Shake Shake Shake

Striking my best "you do as I say" pose in my manager's uniform, circa mid 80's.

Something that T did last night brought me back to my McDonald's days.

Yes, that's right. I spent five years working first as a regular employee, then as an assistant manager, and then for the last two years as the store manager. I fell into it, having graduated from college in 1981 during Ronald Reagan's recession, when interest rates were up in the 14% range and no one was hiring English majors. I was scheduled to be maid of honor in two weddings and I needed cash, so I took the Mickey D's job.

It was actually a GREAT experience. Every candidate running for any office should have had a stint at McDonald's. They teach quite a work ethic. "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean." In other words, if you're on the clock, you're doing something for the company. And the lessons this child of the suburbs learned. I worked with a woman whose husband beat her every night, even when she was pregnant with their second child. She would come in with bruises around her neck from being choked. And there was no talking her out; she couldn't leave -- she was making minimum wage at McDonald's.

I had an other employee's boyfriend beat her up in the ladies room. I'll never forget a customer running to me to tell me what was going on. I stormed right in there and ordered him the f--- out. He took off. I was 5 feet two inches, 95 pounds of pissed off, and you didn't want to mess with me, even if  you did beat up your girlfriend regularly. I also called the cops. Guess which one showed up? The one who beat his wife and kids. Yes, I learned a lot about life -- the hard scrabble real life that so many people never escape. I had junkies and alcoholics working for me. They lived in crummy apartments and didn't have cars. I picked them up and drove them home. One of the best moms I have ever known was a 16-year-old employee with a two-year- old son. She wasn't allowed to work before 6:00 a.m. due to her age. It seemed absurd that she could have been a mom for two years, but child labor laws prevented her from working before 6:00.

I hired immigrants from Singapore, India, and Afghanistan. When we asked the woman from India to clean the floor in the wash area, she got down on her hands and knees and proceeded to hand wash it with a towel. Because that's how you wash a floor in India, apparently. She used to defer to her husband when picking up her check. We refused to hand it to him. "You worked for this money. It is yours. What you do with it after we hand it to you is your business. But we are giving it to you because you earned it."

I learned how to wire a new industrial strength plug onto a toaster. Correctly. Because if you got it wrong, it would explode with a huge POP when you plugged it in. The toaster didn't even need to be on. Just needed to be wired wrong. I learned to turn off the breaker, plug it in, and then turn the breaker back on. I never had one explode.

I learned to fix HVACs, freezers, ice machines, and soda systems. I could take a grill that was completely offline and get it and all its parts up and working and the grill up to calibrated temp within a half an hour. These skills come in handy at home. I have just diagnosed our slow running sink as having a tissue crammed down it. When I get a chance, I'll pull the trap and see if I'm right. Because I can pull traps.

When you manage a McDonald's, you learn to think on your feet. I put out fires without panicking. The kind with flames and smoke, not the kind where someone can't log onto their database or their upload process ended in error. I ended up  with a blister burn one time that encompassed my entire right forearm from being splashed with hot grease. I drove myself to the hospital, with the fluid in the blister sloshing around every time I had to shift. I lost a day of work and didn't get paid. No sick time. I had an employee once put his entire arm into a 400 degree vat to retrieve something he dropped. Hot liquid doesn't look hot. I made him submerge his arm into a bucket of ice water for 20 minutes before we even headed for the hospital. He came out of it with 98 percent first degree burns, and a small section of second degree burns.

I went to Hamburger University for two weeks in Chicago and  graduated Dean's List. It may sound laughable, but I just got an agenda for management training I was scheduled to take at my current place of employment. Twenty five years later, there was nothing on the new agenda that we didn't cover at H.U. You want me to be trained? How about I teach it?

And then there was the H.U. shake machine challenge. You had to score a 100 on the shake machine test to qualify for the challenge. I aced it. Then they blindfolded you and put you in front of an un-assembled machine and had you attempt to assemble it. The person who got it put together the fastest without any errors won a hundred bucks and eternal bragging rights. I practiced putting the machine together for at least a month with my eyes closed. Our machine was against a wall, so it was to my left as I worked on it. When it was my turn for the assembly challenge at H.U., they stationed me with the machine to my right, and I didn't stop to think that this was not how I had practiced. I messed up about halfway through, so no hundred bucks and no bragging rights. Except that there are some bragging rights in just getting to the assembly challenge in and of itself.

The thought of shake machines brings me to my T story. I had assigned him the chore of sweeping the bathroom last night as a way of calming him down from his "my sisters are here and I've eaten a ton of Valentine's Day candy" hyperactive dysregulation. T is a hard worker. Not only did he sweep the bathroom, he came to me holding the toilet brush holder in his hands, proudly telling me that he'd washed it and it was all nice and shiny clean. This is a thing I would wash outside with a hose while wearing rubber gloves. Nope, he washed it with his bare hands in the *gasp* bathroom sink. Where we brush our teeth. I cleaned the sink with vinegar. I'm considering another go with a bleach solution. We may actually need to buy a new sink.

Then he accidentally knocked over our toothbrushes so they landed on the floor next to the toilet. I'm sorry, I don't care what advice I receive on how to sanitize them; I just can't do it. My toothbrush is in the garbage.

Which reminded me of the day I saw the maintenance guy at McDonald's using the shake machine cleaning brush in the toilet. OK, it kind of looked like a toilet brush, but it was on the tray with all the shake machine parts. We used it to clean and sanitize the large cavity that the shake liquid mixes in as it freezes to shake consistency. And now it was inside a toilet. I explained that this was not a toilet brush. I threw it away and ordered a new one. And I NEVER asked how long he'd been using it to clean toilets. To this day, I want to believe I caught him the first time he tried it.

Happy Shamrock Shake Season to one and all!