employee of the month

So here we are, and we’re winding down this summer arc about my stint at Burger King 20 years ago.

It was no secret to my managers that I was going back to college in the fall. But as my days at BK dwindled, my manager George made a comment that I carry with me to this very day: 

It’s a shame you’re going back to college, Step... you could have gone all the way.

George called me “Step.” Not “Steph.” “Step.” It’s okay. Time has ripped my memory in such a way that I’m not sure whether George’s name was actually George or whether I’m remembering the wrong name but just now deciding it’s easier to refer to him as George and leave it at that. So “Step” is no big deal.

party with cheese

So here we are with, you guessed it, the aftermath of my previous post, “clown with cheese.”

On Saturday afternoon, August 24, 1991, a mere three days after my three hours of somewhat useless clown training, I was slated to host my first Burger King birthday party. I was a bit terrified, not because I didn’t know what to expect, but rather because I knew exactly what to expect.

Most of my pre-college employment was spent working with kids, either as a babysitter or a day camp counselor... and for a brief spell in middle school, I also worked for Kiddie Catering, the brainchild of my friend’s Martha-before-there-was-Martha mom, whom we’ll call “Ms. M.” This was a very small one-van operation, wherein Ms. M shopped out birthday party entertainment in the form of an eager college student and her willing young assistant (me) that would come to your home and provide supervised games, a sundae bar, and a mini-show from a costumed character who danced and “talked” to a pre-recorded track. Guess who was inside the costumed character?

clown with cheese

So here we are, to talk of a red-letter day that occurred two decades ago during my adventures at Burger King.

But before I get to that, I need to address yet another example of the New York Times following in my footsteps. It happened this past spring, after I tried to be all funny and satirical about proms in “omp!” and created (or so I thought) the concept of the Adult Prom... and then lo and behold, exactly 15 days later the Times ran a feature story on actual Adult Proms being held in the Midwest. And it happened yet again on July 31, not even a month after I admitted to still using paper calendars in “old tymes not forgotten,” when I came across a feature about some people refusing to ride the wave of digital planners and calendar software. 

Well, let’s see the Grey Lady do a story about fast-food clown training. 

ka-ching with cheese

So here we are, back after a longer-than-planned hiatus, to get back to that magical Burger King summer of 1991. 

The day I was bumped up to the cash register was monumental, but at the time, I didn’t think it was such a big deal. After all, I had an concurrent evening job at Kerr Drugs and had already run registers for several weeks. Of course, those were ancient registers with no bar code scanner or credit card pad... every price and product code had to be entered by hand, and every credit card transaction required the use of the old-fashioned “chunk-chunk” slider device that imprinted the card number onto carbon receipts. But I’d mastered them, and surely the Burger King registers would be a breeze by comparison. Hell, we didn’t even accept credit cards at the BK. That alone had to make for smooth sailing.

But consider, if you will, the frustrated tinkerings of a bright young engineer charged with designing a fast-food cash register. He’s got to make tiny little buttons for each menu item. He’s got to include buttons that say small, medium, and large. Buttons that are pink and blue. He has a master’s degree. He is not happy.

intermission

So here we are, and I am taking a small breather from telling the tales of my Burger King adventures 20 years ago.

I probably have four more BK posts left in me. For those who are fatigued by these stories, I apologize. But sometimes I feel that one of the unspoken missions of my blog is to spread the wisdom I have accrued through unlikely means, and that was certainly a summer filled with lessons, not all of which were about grilled meat. Wait until I tell you about clown school. Doesn’t that sound promising?

selective memory with cheese

So here we are, in the continuing saga of my Burger King Summer of ’91, one score ago.

There are things that I remember vividly about those ten weeks. One such thing was the day that I swear I made Burger King history by making a single order of six ham and cheese sandwiches. I don’t think anyone had done it before, and I’m sure it's not been done since.

change with cheese

So here we are, in another chapter of the 20th anniversary of my Great Burger King Adventure of 1991.

I don’t know why my ten summer weeks at Burger King happened to fall during a period of great change, but they did. Being smack in the middle of it provided me with yet another valuable life lesson:

You do not want to be on the front lines of change. People may say they want change, but they mostly don’t.

It was an odd chapter in Burger King history, when the Whopper Jr. was temporarily renamed Hamburger (or Cheeseburger) Deluxe, and the old-school Whaler fish sandwich was now the more-PC Ocean Catch. This proved to be impossible for long-time customers to comprehend, let alone accept. It’s not like there was an ad campaign that explained the change, or even massive signage to clarify the situation... it just happened. And I’d see customers come to the register and crane their necks up at the menu board, brows furrowed, eyes darting and searching... and then, in small fearful voices, they would ask:

first day with cheese

So here we are.

Twenty years ago, I was lucky when that call came through. It was just one summer earlier, during the recession of 1990, when I’d had no luck at all even getting an application at the fast-food joints of Jacksonville, NC. But in the summer of 1991, The King called, beckoning me to his flame-kissed burger palace.

And now I had not one, but two part-time jobs that would help add desperately needed kopeks to my college coffer. I’d work the registers at the mall drugstore in the evening, and during the day, I’d do everything there was to do at Burger King. It would prove to be a pivotal, horrible, wearying, lonely, amazing summer where I learned less about burgers and more about human nature than I could have dreamed.