Fast Food Gal – True Story
Fast Food Gal – A True Story
Believe it or not, the town I grew up in was so small we didn’t have a fast food restaurant. While I was in high school, one finally did open. Everyone was excited with the idea of ordering burgers, fries and milkshakes. Needless to say, my gal pals and myself decided to all apply for jobs which we all got. We had to watch a film on upselling fries, desserts, drinks, etc. I still use those principals I learned there. They showed us how to make shakes and to cut a batch of tomatoes with a razor-sharp slicer.
We all had a uniform to wear and big white shoes. My gal pal said they looked like white plates on the bottoms of our shoes. They were the ugliest shoes I ever wore. We also had to wear hair nets. Now a days, I guess they provide hats to do away with the hair net requirement.
We had a grand gala opening with lots of fun and prizes. I even got to dress up in an old fashioned red and white costume for the grand opening. I think I still have a picture of myself in the costume. When the grand opening started, we were swamped with customers. Everyone in the town came for a meal. Generally, I worked the front center cash register and we also had two side registers. The drive through was always swamped. Occasionally, I had to go outside with a menu board you could plug in and take the orders of the cars waiting in line. My girlfriend usually got the assignment to dress up as the mascot and wave at the cars. Boy, that was a hot job when you put the head on. People were allowed to choose a key to open the treasure box and depending on the key, you could win a small prize. One the best prizes was a tin coke tray probably worth under a dollar at the most. People were looking through the keys to find the odd-looking ones which would open the better prize containers.
I really enjoyed the work and it was a fun job to work with my girlfriends. No one took anything too seriously. We were not given a meal but we could have all the soda and shakes that we wanted.
We had an older manager and a young but not hip assistant manager who was always trying to motivate us to do more work, work faster and clean the restaurant. Well as things go, it wasn’t long until there was an incident where the manager was fired. Not sure of things but it was rumored that he came in after he had been drinking. We were all totally shocked but we were young and not yet on to the ways of the world.
Years later from that group, one girl passed away from cancer, another was involved with the wrong side of the law, one went on to raise many children, and the last one I never really kept in touch with. Life goes on, we all grew up, faced real life but for that short era of time, things were grand and . . . would you like a large coke and fries with that burger?