This may look familiar to denizens of the golden arches in the 70's and 80's. I think they used to be white plastic and I think there was a different rating system, I don't know. This is what we had. Collect them all.

Way back when, I needed a job to pay for my sparkly Chevette that I was going to buy. Of course, I'll be using 99% of my wages on insurance as I'm a newbie driver. So, when I turned 16, I went and got a job at the local Dairy Queen. They paid "training wages" , or sub-minimum. That meant, 2.90 an hour. But hey, I was growing up. I had a job! Commence to suck.

Yes, I learned all sorts of fascinating stuff in my few short weeks working there. They had "brazier" burgers, which meant they were on a "Burger King" style moving grill. Flame broiled. Then, we put them on buns and steamed the burger. Cool. Onion rings and fries. Rip carton, pour into fryer, set timer. These are skills you'll pass on to your children's children. Most important is the few times I worked front counter support. I had to learn "how to draw DQ". That meant, making a little curly Q out of the ice cream. I don't know that I got good at it, because they let the guys handle the fried part and let the girls make those dainty "Q"'zzzzz. Because we sold about 98 percent ice cream to 2% food, I spent most of the time cleaning the place. After a few weeks, we had a few overcast and rainy days, and the manager called me and said don't come in. Understand, I had that Chevette to pay for, and at 15 hours a week, 2.90 an hour, missing two days was almost $20!!!  So, I moseyed over to my nearby McDonalds and got 25-30 hours a week and started at minimum wage. Oh yes, I asked them if they ever called us to tell us not to come in. They thought I was a comedian.

I was issued a uniform, 100% Polyester, and a paper hat, and a name tag. I think it was the broken one with the silver spatula. I was ready to work and learned a big lesson my first day. They put me on the french fries and told me to keep it clean. We had these "service towels" that were white with maroon pinstripes. They showed me how to put some in the basket then pull them out and drain them, and then "season" them and then how to package small and large fries. (Only two sizes at the time. )  I got the hang of it pretty fast. I was a hot shot fry jockey. I was keeping it clean. "Time to lean, time to clean" was the mantra. Of course, I lost grip on a cleaning towel, the end of it went into the fryer and reflexively pulled it out only to have it fold back on my hand. That got me sent home after a large gauze bandage and a "incident report" was filled out. It wasn't bad enough to blister, as I kept it under cold water for 10 minutes but it hurt enough that I couldn't work over hot for the rest of the night. I thought for sure I'd be canned. HAHAHAHAHA.

I learned very quickly that if you did your job, did it well, were reliable, and they would call YOU and offer extra hours, you'd never get fired from McDonalds. My store quickly became a fun house to young high school kids and slightly older non college townies that had pretty much dropped out of society. There was the breakfast crew of retirees with their own clique, and management was less than stellar. However, it was a family where I met some great friends and had fun working at a place that was no fun to work. As long as work got done, white washed when the regional manager came in and saw us running to peak, and the numbers for sales vs. waste stayed above what was expected, we ran the place. So much that I want to write a book about it.

McDonalds had a employee rating system that was more based on the time you spent there rather than the quality of work. Three cheap stickers were affixed on our name tags like military awards. Gee, I should have gotten a purple french fry for being burned on my first day. The colors were like Olympics medals. Bronze, silver, gold. Trouble was, we rarely got them. We rarely got anything. I had two broken name tags, and I think I had a silver, a bronze and a gold. The motto was "Quality, Service, Cleanliness."

"Quality" was the spatula. It showed we could consistently put out a quarter pound burger with the onions placed just so. The Big Macs were made so the sauce was gooshed on the burger without slopping out the sides. Crap like that.

"Service" was the register service. How quickly you served the customer s*it from the bin less than 10 minutes old. How well you made those sundaes. (I had that covered from my days at DQ.) How well you talked to customers both in the drive through and up front.  Yes, I was that kid that went "CHING" in the drive thru.  It was a sucky job, but I was still in high school. "WE GOT A BUS!!"

"Cleanliness" was a tricky one to excel in. Nobody liked keeping everything clean all the time. Clean the grill. Clean the prep station. Clean the toasters. Clean clean clean. I did my part. When a manager asked me to clean a splash on the side of the milk shake machine, I got my bucket of warm water with sanitizer in it and was wringing out my maroon striped towel when I noticed...the splash was MOVING. An exterminator came in and couldn't identify what they were and the whole machine went away for "steam cleaning." That should have earned me my gold right there. I dubbed the little moving white specks "Sugar Mites". That's what they were after all. Never did learn what they were....

Service, quality, cleanliness. This was the last badge I "earned". Truth be told, we had a few "supervisors" that were down with the cause of high school kids and dope smoking society dropouts. We had one manager who came in high or got high while he worked. That made our job even better. We worked for the golden arch corp. Going no place fast.  So, one of our supervisors thew a bit of a party in the break room and it was a beer fest for all. He supposedly "lost" the key to the cabinet where they stored these "magic award stickers" and proceeded to break into the cabinet and award all involved "triple gold".

By then, I had been there almost two years. I did get the "trainer" strip at the top because I helped train the new wide eyed high school kids coming in. I was good enough that the druggie manager I mentioned actually accused me of being on drugs because I was always so happy in drive thru. It was all I could do to keep from going crazy.  I could be a star in the drive thru. I would broadcast to one car at a time and be surprised that someone actually enjoyed their dreck. Someone should have bitch slapped the silliness out of me. 

Of course, once you have a triple gold name tag, they don't check on these things. They don't keep records going all the way back to when the store opened. "Joe made it to all silvers, he shouldn't get gold yet..." So, I have a few of these triple gold name tags as I went back to the Macs three or four times  for stints from 3 weeks to 6 months at a time. It was a part time job I knew how to do. They tore my old store down, and when it reopened, I went back to work there for a few months. I made McPizza (which wasn't bad at all) and McFried Chicken, (which wasn't bad either.) They added micro waves and bins that held cooked meat filled with "blue water" that when looking at the big chemical binder every store has per fed regulations, the blue water was listed as "propitiatory" and didn't list what it was made of. Hmmmmmm. That was my cue to exit Mickey Macs. 

I did work at McDonalds once more when I needed a second job in Toledo. Here was Mr. Radio Producer taking a job that Mr. Radio Producer shouldn't have been taking. I worked for a week there. I told the employees that worked on Friday that they could hear me on the college radio station that I was also working for. I proceeded to tear down the job and even took a phone call from someone who was one of my co-workers and told him he was insane for enduring the McSystem. That ended my McDonalds tenure for good.

I'm sure when I dig up more crap from my employment there, I'll do another post or seven on how working there was the time of my life. I will say that one of the stoned employees decided to take a dump in the barrel of cleanser we used for cleaning the fryers. Man was the manager angry, but nobody fessed up. Conversation with Mc Quartermaster:

"I need to order a new 55 gallon drum of cleaner"

"We show you just got one two weeks ago."

"We had a um...er...sewer leak...."

*lifting up the ceiling tile in the crew room to get a fresh McHat.*

-Ric