The Summer of Crickets (BK pt. 1)

"I'm from America. Home of the whopper." - Jon Stewart

Working in fast food is something that pays very poorly, obviously. Often you get treated by customers with utter contempt. You go home smelling like french fries. It is something I highly recommend everybody do at least a few months in their life.

In high school I worked two different stints at Burger King. I really shouldn't have gone back for a second helping, but I guess I was a glutton for dirty fryer oil and minimum wage compensation.

My first tour of duty was when the store was brand new. It opened right across the street from my high school. Minimum wage was $5.15 an hour. I was making $5.20. Totally bad ass. I was making more than the minimum amount! Minimum wage means your employer would pay you less if it were legal. You don't really know how much your employer values you. But I was making a nickel more! I knew exactly how much I was worth to Kostel Inc. (the owners of our franchise).

I didn't pursue this job out of need. I wasn't under any financial duress. My parents didn't compel me to work. I was 16 and could now work and take part of commerce. I just wanted something to do. I wanted spending money. One of the ladies of the morning crew asked me what I would do with my first paycheck. I answered quickly. I was going to buy a TV. At this point I had some old beat up hand-me-down small TV that changed channels at the unit only. Not even a remote. Now I would get my very own TV that I chose myself. With a damn remote. I bought a boxy Magnovox with no audio and video inputs. Just a coax cable input on the back. My second paycheck went toward buying a PlayStation and a copy of Tomb Raider. Having AV inputs would have been handy. Had to get some kind of adapter just to get the damn thing to work. Anyway, I was proud of my TV. The Magnovox slogan was “smart, very smart.” I felt smart for getting it.  And I used that TV until I moved to Tulsa about nine years later.  I never even had to change the remote's batteries. Solid investment.

Buying that TV excited me. The idea of making my first big purchase was a big deal. I'm sure I had a sparkle in my eyes and a stupid accompanying grin. Looking back it was probably silly because I was talking to women making roughly the same as me, but they needed their money for bills and feeding their kids. Or maybe it genuinely interested them to hear what some kid was going to do with his first paycheck. I'm terrible at reading people.

For the most part my coworkers were kids I went to school with. There were essentially two day-parts. 1^st shift was from open which was 6am until about 5pm. The second shift was from about 4pm until closing time at 11pm. Employees had staggered shifts so they came in sometime during those two shifts. Older adults manned the early shift and teens and young adults worked the evenings. Except weekends. The adults didn't work weekends. Weekend shifts were split between the teens and young adults. We didn't work Monday to Friday on my crew. This catered to the adults, the family people. The moms I guess. Kids didn't have families? Nah, I understand the reasoning and I accepted this. I just wanted money.

Our shift manager was some guy who's name I don't remember? Dennis? Let's go with Dennis. He just got discharged from a branch of the military and had no leadership. He was pushed around, walked all over. His employees had no respect for him. I was nice enough to him, but it's hard to respect somebody as your boss if he has no command over his underlings. Some of my co-workers took breaks at whatever time they wanted without permission. Food was eaten without being paid for. Some guys would flirt with young ladies for 15 or 20 minutes at a time while others worked.

Dennis came to work once with a black eye and somebody made fun of him to his face saying his wife slugged him. This may have had some validity as word got out later on that his wife had left him. How cruel. Dennis didn't stay around too long, he was replaced with a younger and cruder person named Miranda.

I have called that summer the summer of crickets. That summer we had a cricket problem. The north wall of our store was often nearly completely blacked out. Covered in an ebony sea of micro-beasts. This was not appealing. We were next to a field south of a Wal-Mart super center.  These insect invaders had to have come from there.  As you drove in our parking lot there was a loud popping sound. It was as if our lot was paved in bubble wrap. I have no idea how we did any business at all. Future college roommate John and I were tasked with exterminating these critters.

We were armed with just a few tools. John and I sprayed the wall with a water hose. This was not a high pressure washer, would not want to peel off the paint. We used push brooms to make as large a pile as possible. Dust pans would be used to dump the bugs, living and dead, into a 55 gallon trash can on wheels. Scoop in some poison and lye for the smell. Repeat. We filled that bucket up after a few hours in the hot Texas summer heat. For $5.20 an hour we rounded up and killed thousands of crickets. Cheaper than Terminex, but not as effective.

I'm pretty sure there were dozens of health code violations. We actually had fun and preferred this to our normal work. It was a nice break from cranky customers. And I am certain this was an exercise in futility. Within a few days the bastards were back.  Our pants, shirt and hat were dusted in white powder.  The chalky residue mixed with sweat on our faces and arms combined to make a lovely paste. I fear that this is not good for our long-term health outlook.

Employees were given one shirt and a hat for a uniform. The shirts were $15. This was four hours work after taxes. Many workers would wear their shirt multiple days in a row. Who has time to wash it every day? And after so many washes the color would fade of course. But when you make minimum wage it's a burden to buy a $15 shirt. Me being a teenage boy without a girlfriend, I was guilty of wearing a shirt a few times before washing. I did end up buying two more shirts though. And after my last day of work it was like vultures swarming on a dead dog. People wanted my shirts. I'm sentimental but I didn't want my shirts. I gave them to the lady I felt most in need, a woman named Bobbie with a raspy smoker's voice. When she took orders in the drive thru she was often mistakenly called sir.

We had some silly goofy times. When it was slow John would grab the intercom mic and announce, “Paging Dr. Dre. Paging Dr. Dre. You are wanted in the OR.” Joel T and I had more than a few races making burgers. The condiment trough was in between two stainless steel tables. In about 15 seconds we could slap together a burger made to order in an intense race for burger supremacy. It wasn't pretty but it was made your way. More food for the waste inventory bucket. That waste bucket was used and abused. One time I deep fried an entire whopper just to see what it would look like. It maintained it's composure and just looked a little extra greasy is all. The lettuce had seen better days though.

Sometimes our manager would announce, “Drop ten chicken tenders,” a few minutes before closing. Every night  the manager would go through the waste bucket and record what was wasted. This kept us honest or something. But the manager used it to get free hot and fresh chicken tenders. Record it as waste and put it in his belly!

After closing one night, a couple of the guys thought it would be a great idea to get into a condiment fight. Ketchup, honey mustard and barbecue sauce adorned the floors, tables, and booths. This girl I was interested in and I didn't partake in such tomfoolery. Her name was Briane and we unfortunately shared the same last name.  She was a grade above me in a different school.  We washed the dishes instead of sullying the prestine dining room. We ended up helping them clean their damn dirty mess though. Somehow I spilled the mop bucket and now I was the bad guy who left a mess that others had to help clean up. Where is the justice? That was a late night.  But we still got paid.

Nick K and I had a joke we called the official joke of Bonham Burger King. We would actually tell the joke over the PA as customers pulled up into the drive thru. Stop me if you heard it before. “A horse walks into a bar. Bartender says why such the long face?” Hey oh! I was told by a customer once that it wasn't very professional. Not everybody has a great sense of humor. I run into that a lot to this day actually.

The general manager worked roughly eight to five. The morning manager would work opening until about 3 pm. And the lowest manager worked closing. One of the most unfair practices at the store was forcing the closing manager to end the day with labor at a certain mark. A computer kept track of the day's receipts and the pay of all the employees on the clock that day. The opening and midshift would often overstack their crew and drive up the labor number. The night manager would have to send workers home early and people would quit because they didn't get enough hours. Those lucky enough to work were part of a skeleton crew that were always busy and sometimes they would quit from the stress. Did I mention turnover was high?

Drive thru time was a point of pride. There was a clock on the wall that kept track of the average time it took for a car to go from the menu to the time it pulled away from the window. It kept the average for the whole day. Ideally the average time would take about three minutes. If a person ordered a fish sandwich it was bad. We didn't keep cooked fish in stock because it was not a popular menu item. We always made it fresh. The time it took to fry up fish was 4 minutes and 45 seconds. Not good for our average. We were good and could get the average down to 2 ½ minutes at times. Without cheating. When business was dead, sometimes one of us would get in his car and just drive through over and over just to see how low we could get the average. Of course if we ended the day with an average time of 45 seconds it would look suspicious. But hey, whatever it takes, right?   

Joel, John and I were hands down the best workers. Nick K was good too but he didn't stick around long enough to have a great impression on management,  not to mention he could be "lippy".  We were the core of the night shift. We were dependable, punctual, fast, and well, competent. For whatever reason we all got together and decided we would quit. This effectively screwed them over. Nobody else could man the drive thru or slap together sandwiches as fast as us. The general manger met with me and offered me a massive raise to stay. I was bought out for 40 cents an hour. I set aside my principles for a three dollars more per day. Principles? Nah, I decided to quit because it was something to do. Now I knew I was appreciated. Joel was convinced to stay as well. John called us sellouts and stood his ground. Guess he had conviction. I had an extra $30 per paycheck though.

Briane and I had gone to the movies and gone out a couple times. The last time was at Coffee Mill Lake. It was nice. Sitting and holding each other on the hood of my car I called “whore house red” as the warm summer wound down. We talked about how she had gotten her third speeding ticket. I bragged that I had never ever even gotten pulled over. We talked about a friend of ours participating in a county talent show. I think she was going to sing maybe? And then Briane told me that she had gone out a few times with Joel and wanted to give him a shot. I liked her but wasn't smitten or in love. I was okay with being friends. We held each other a little longer and went home. She actually rode with some other friend who had driven out there and I was alone. To my thoughts. At night after getting dumped. I guess I was more upset than I had let on. As I drove past the highway near the VFW I got pulled over. Apparently the top speed of my 1989 red Ford Escort was 79 miles per hour. This was not great. Especially in a 65 mile per hour zone. Guess I should have knocked on wood. Not a cheap ticket to get.

My first tour duty at Burger King was from April of my Sophomore year until December of my Junior year. My last day of work came in the form of my first ever sick day. My ex girlfriend Anna was the passenger of a car pulling up in my drive thru. The driver was an older guy she was dating. Michael.  He was significantly older than her and I would tell myself she dumped me for him. That she dumped me for him because he could buy her alcohol if she wanted. It never occurred to me that she dumped me because of me. That maybe it was because I'm not the most emotionally warm human being. I tend to pull back in public. It's hard for me to open up. I'm just not a thoughtful person.  Nah, this girl who never really displayed a penchant for superficiality all of the sudden kicked my ass to the curb because she could now have access to wine coolers and peach schnapps.

Not long after I fulfilled their order I started feeling ill. This was actual physical pain, not related to how I felt after seeing my first love with another guy, having to serve them. No, my abdomen was in pain. I left work and went to bed at home. My dad ended up taking me to the ER at Northeast Texas Medical center a few hours later. I was sent home with with a diagnosis of gastroenteritis and pain pills. The pain did not subside and a few days later I'm at my family doctor, Dr. Schreiber. He had me lay down and did some thing where he punched the bottom of my right foot and I winced in pain. Somehow he decided I had appendicitis. I was sent to Texoma Medical Center in nearby Denison, Texas.

By the time I was in a position of being able to return to work, I had a trip to Germany coming up in a few weeks. I did the fast food equivalent of resigning and they told me I was welcome to come back anytime I wanted to work again. I did not return after my vacation. I never planned to work there again. But things don't normally go as planned.  
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Before selfies were "cool". 1999

If I had to pick a single song to be the souldtrack to this post it would be...