Refreshing.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Friday, July 09, 2010
Quote of the Day, 47:
I don't even follow baseball, and I knew.
-Sweetie, proclaiming her brilliance for having predicted LeBron James, basketball star, would go to Miami.
Sweetie knows nothing about sports. And yet she somehow predicted LeBron going to Miami. And she routinely wins the annual football pool. She's like Paul The Octopus, only way hotter.
condensery (Friday's Sunday's Poem/Hot Actress 55)
Poet’s Work
Lorine Niedecker
Grandfather
advised me:
Learn a trade
I learned
to sit at desk
and condense
No layoff
from this
condensery
__________________________________________________________
About the Poem: Yesterday, I inadvertently wrote a poem that I'm going to advertently try to get published in The New Yorker, which efforts I'll someday claim were a genius work of performance art that entitles me to an NEA Grant in the range of a bazillion dollars (delivered to me in Hawaii, where I'll be living.) So today, I'm thinking about what it takes to write poetry -- as was today's poet.
About the Hot Actress: Sweetie picked her; we verified that she's over 30, and Sweetie also pointed out that she's not skinny -- which is kind of Sweetie's thing today, since it's only 7:48 and she's already made me discuss with her a picture of Jessica Simpson and whether Jessica is fat (we agreed she's not.)
Plus, adds, Sweetie "She's got a nerd husband. Jeff somebody."
Plus, adds me, judging by Google, she seems to live entirely in ball gowns.
Lorine Niedecker
Grandfatheradvised me:
Learn a trade
I learned
to sit at desk
and condense
No layoff
from this
condensery
__________________________________________________________
About the Poem: Yesterday, I inadvertently wrote a poem that I'm going to advertently try to get published in The New Yorker, which efforts I'll someday claim were a genius work of performance art that entitles me to an NEA Grant in the range of a bazillion dollars (delivered to me in Hawaii, where I'll be living.) So today, I'm thinking about what it takes to write poetry -- as was today's poet.
About the Hot Actress: Sweetie picked her; we verified that she's over 30, and Sweetie also pointed out that she's not skinny -- which is kind of Sweetie's thing today, since it's only 7:48 and she's already made me discuss with her a picture of Jessica Simpson and whether Jessica is fat (we agreed she's not.)Plus, adds, Sweetie "She's got a nerd husband. Jeff somebody."
Plus, adds me, judging by Google, she seems to live entirely in ball gowns.
It's true. I'm generally a happy guy.
Oldest is again job-searching; she's perpetually on the lookout for a better job these days, and when she gets the urge to move on to a new career, she comes over here and has me and Sweetie help her prepare a new resume.
We try to tell her we're not really the people to do that -- given that I've been at my job now for 10 years and Sweetie has been a stay-at-home-mom for three years -- but Oldest says the same thing: "Where am I supposed to get someone to help me, then?"
Now, I have an answer to that question: the sample resumes at Resume Bucket (resumebucket.com.) They've got sample resumes in all kinds of different categories, so you can tailor your resume to the career you hope to have (or improve.)
Using that site, Oldest was able to create a really good, up-to-date resume, and I also was able to show her how to convert her resume to a webpage, to make it findable for employers and to make it easier to spread it around -- plus, she wouldn't have to come use our computer every time to print it. Wherever she is, she can get access to her resume.
Oldest is happy -- she's got some job leads and her ever-present job search might actually work this time. Sweetie's happy, because Oldest isn't constantly bugging her and hanging around the house printing up new resumes. And I'm happy because... well, I'm generally a happy guy.
We try to tell her we're not really the people to do that -- given that I've been at my job now for 10 years and Sweetie has been a stay-at-home-mom for three years -- but Oldest says the same thing: "Where am I supposed to get someone to help me, then?"
Now, I have an answer to that question: the sample resumes at Resume Bucket (resumebucket.com.) They've got sample resumes in all kinds of different categories, so you can tailor your resume to the career you hope to have (or improve.)
Using that site, Oldest was able to create a really good, up-to-date resume, and I also was able to show her how to convert her resume to a webpage, to make it findable for employers and to make it easier to spread it around -- plus, she wouldn't have to come use our computer every time to print it. Wherever she is, she can get access to her resume.
Oldest is happy -- she's got some job leads and her ever-present job search might actually work this time. Sweetie's happy, because Oldest isn't constantly bugging her and hanging around the house printing up new resumes. And I'm happy because... well, I'm generally a happy guy.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
McDonald's 3 (Jobs v. Life)
Jobs v. Life is an exploration of my life through the jobs I've worked. McDonald's is the second job I ever had. The Table Of Contents is here.
I don't recall how long I worked the fry cook position at the McDonald's; I only worked there about a year-and-a-half, which seems, in retrospect, an incredibly long time for me to have worked there. I do know that eventually I was promoted-- promoted being a relative word, here -- to working on the burger-cooking end of things.
That was the next level up: I got to make the burgers that people loved, instead of the fries that people eat with their burgers because they think they're supposed to do that. Have you ever thought about that? Why do people order fries with burgers, automatically? I do that, anyway, or used to: almost everytime I went to a fast-food restaurant, I ordered fries with the burger, and did so even in the days before the extra-value meals and super-meals and meal-deal-meals and other prepackaged specials that encourage me to buy food that I don't particularly like.
Becuase I don't; I don't particularly like McDonald's fries. Or Burger King's fries. Or any french fries. They're okay, but they're not what I'd choose to go with a burger, or a chicken sandwich, or, now, a mishmash of Big Mac ingredients in a tortilla, which has to be called a wrap because if you call it a tortilla people will get confused and think it's foreign food. Or that they're at Taco Bell. Either way, they'll be freaked out.
If I was given a choice of what to get as a side for my burger, etc., I'd probably choose potato chips, which only serves to highlight the strangeness of my mind... because when I see restaurants that let me get potato chips as a side to my meal, I (a) almost never get them, and (b) assume that the restaurant is kind of a cheesy, low-rent operation.
(Subway, where I'd work in the future, falls into that latter category, and may have contributed to that cheesy-low-rent belief, not least because I worked there.)
Part of that belief stems from the fact that the potato chips you get at restaurants as a side dish are almost comically too small. The bags don't even look like they'd hold any chips, let alone sufficient chips to form a side to the meal I'm getting. Part of being a self-proclaimed (but still accurately-described) expert on what things should cost is also being an expert on what size portions are the right size for a given part of a meal. I can do that; I'm an expert on how much of something you should get, which, when combined with my expertise on how much things should cost, makes me very valuable to society. (Note that, future inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic world. You will not want to use me for monster bait, since I will be able to serve our new society by telling you how big portions should be and what they should cost.)
Some portion-sizing things are easy: Ramen noodles, for example: the correct portion size is "one packet." Once, Sweetie made some Ramen noodles for Mr F for his dinner, making them at the same time that she made them for me for my lunch the next day... and making both packets at the same time in the same container. I watched her as she doled out Mr F's dinner noodles and then packed up the remainder into my lunch, and I was pretty sure that she'd gotten the portions wrong, that Mr F was getting more than a packet while I was getting, for lunch, less than a packet. I didn't begrudge Mr F the extra portion, but I did feel robbed the next day.
Potato chips, too, have a serving size, and that size is "Those bags that you get for 99 cents at the convenience store." That's one serving; anything less and you're getting ripped off. Anything more and you're a glutton. So you can see where the problem comes in, when buying those micro-bagged chips at the restaurants that are too cheap to install a deep fryer and allow you to buy french fries: I feel I'm getting ripped off, and don't want to buy the chips.
I don't want to buy the fries, either, really, because I don't really like fries, so I shouldn't hold it against those loser restaurants that don't serve fries, but I do, because if you're going to be a fast food restaurant, you ought to serve french fries, even if people like me don't really want them. We'll still buy them, because you'll package them in a Meal Deal that convinces us it's worth it to buy the whole deal rather than separately getting only the ingredients we want, and maybe it is. If I'd pay $3.99 for two cheeseburgers and a soda, and $4.19 for those burgers, a soda, and fries in a "meal deal," shouldn't I get the fries for just twenty cents even if I don't really want them? For twenty cents, I kind of want them.
I have a complicated relationship with fast food restaurants, is I guess what I'm trying to say, and I wonder how much of that stems from my dimly-remembered 18 months at McDonald's, where I longed, always, to move up in work stations, never satisfied with my lot in life but yet never wanting to actually work hard enough to advance to the next level more quickly. I'm sure it took a longer time than usual to move from fry station guy to hamburger grill guy, given my attitudes.
When I did move to hamburger guy, the level of complexity moved up a notch. Fry cooking had been easy: Dump some frozen, breaded stuff into a vat, hit a button, and wait until a high-pitched beep told me to take it out. Once it was out and relatively cool, I would package it in whatever those things are supposed to be packaged in: fries went into paper or cardboard packets (back then, there were only two sizes: regular and large), pies went into cardboard sleeves, and filet-o-fishes went... I'm not sure. I don't remember what I did with those. Probably gave them to the hamburger guys to put on buns and give to the crew chief who'd wrap them and slide them down the heated bin where things were kept back then -- a series of black slides filled with Big Macs and burgers and filets, each with a number behind them, a "1 to 10" number that represented when the food was to be thrown away. Food was supposed to be kept under the lamps no more than 10 minutes, so if you put a burger in there at 12:55, you'd put a "1" behind it to indicate that when the minute hand was on the 1, that burger was to be thrown out.
That wasn't my job yet. I wasn't ready for the complexities of wrapping burgers and putting numbers -- in part because the crew chief was also responsible for telling burger guys how much of something to make: I need 10 ham, the chief might holler, and we'd have to cook him up 10 hamburgers. Or I need 5 macs, judging, based on whatever criteria the crew chief had, how many Big Macs we'd need in the next 10 minutes.
My job... at the time...was to cook those 5 macs, or 10 hams, or 12 cheese. My setup was a grill, with three lights above it. The first light was the one I'd hit when I first put down the patties. The second light would then blink and beep when it was time to sear the patties and flip them -- pressing the spatula down on them to squeeze out the juices and help them cook all the way through. The third was the light that would blink and beep when the patties were done.
That was how I learned to cook burgers; I didn't learn at home, from Mom and Dad, even though we had hamburger night nearly every Friday for my entire life. I never watched Mom or Dad cook hamburgers at home; they made them on the "super grill," a large electric skillet, and they were delicious, but I didn't watch them because I had no interest in cooking dinner, not for myself or my family, growing up. At McDonald's, I had no interest in cooking dinner, either, but I did have an interest in getting paid, so I cooked burgers for $2.35 an hour, and applied the McDonald's cooking style to every single burger I'd ever cook for the rest of my life: When I cook burgers nowadays, I still flip-and-sear, when I can; I feel a little lost when I cook them in some way (like on a Foreman grill) that doesn't let me flip the burgers and sear them.
The automation-- removing any need to think from the mind of an easily-distracted, daydreaming 16-year-old -- was necessary, as evidenced by my later adventures in cooking burgers outside of McDonald's, because while I still flip-and-sear, I tend to do so a bit too much: I flip my burgers (and my pancakes, and my grilled-cheese sandwiches, and anything else that can be flipped) a lot -- probably too much, searing them when I can (I've tried to sear pancakes and I don't recommend it), and then, when I get bored flipping-and-searing, or distracted by the Internet or Mr Bunches or a really good song, I forget entirely about the burgers, etc., until they're burnt.
(The only food I don't flip is eggs, which I am incapable of frying. I cannot fry an egg, and I don't even really try. When I'm forced to fry eggs now, I break about five into a pan, set it on medium heat, put a top on, and let them sit until everything in the pan is solid. The eggs turn out tolerable.)
Nothing was left to chance at McDonald's; I was not allowed to use my judgment as to when to flip the burgers or when they'd be done. So when the crew chief yelled I need 10 ham I'd simply grab ten pre-frozen patties out of the freezer (located right next to the grill), lay them out on the grill, hit button one, and wait for them to be done.
It took about 2 minutes to cook a burger, maybe 3. During that wait, I had things to do, like toasting the buns. The bun toaster was right behind me, so I'd lay out the burgers, then grab the buns from a rack and slide them onto the tray to put into the toaster, which looked like nothing so much as a series of hot metal slabs -- which is what it was. Each slab heated up when activated, so buns sitting on them would toast. The top lid lifted up to help scrape hot toasted buns into the tray where they'd be transferred to the table to be ketchupped, and that top lid led to a workplace injury: A burn on my wrist, that I got when I lifted up the tray too high and too quickly, causing it to fall off the hot metal slap. I was holding it by the handle, the only part of the lid that wasn't white-hot, and it swung in an arc to touch my right wrist -- burning it instantly in a burn that blistered up like crazy.
I had to stop what I was doing and get someone to watch the burgers and go back to the big sinks where trays and stuff were washed. With the assistant manager, I ran the burn under cold water until it hurt in a different kind of way. He looked at it, said "Okay, back to work," and I was back to the grill, wrist throbbing without even a bandage on it.
I still have the scar today -- my only workplace injury, ever. It's not something I show off, but looking at it, I can still remember watching the hot metal tray swing towards my arm and wondering what to do, almost in slow-motion.
The buns from the toaster would go to the table where all the toppings sat in dishes: ketchup, mustard, onions, lettuce, pickles, cheese, and the "secret sauce."
When I started working at McDonald's, I didn't know what the secret sauce was on a Big Mac. Being that I'd always thought of our family as kind of poor -- I don't think we really were, I think my parents just instilled that belief in me -- we'd never really had Big Macs. We hadn't even gone to McDonald's all that often when I was a kid, and certainly didn't go as often as I take my own kids nowadays. The Babies! and I are probably at a McDonald's once a week, on average. But if I went 10 times as a kid before I worked there, I'd be surprised. Our family didn't go to fast food restaurants, or restaurants, hardly at all. When we did go somewhere to eat, it was usually either the Mama Mia's pizza place where they had the giant garlic breads that everyone loved, or to a drive-in restaurant in Oconomowoc called "The Kiltie," (it's still there, I see) where we'd all get ice cream -- never a meal, just ice cream.
So I'm not sure, when I started at McDonald's, that I'd ever had a Big Mac, and I didn't know at all what the secret sauce was. When I began on the grill, there the sauce sat, in a dispenser that wasn't like the ketchup and mustard dispensers.
The ketchup and mustard dispensers, like everything else at McDonald's, left nothing to chance: they were nothing so much as buckets-with-handles, and a lever. I'd pick up the bucket, squeeze the lever with my thumb, and a pre-approved amount of ketchup, or mustard, would be dispensed onto the bun. The ketchup and mustard were put onto the top bun, as was the pickle and the cheese; only the patty went on the lower bun. The onions were sprinkled onto the burgers as they cooked, to kind-of-fry them.
That was it: Lay out the burgers, toast the buns, ketchup, mustard, pickle, cheese, then scoop the burgers onto the bun and hand the tray to the chief for wrapping. The whole process was timed so that you could toast and fix the buns in about the time the burgers cooked, leaving little down time for a grill guy -- unlike fries, where there was lots of down time and lots of time to lean, time to clean.
Big Macs were more complicated: there's that third bun in there, the middle level, plus lettuce, plus the secret sauce -- which I was all excited about when I saw it, in its own dispenser that was kind of like a caulk gun.
I was working with a guy named Brian Drifka, who was my older brother's age; I was kind of friends with Brian's little brother Steve, who was in my grade. Brian was training me on the grill, and I looked up to him: he was a cool guy, one of those guys who could play hacky-sack and who knew how to act around girls and was good at sports.
I was not a cool guy. I was a sweaty, fat kid with glasses who wanted to be cool like Brian Drifka, so working with him was a start. When I pointed to the secret sauce, on my first day of the grill, I tried to be cool as I said:
"Ooh, the secret sauce. If I work here enough I'll learn the ingredients."
Brian Drifka just looked at me... coolly... and said "It's just thousand island dressing."
"Yeah," I said, trying to pass off my uncoolness as a joke.
Any disappointment I had in learning that the secret sauce was simply salad dressing was replaced by my learning that I could make my own sort-of-Big Mac when I got my meal for each shift: We were allowed a burger, fries, and a soda for every shift worked, and we could put extra toppings on our burger if we wanted. One day, I saw a girl working there put secret sauce on her burger, and I realized that I could do that, too -- so from then on, my burger was actually half-a-Big Mac.
Which I'd eat, with my fries, in the break room. I always got the fries, even then.
I don't recall how long I worked the fry cook position at the McDonald's; I only worked there about a year-and-a-half, which seems, in retrospect, an incredibly long time for me to have worked there. I do know that eventually I was promoted-- promoted being a relative word, here -- to working on the burger-cooking end of things.That was the next level up: I got to make the burgers that people loved, instead of the fries that people eat with their burgers because they think they're supposed to do that. Have you ever thought about that? Why do people order fries with burgers, automatically? I do that, anyway, or used to: almost everytime I went to a fast-food restaurant, I ordered fries with the burger, and did so even in the days before the extra-value meals and super-meals and meal-deal-meals and other prepackaged specials that encourage me to buy food that I don't particularly like.
Becuase I don't; I don't particularly like McDonald's fries. Or Burger King's fries. Or any french fries. They're okay, but they're not what I'd choose to go with a burger, or a chicken sandwich, or, now, a mishmash of Big Mac ingredients in a tortilla, which has to be called a wrap because if you call it a tortilla people will get confused and think it's foreign food. Or that they're at Taco Bell. Either way, they'll be freaked out.
If I was given a choice of what to get as a side for my burger, etc., I'd probably choose potato chips, which only serves to highlight the strangeness of my mind... because when I see restaurants that let me get potato chips as a side to my meal, I (a) almost never get them, and (b) assume that the restaurant is kind of a cheesy, low-rent operation.
(Subway, where I'd work in the future, falls into that latter category, and may have contributed to that cheesy-low-rent belief, not least because I worked there.)
Part of that belief stems from the fact that the potato chips you get at restaurants as a side dish are almost comically too small. The bags don't even look like they'd hold any chips, let alone sufficient chips to form a side to the meal I'm getting. Part of being a self-proclaimed (but still accurately-described) expert on what things should cost is also being an expert on what size portions are the right size for a given part of a meal. I can do that; I'm an expert on how much of something you should get, which, when combined with my expertise on how much things should cost, makes me very valuable to society. (Note that, future inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic world. You will not want to use me for monster bait, since I will be able to serve our new society by telling you how big portions should be and what they should cost.)
Some portion-sizing things are easy: Ramen noodles, for example: the correct portion size is "one packet." Once, Sweetie made some Ramen noodles for Mr F for his dinner, making them at the same time that she made them for me for my lunch the next day... and making both packets at the same time in the same container. I watched her as she doled out Mr F's dinner noodles and then packed up the remainder into my lunch, and I was pretty sure that she'd gotten the portions wrong, that Mr F was getting more than a packet while I was getting, for lunch, less than a packet. I didn't begrudge Mr F the extra portion, but I did feel robbed the next day.
Potato chips, too, have a serving size, and that size is "Those bags that you get for 99 cents at the convenience store." That's one serving; anything less and you're getting ripped off. Anything more and you're a glutton. So you can see where the problem comes in, when buying those micro-bagged chips at the restaurants that are too cheap to install a deep fryer and allow you to buy french fries: I feel I'm getting ripped off, and don't want to buy the chips.
I don't want to buy the fries, either, really, because I don't really like fries, so I shouldn't hold it against those loser restaurants that don't serve fries, but I do, because if you're going to be a fast food restaurant, you ought to serve french fries, even if people like me don't really want them. We'll still buy them, because you'll package them in a Meal Deal that convinces us it's worth it to buy the whole deal rather than separately getting only the ingredients we want, and maybe it is. If I'd pay $3.99 for two cheeseburgers and a soda, and $4.19 for those burgers, a soda, and fries in a "meal deal," shouldn't I get the fries for just twenty cents even if I don't really want them? For twenty cents, I kind of want them.
I have a complicated relationship with fast food restaurants, is I guess what I'm trying to say, and I wonder how much of that stems from my dimly-remembered 18 months at McDonald's, where I longed, always, to move up in work stations, never satisfied with my lot in life but yet never wanting to actually work hard enough to advance to the next level more quickly. I'm sure it took a longer time than usual to move from fry station guy to hamburger grill guy, given my attitudes.
When I did move to hamburger guy, the level of complexity moved up a notch. Fry cooking had been easy: Dump some frozen, breaded stuff into a vat, hit a button, and wait until a high-pitched beep told me to take it out. Once it was out and relatively cool, I would package it in whatever those things are supposed to be packaged in: fries went into paper or cardboard packets (back then, there were only two sizes: regular and large), pies went into cardboard sleeves, and filet-o-fishes went... I'm not sure. I don't remember what I did with those. Probably gave them to the hamburger guys to put on buns and give to the crew chief who'd wrap them and slide them down the heated bin where things were kept back then -- a series of black slides filled with Big Macs and burgers and filets, each with a number behind them, a "1 to 10" number that represented when the food was to be thrown away. Food was supposed to be kept under the lamps no more than 10 minutes, so if you put a burger in there at 12:55, you'd put a "1" behind it to indicate that when the minute hand was on the 1, that burger was to be thrown out.
That wasn't my job yet. I wasn't ready for the complexities of wrapping burgers and putting numbers -- in part because the crew chief was also responsible for telling burger guys how much of something to make: I need 10 ham, the chief might holler, and we'd have to cook him up 10 hamburgers. Or I need 5 macs, judging, based on whatever criteria the crew chief had, how many Big Macs we'd need in the next 10 minutes.
My job... at the time...was to cook those 5 macs, or 10 hams, or 12 cheese. My setup was a grill, with three lights above it. The first light was the one I'd hit when I first put down the patties. The second light would then blink and beep when it was time to sear the patties and flip them -- pressing the spatula down on them to squeeze out the juices and help them cook all the way through. The third was the light that would blink and beep when the patties were done.
That was how I learned to cook burgers; I didn't learn at home, from Mom and Dad, even though we had hamburger night nearly every Friday for my entire life. I never watched Mom or Dad cook hamburgers at home; they made them on the "super grill," a large electric skillet, and they were delicious, but I didn't watch them because I had no interest in cooking dinner, not for myself or my family, growing up. At McDonald's, I had no interest in cooking dinner, either, but I did have an interest in getting paid, so I cooked burgers for $2.35 an hour, and applied the McDonald's cooking style to every single burger I'd ever cook for the rest of my life: When I cook burgers nowadays, I still flip-and-sear, when I can; I feel a little lost when I cook them in some way (like on a Foreman grill) that doesn't let me flip the burgers and sear them.
The automation-- removing any need to think from the mind of an easily-distracted, daydreaming 16-year-old -- was necessary, as evidenced by my later adventures in cooking burgers outside of McDonald's, because while I still flip-and-sear, I tend to do so a bit too much: I flip my burgers (and my pancakes, and my grilled-cheese sandwiches, and anything else that can be flipped) a lot -- probably too much, searing them when I can (I've tried to sear pancakes and I don't recommend it), and then, when I get bored flipping-and-searing, or distracted by the Internet or Mr Bunches or a really good song, I forget entirely about the burgers, etc., until they're burnt.
(The only food I don't flip is eggs, which I am incapable of frying. I cannot fry an egg, and I don't even really try. When I'm forced to fry eggs now, I break about five into a pan, set it on medium heat, put a top on, and let them sit until everything in the pan is solid. The eggs turn out tolerable.)
Nothing was left to chance at McDonald's; I was not allowed to use my judgment as to when to flip the burgers or when they'd be done. So when the crew chief yelled I need 10 ham I'd simply grab ten pre-frozen patties out of the freezer (located right next to the grill), lay them out on the grill, hit button one, and wait for them to be done.
It took about 2 minutes to cook a burger, maybe 3. During that wait, I had things to do, like toasting the buns. The bun toaster was right behind me, so I'd lay out the burgers, then grab the buns from a rack and slide them onto the tray to put into the toaster, which looked like nothing so much as a series of hot metal slabs -- which is what it was. Each slab heated up when activated, so buns sitting on them would toast. The top lid lifted up to help scrape hot toasted buns into the tray where they'd be transferred to the table to be ketchupped, and that top lid led to a workplace injury: A burn on my wrist, that I got when I lifted up the tray too high and too quickly, causing it to fall off the hot metal slap. I was holding it by the handle, the only part of the lid that wasn't white-hot, and it swung in an arc to touch my right wrist -- burning it instantly in a burn that blistered up like crazy.
I had to stop what I was doing and get someone to watch the burgers and go back to the big sinks where trays and stuff were washed. With the assistant manager, I ran the burn under cold water until it hurt in a different kind of way. He looked at it, said "Okay, back to work," and I was back to the grill, wrist throbbing without even a bandage on it.
I still have the scar today -- my only workplace injury, ever. It's not something I show off, but looking at it, I can still remember watching the hot metal tray swing towards my arm and wondering what to do, almost in slow-motion.
The buns from the toaster would go to the table where all the toppings sat in dishes: ketchup, mustard, onions, lettuce, pickles, cheese, and the "secret sauce."
When I started working at McDonald's, I didn't know what the secret sauce was on a Big Mac. Being that I'd always thought of our family as kind of poor -- I don't think we really were, I think my parents just instilled that belief in me -- we'd never really had Big Macs. We hadn't even gone to McDonald's all that often when I was a kid, and certainly didn't go as often as I take my own kids nowadays. The Babies! and I are probably at a McDonald's once a week, on average. But if I went 10 times as a kid before I worked there, I'd be surprised. Our family didn't go to fast food restaurants, or restaurants, hardly at all. When we did go somewhere to eat, it was usually either the Mama Mia's pizza place where they had the giant garlic breads that everyone loved, or to a drive-in restaurant in Oconomowoc called "The Kiltie," (it's still there, I see) where we'd all get ice cream -- never a meal, just ice cream.
So I'm not sure, when I started at McDonald's, that I'd ever had a Big Mac, and I didn't know at all what the secret sauce was. When I began on the grill, there the sauce sat, in a dispenser that wasn't like the ketchup and mustard dispensers.
The ketchup and mustard dispensers, like everything else at McDonald's, left nothing to chance: they were nothing so much as buckets-with-handles, and a lever. I'd pick up the bucket, squeeze the lever with my thumb, and a pre-approved amount of ketchup, or mustard, would be dispensed onto the bun. The ketchup and mustard were put onto the top bun, as was the pickle and the cheese; only the patty went on the lower bun. The onions were sprinkled onto the burgers as they cooked, to kind-of-fry them.
That was it: Lay out the burgers, toast the buns, ketchup, mustard, pickle, cheese, then scoop the burgers onto the bun and hand the tray to the chief for wrapping. The whole process was timed so that you could toast and fix the buns in about the time the burgers cooked, leaving little down time for a grill guy -- unlike fries, where there was lots of down time and lots of time to lean, time to clean.
Big Macs were more complicated: there's that third bun in there, the middle level, plus lettuce, plus the secret sauce -- which I was all excited about when I saw it, in its own dispenser that was kind of like a caulk gun.
I was working with a guy named Brian Drifka, who was my older brother's age; I was kind of friends with Brian's little brother Steve, who was in my grade. Brian was training me on the grill, and I looked up to him: he was a cool guy, one of those guys who could play hacky-sack and who knew how to act around girls and was good at sports.
I was not a cool guy. I was a sweaty, fat kid with glasses who wanted to be cool like Brian Drifka, so working with him was a start. When I pointed to the secret sauce, on my first day of the grill, I tried to be cool as I said:
"Ooh, the secret sauce. If I work here enough I'll learn the ingredients."
Brian Drifka just looked at me... coolly... and said "It's just thousand island dressing."
"Yeah," I said, trying to pass off my uncoolness as a joke.
Any disappointment I had in learning that the secret sauce was simply salad dressing was replaced by my learning that I could make my own sort-of-Big Mac when I got my meal for each shift: We were allowed a burger, fries, and a soda for every shift worked, and we could put extra toppings on our burger if we wanted. One day, I saw a girl working there put secret sauce on her burger, and I realized that I could do that, too -- so from then on, my burger was actually half-a-Big Mac.
Which I'd eat, with my fries, in the break room. I always got the fries, even then.
A lesson in marital punctuation. (Texts From Sweetie, 4)
On Monday, Sweetie -- concerned that the legal holiday might impact her favorite hobby (balancing her checkbook) -- texted me this:
Banks are open!
Note the punctuation -- important because yesterday, as I walked out of the office to head home, I texted Sweetie this:
On my way home -- walking to car.
Sweetie replied with:
Yay.
Note that punctuation.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
1001 Ways To Tune Up The World, Number 68
68. Stop bleeping out words.
Not long ago, I was watching TV and John Stewart said the word [PARENTS! GET YOUR KIDS OUT OF THE ROOM!] asshole.
But all I heard was ass[bleep]. And I thought "Really? The hole part of that word is what makes that word inappropriate... at 10:15 p.m.... on cable?"
You can hear kids say [SERIOUSLY! PARENTS! GET THOSE KIDS INTO A NUNNERY FASTER THAN YOU CAN SAY Galileo's daughter] fuck all the time on South Park. Or, rather, you can't. What you can hear is people say f, then a bleep, then k.
If you don't want your kids to hear swear words, prescreen their TV shows and don't let them watch ones where people swear. But also, if you don't want your kids to hear swear words, good luck with that, since we live in a society where this happens:
In the meantime, the bleeping is pointless -- I'm pretty sure that the people in charge of bleeping things out are engaged in a contest to see who can bleep the least of a word without getting in trouble.
Plus, Bob & Tom's show hasn't been nearly as funny since everyone went all nuts about swearing after Nipplegate.
Prior entries:
64. Make spray bottles work when tilted.
63. Pay teachers a lot more.
62. Longer school years.
61. Longer school days.
63. Pay teachers a lot more.
62. Longer school years.
61. Longer school days.
58. Let everyone use "forever pricing" on everything.
57. Start all buildings on the first floor.
56. Process EVERYTHING.
57. Start all buildings on the first floor.
56. Process EVERYTHING.
30/31. Impose a luxury tax that increases exponentially the more people spend/Never watch another Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie movie again.
13. Ban driving any kind of automobile, motorcycle or other personal vehicle within 1-2 miles of downtown in any city with a population of more than 100,000.
12. Abolish gym class; instead, teach kids to play musical instruments.
11. Change copyright laws to allow anyone to use anyone else's creative work provided that the copier pay 60% of the profit to the originator and that the copier not cast the original work in a negative light.
10. Have more sidewalk cafes and outdoor seating.
9. When you have to give someone a gift, ask them what they want, and then get that thing for them.
8. Never interrupt or finish someone's jokes.
7. Periodically, give up something you like for at least a month.
6. Switch to "E-money."
5. Have each person assigned one phone number, and then add an extension for the various phones and faxes that person might be reached at.
4. Abolish Mondays and Tuesdays.
3. Don't listen to interviews with athletes or comedians.
2. Have "personal cashiers" at the grocery store.
1. Don't earn more than $200,000 per year.
Is this working? You bet --
1001 Ways also helped change the world here!
And
1001 Ways also helped change the world here!
__________________________________________________________________
Claudius wanted to be the first man to reach the stars... but it was murder to get there. Read Eclipse, the haunting sci-fi book from Briane Pagel. Available at Lulu.com and on your Kindle.
____________________________________________________________
Resorts Rescued Reviews
Vacation in style -- and for less, with the travel,Leisure, Entertainment network at Resorts Rescued. This Vacation Network will put you in touch with great time-share opportunities whether you're looking to buy or rent.Resorts Rescued operates on the premise that you deserve better for your vacation, and so they provide you that better. They'll let you into fantastic locations with amazing luxuries, and they do their best to always charge less than the competition.
The last time we went to Florida, we stayed in a time-share that we rented, and I have to tell you, it was GREAT. We had way more room than a hotel offers: A balcony, living room, two bedrooms, and a kitchen. The resort had a pool and tennis courts and game room and workout room, and plenty of space to spread out on the grounds. Plus, it was actually WAY less expensive than a hotel would have cost.
Resorts Rescued has 1000 locations globally, spreading through 450 cities in 75 countries.
Resorts Rescued can also help you buy a timeshare or sell one. Remember:
Resorts Rescued: continuously setting industry standards. They've got a new corporate Location at 4 Research Dr. Suite 402 Shelton, Ct 06484, with a phone number of 860-770-6621.
Monday, July 05, 2010
In the end, she ate the pie. (Texts From Sweetie, 3)
This just in:
Now I can't eat my pie because it is after 8:00.
(Sent to me one night when the Babies! and I promised to run errands, including picking up a Hostess Fruit Pie, but stopped at the park first.)
Yeah, I'm trying this again. (早晨新闻)
早晨新闻: That's "morning news" in simple Chinese. Now you know.Things That'll Kill You Update: If you're keeping track of things that will kill you, as I do, add "grapes" to the list. A Greenville, Wisconsin 10-year-old girl nearly ate a black widow spider hiding in some grapes. The grapes were from Mexico; it's not known where the spider was from.
People I Hate But Will Pretend To Be Friends With: Paul Sims of Mequon was the latest Wisconsin lottery winner, taking home $920,000 after taxes. If he lives in Mequon, he's already got tons of money, so if he wants me to be his friend, he'd better start feeding $20s into the little slot on his computer to email them to me.
Paul Sims doesn't have a crazy "Here's how I won the lottery in a wacky way" story... yet... but maybe he doesn't need one; his paltry $920,000 is the lowest in the past three years' of Wisconsin history.
Small Town Newspaper Watch: The Power County Press headlined two stories this weekend: coverage of the controversial "bike rodeo" where (I'm pretty sure) kids are taught to rope and brand bikes, and news of a class-action lawsuit being filed by some New York City produce stands ("New York City!") against Idaho potato farmers. Guess which story local moms clipped out and put on the 'fridge with a magnet shaped like a kitten?
______________________________________________________________
This ad for adults only: Kids, stop reading right now. I mean it. Look away. Seriously. Don't make me come over there. Aw, to heck with it. I'm not your parent. Go ahead, read about how to find someone who shares your likes and dislikes -- whatever they may be -- at findkinkypeople.com: the website that'll help you find that significant other who, like you, thinks otters are sexy but hates words with the letter "k" in them.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
The Found Alphabet: H
The Found Alphabet shows letters in the alphabet popping up in my life.
H: 
Those Hs appear on the labels of some of Mr Bunches' favorite things: crayons, and Mini S'Mores. They were prominent yesterday, when we had errands to run during our Saturday Adventures.
Mr Bunches loves crayons and markers, and when he sees them, he likes to buy them. Generally, he goes for the large crayons and large markers -- but he's a snob and won't get generics. He also likes the washable crayons, which is good because he's not totally bound to coloring on paper as opposed to, say, coloring on the TV or coloring on the kitchen table. (Which, let's face it, is at this point really not worth protecting.)
I always buy him the crayons, or almost always: yesterday, when we had a bunch of stores to go to, he got crayons at the first store, and crayons at the second store, but when he saw a different display of crayons at the second store, he wanted more crayons, but I thought that was ridiculous, so I cut him off and told him he was done with crayons. Then we went to the third store, and he saw crayons, and I gave in and bought them for him. So we have 30 brand-new crayons from yesterday, if you need any.
The S'mores are a different story. They're Mr Bunches' snack of choice nowadays. He's given up on cookies, cheese puffs, and the other things that we try to use to keep him on a sugar high. But he won't eat all the S'more: Instead, he pulls apart the little sandwich and eats only the frosting-y half, leaving a trail or pile of other halves wherever it is he's eating them. (Usually on his bed.)
Prior letters:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
Those Hs appear on the labels of some of Mr Bunches' favorite things: crayons, and Mini S'Mores. They were prominent yesterday, when we had errands to run during our Saturday Adventures.Mr Bunches loves crayons and markers, and when he sees them, he likes to buy them. Generally, he goes for the large crayons and large markers -- but he's a snob and won't get generics. He also likes the washable crayons, which is good because he's not totally bound to coloring on paper as opposed to, say, coloring on the TV or coloring on the kitchen table. (Which, let's face it, is at this point really not worth protecting.)
I always buy him the crayons, or almost always: yesterday, when we had a bunch of stores to go to, he got crayons at the first store, and crayons at the second store, but when he saw a different display of crayons at the second store, he wanted more crayons, but I thought that was ridiculous, so I cut him off and told him he was done with crayons. Then we went to the third store, and he saw crayons, and I gave in and bought them for him. So we have 30 brand-new crayons from yesterday, if you need any.
The S'mores are a different story. They're Mr Bunches' snack of choice nowadays. He's given up on cookies, cheese puffs, and the other things that we try to use to keep him on a sugar high. But he won't eat all the S'more: Instead, he pulls apart the little sandwich and eats only the frosting-y half, leaving a trail or pile of other halves wherever it is he's eating them. (Usually on his bed.)
Prior letters:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
Lawyers can help? Here I thought they were more of a virus.
Getting out of debt isn't as easy as getting into debt. You didn't need help running up those medical bills, credit cards, or other accounts -- but you could use some help getting out of it. A qualified Debt Settlement Attorney can help you determine your options -- whether a chapter 7 or 13 bankruptcy might help, or if you have other options. A lawyer can help avoid foreclosure and garnishment and other remedies.
A lawyer like Michael Lupolover, who heads up the Law Offices Of Michael Lupolover, a consumer law firm that is there to protect you and help you with bankruptcy, foreclosures, debt relief programs, and more.
A lawyer like Michael Lupolover, who heads up the Law Offices Of Michael Lupolover, a consumer law firm that is there to protect you and help you with bankruptcy, foreclosures, debt relief programs, and more.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)