My First Job: Rank and File (Part 2 of 4)

All of this hullabaloo about fast food chains supporting anti-gay causes and the ensuing controversy has stirred up some more of my own memories about working at Everyone's Favorite Chicken or "EFC," which is not really its name. (Names have been changed, as Tina Fey would say, "to protect the awesome.") See my earlier post, "Keep Calm and Carry On," for more on the background and chuckles on how I came to work at EFC and other adventures in fast food.


Rank and File


It was very interesting to learn the power dynamic at EFC. There was the single-shade-of-grey-haired gentleman who owned the joint and hired me. Let's call him "Mr. Smith." Mr. Smith was a genuinely nice man. As a boss, however, he really effed up the system when he came out of his upstairs office to "help out front." He was much more effective as a figure head than a manager or a front-line employee of any sort. There was a collective inward groan when he surfaced out front to lend a hand. The front line crew had mastered our communication and chain of productivity (or non-productivity, depending on our mood at the moment), and having to deal with the Interloper and slap a smile on our face to please this authority figure really slowed down our rhythm. Also, it made it slightly more challenging to give away free food to our friends when he was around. (More about that later.) If we played our parts well enough, however, he never knew a thing.


Mr. Smith's favorite expression was, "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean." Clever. I do remember one spectacular cleaning Mr. Smith performed. We had a Very Special Visitor, the Health Inspector, stop by to evaluate the restaurant. I witnessed Mr. Smith dust off the top of an exhaust fan, scattering dust and debris into the basket of food frying in oil below it and onto the fries waiting in the warmer while simultaneously sweet-talking the inspector. The restaurant passed the inspection with flying colors, I kid you not.


The true management was entrusted to college-age kids -- some of whom were recent high-school grads from my own school, meaning that I already knew them in a previous social hierarchy of power. Or if I didn't know them previously, then these kids (I mean, let's call them what they really were: slightly older kids than me - with definitely more facial hair than me) automatically earned credit with us as older college students. At least one of the two women college students ran all of the books. I think that's called "accounting," but math has never been my bag, so I have repressed such vocabulary if I ever knew it at all. (Do I have any friends who are accountants? If so, my apologies, but I have no idea what it is that you do, really.) And then there was the good ol' boy, "Charlie," our charismatic college-age manager whom many of the females, at least, both resented and revered for his ability to boss us around, his smug charm, his good looks, and his flirty ways. He and whichever guy was working often mildly hazed the newbie employees by having them go around to the other stores in the mall and ask to borrow their "left-handed shelf stretcher." I'm disappointed that such a thing does not exist because I am left-handed, and I do try to appreciate the advances in left-handed technologies that our modern world offers. He and a few of the other males who adopted the good ol' boy mentality exerted enough influence over me and Beffy (my best friend who helped land me this cushy job) that for a period of time, we even listened to country music. Like anthropologists trying to assimilate to a new culture, there we were: hardcore Cure and Morrissey fans-turned-modern-country-music listeners. These were crazy (and short-lived) times.


Most of the positions at EFC were very gender-divided without great explanation. The girls typically worked out front on the literal "front lines" as cashiers and order-takers, and the guys were in the back, cooking chicken and presumably talking smack. Oh, and concocting crazy combinations of food that they dared each other to eat. It was a primitive form of "Fear Factor" going on back there...After enough hangry* people came at me demanding food, suddenly lurking around in a back room - even if it means slaving over vats of frying chicken - seems like a welcome alternative. The real kicker is that us ladies watched as the guys slinging chicken and having fun times in the back got raises and we did not. I do not know the justification for this, but it seemed incredibly unfair. That I did not commit murder during the entirety of the Christmas season when I worked at the busiest (and only) mall restaurant full of endlessly crabby children and adults was definitely grounds for a raise, if you ask me.

 "Hungry" plus "angry" equals "hangry." Thank you, Betsy Lavin, for creating this most appropriate, descriptive term.