My First Job: Prank and Rile, Part 3 of 4


Oh, there were as many pranks going down at EFC as there were baskets of chicken breasts being fried. That's what happens when teenagers are running the show. My favorite falls somewhere between flirting and sexual harassment, depending on your perspective. The uniform at EFC at the time was navy blue pants and some 1990s-esque color-block polo shirt. Oh, and an EFC baseball cap, because later there would be a company baseball team practice. (Nah.) So, some of the guys working in the back would lay in wait, their gloved hands covered in flour and breading stickiness. I (or some other female employee - this was definitely not just a "me" thing) would come slide-running to the back on a film of fry grease to get chicken that was finally ready for someone's order. Once I had the goods, I'd turn to leave, and said guy would smack the back of my pants with a breaded hand. This left me with a beautiful white handprint or two on my backside for all of my customers to admire. Have you ever wiped your wet, breading-covered hands on your clothes? It's pretty much stuck like white paste until you can get it to a washing machine. Not cool, boys. Kinda funny if it's not you, maybe, but definitely not cool.


If you like the pie at EFC, this one's for you: One night I was closing the store with three other guys. We were clowning around (who, us?) in the back. One thing led to another, and suddenly, I found myself pinned to a refrigerator and having a pie shoved in my face. If that sounds like something that went too far, it was. I don't think the pie-to-the-face was as offensive as "three guys versus me" felt at the time. I walked out of there that night in the middle of closing, I was so pissed. I believe that was riiiight about the time that I gave my two-weeks' notice and refused to work a closing shift, much to the irritation of the other Chicken Slaves.


I think it was the combination of the slickness of the fry-grease coated floor, the narrowness of the area behind the counter, and the pheromones of teenage employees that led to "The Grope." The Grope was another one of those nebulous concepts that may or may have not been appropriate in a workplace setting, depending upon whom you ask and the particular situation. I mean, groping your partner while dancing is one thing, but doing it while doling out chicken nuggets is another, I think. In the bustle of activity behind the ordering counter, it was easy to collide with someone, particularly when we were in a rush ("fast" food, right?) to get someone's order and get them out of our faces and/or when we were ensnared in a flood of oil from a leaky machine. Either way, I was probably going to hit something (like the floor...with my face) or someone. Many of the fellas who came to deliver chicken to the front line workers "snuck around" us by putting a hand or two of theirs on our waists to make their way past us. It seemed to be part of the culture. When I worked my next job - also behind a food counter, but this time at a movie concession stand - I remember being fully surprised that the guys behind the counter did not touch me at all when moving around (in spite of limited space and an occasionally leaky butter dispenser). I asked myself the question, "Why does nobody touch anyone else here?" And it finally occurred to me that maybe not everyone gets groped at their job! Maybe EFC is just a Special Place for Groping! It is truly embarrassing that I became so used to being groped that it didn't occur to me that maybe it was not really part of the job description.


It didn't help, either, that there was a rumor that one of the managers refused to sign the new sexual harassment paperwork handed out by the owner, allegedly on the grounds that "It would take all of the fun out of my job!" (Thankfully, like some people have the good fortune of doing, said manager grew up well and is now a respectable member of society.)


We also "Stuck It to the Man" (who, in our case, was the Annoying Customer - meaning everyone but our friends and loved ones who dared approach our counter space) when we had the chance. Many folks who approached us to order nuggets were stuck on McDonald's lingo, and often requested "Chicken McNuggets." Being minimum-wage paid teenagers and trying to exert any control and authority over our crappy job at the bottom of the totem pole, Beffy (my best friend who helped land me this cushy job) and I would reply in a snarky tone, "I'm sorry, we don't sell 'Chicken McNuggets' here," leaving that customer confused for a few seconds. If we were feeling generous, we might add, "This is EFC, not McDonalds; we don't sell McNuggets." Subsequently, we'd make their hungry faces ask for chicken nuggets the correct way, the "EFC" way. And then we'd have to get them to specify if they wanted a 6-pack, an 8-pack, or a 12-pack of nuggets, because that's the EFC quantity in which they were sold. So there, suckers!


Sometimes we (and I say "we," but I really mean those fry guys making the big bucks in the back room) got behind on our chicken orders when we were particularly busy. We'd pull one over on the customer by going "to the back" under the guise of "checking to see if their order was ready." But really, we went back there and inhaled as many nuggets as we possibly could get away with. We really liked to test the outer limits of "being right back" with someone's order. But here's the thing: no matter how much food I ate before I left for work, really gorging myself and everything, I would inevitably be overtaken by standing in Ground Zero of fried chicken aroma. Every. Time! So when work breaks didn't come for hours, and a meal time approached while I was on the clock, I had no willpower to resist a freshly fried batch of goodness. So...I'm sorry that I scarfed those nuggets you were waiting for instead of giving them directly to you, but it was only an extra five minutes, right? What would you have done with that time anyway, gone to The Limited?


The biggest prank of all was the one that the actual menu played on unsuspecting customers. Or maybe it was just the customers' denial and/or ignorance at play. It seemed a lot of health-conscious folks (and usually women, really) gravitated toward the one menu item with the word "salad" in it: The Chicken Salad Sandwich. (There are many more options for real salads on the menu today, to EFC's credit.) Remember, this was the mid-1990's, and there wasn't quite as much information passed around about how bad mayo-based salads were or the nutritional content of anything on the menu, for that matter...So here was the typical "I'm on a diet" order: "I'd like a chicken salad sandwich on whole wheat, toasted, with a diet lemonade/diet coke." Somehow, us worker grunts were the ones who had access to a secret pamphlet of nutritional information. This may be a reach, but if those dieters knew that the chicken salad sandwich had about FOUR TIMES as many grams of fat and calories as the regular fried chicken dealio does, and that whole wheat is NOT necessarily good for you like whole grain is, and that toasting does absolutely nothing for nutritional value (I have no idea why this "toasting" phenomenon happened; I think these customers just liked the darker look of toasted bread and the extra calories that we burned by running back and forth to the toaster oven)...Well, that might have helped to explain why they weren't losing weight. So we let them live happily in their delusion and snickered about them when they left.

Tales from the Crib...and Beyond: My First Job: Rank and File (Part 2 of 4)

Tales from the Crib...and Beyond: 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 memo...

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.