No Butter!
'No Butter', Chapter 18 of Gone With the Evolution, by Micah Sabol 'No butter!!' the old lady screamed as she slammed down a plate with two pieces of toast on the upper counter ledge. A younger manager whispered to me later to just say, "Listen, old lady, etc . . ." But I was the shy, quiet type with a deer in the headlight look on my face that usually spoofed people into thinking I was perhaps a potential mass murderer type, and I seemed to invite conflict wherever I went. For weeks now, I had been working in Bobs Big Boy restaurant, about a 30-minute high-speed drive down the Maryland highway to the west. Starting as a dishwasher, I made no friends of the waitresses, as they almost had to put their backs on the wall and push with their feet to make room for the dishes in the kitchen. Huge burnt food lay on the bottomless pit of cauldrons that really needed a chissel and hammer to dislodge the burnt-on mess. My counter was always full of endless dishes as Bobs Big Boy attracted all the gorging citizens of our great country to eat there in a non-stop all you can eat buffet. Piles of bacon stacked half a meter high on the buffet to the delight of pensioners, who wadled back and forth and later stepped into their Fords or Cadilacs to trundle home. Later, I worked as a short-order cook, but the other two cooks made it clear that I was stepping on their turf and, with menacing looks, grudgingly showed me the ropes. With the electronic machine spewing out tickets, each order needed to be done individually, and the pace was incredible. The waitresses depended on tips, so any mistake was catastrophic, it seemed. The managers were young and fresh, and a pair would slip into the back room or snort some white powder in the bathrooms. All in all, they seemed delighted with life. Unfortunately, for so many workers in the fast food industry, the workers hours are always part-time, so no types of benefits are paid. No sick leave, no maternity leave (unheard of in the U.S.), no health benefits, and on top of that, no public transportation. Wages of maybe $100 a week for what seemed like full-time work every day hardly paid for the gas. The illusion that if you work hard, you can slowly build a future in the U.S. is for at least 1/2 of the population, a cruel joke.
'No Butter', Chapter 18 of Gone With the Evolution, by Micah Sabol 'No butter!!' the old lady screamed as she slammed down a plate with two pieces of toast on the upper counter ledge. A younger manager whispered to me later to just say, "Listen, old lady, etc . . ." But I was the shy, quiet type with a deer in the headlight look on my face that usually spoofed people into thinking I was perhaps a potential mass murderer type, and I seemed to invite conflict wherever I went. For weeks now, I had been working in Bobs Big Boy restaurant, about a 30-minute high-speed drive down the Maryland highway to the west. Starting as a dishwasher, I made no friends of the waitresses, as they almost had to put their backs on the wall and push with their feet to make room for the dishes in the kitchen. Huge burnt food lay on the bottomless pit of cauldrons that really needed a chissel and hammer to dislodge the burnt-on mess. My counter was always full of endless dishes as Bobs Big Boy attracted all the gorging citizens of our great country to eat there in a non-stop all you can eat buffet. Piles of bacon stacked half a meter high on the buffet to the delight of pensioners, who wadled back and forth and later stepped into their Fords or Cadilacs to trundle home. Later, I worked as a short-order cook, but the other two cooks made it clear that I was stepping on their turf and, with menacing looks, grudgingly showed me the ropes. With the electronic machine spewing out tickets, each order needed to be done individually, and the pace was incredible. The waitresses depended on tips, so any mistake was catastrophic, it seemed. The managers were young and fresh, and a pair would slip into the back room or snort some white powder in the bathrooms. All in all, they seemed delighted with life. Unfortunately, for so many workers in the fast food industry, the workers hours are always part-time, so no types of benefits are paid. No sick leave, no maternity leave (unheard of in the U.S.), no health benefits, and on top of that, no public transportation. Wages of maybe $100 a week for what seemed like full-time work every day hardly paid for the gas. The illusion that if you work hard, you can slowly build a future in the U.S. is for at least 1/2 of the population, a cruel joke.