Last night I dreamt I found an old friend and we were catching up. "So, what are you doing, still an accountant?" I asked.
"Nope, I work in law."
"As a researcher for a firm, or doing accounting for a firm, or..."
"No, I actually got a law degree."
This guy worked with me at Hunt Valley McD's when we were young punks--Leon was one of the rich Dulaney High brats there, I was one of the middle-class Hereford rednecks--and we argued about politics all the time. I enjoyed tying him in knots and he'd always get angry when he couldn't respond to a debating point and try to wrestle me, after which I'd pick him up and throw him in the trash bins at the back of the kitchen. "Some day I'll be able to debate you and win!" he'd shriek, lying there amidst the old stale buns and wilted iceburg lettuce and spent Special Sauce tubes. Strange friendship, no? But it worked for five or six years, until he went away to Penn State and became an accountant while I went away to Temple and became nothing (though we both worked at McDs off and on through school because the manager, desperate for good help, gave us 10 extra hours every three days we worked and made it worth our while). The second-to-the-last time I talked to him he was at Anderson Cooper or whatever that big Enron-shenanigans firm was that went bust, but then Cha ran into him by chance in DC and we got his phone number and I called him and we talked but then the phone died and took his number with it and I often wonder about him. On the phone he told me he'd been in Australia for Anderson for three years, and I was about to ask him about the time I saw him on CSPAN in the crowd at some Heritage Foundation event when the line went dead.
But any rate, back to the dream. Leon told me he worked as a corporate lawyer, and then suddenly I was in a hotel room and was discussing the de-evolution of American conservatism with Senator John McCain and Senator Chuck Hagel, and we were having a grand old time when I woke up.
I have no interpretation for this, but suspect its genesis lies in Julio telling me he saw former McD's/Borders employee and former Cha roommate KD working as a cashier at Target, and Yo! Adrienne was embarrassed by Julio's radical attempts to not be seen by said cashier.
9 comments:
I know you hate when people nudge you about writing, but I think you need to chronicle your retail/fast food experience in a memoir. "Nickel and Dimed" is endlessly re-readable and is in its 5th printing or something, and books like "Waiting" (memoirs of a waitress) suck ass but still sell quite well. No one has yet to write the definitive book on this. People fondly recall the movie "Clerks" even though it's terrible. You have a great memory for details and characters, and you have seen EVERYTHING. Would probably take you about a month to write. I will hand deliver it to Random House myself.
For what its worth, I had a dream last night I was trapped in my grandparents house with Tom Cruise, while zombies were trying to get in. Kylie Minogue showed up to give a concert and scared the zombies away. I'm not making this up.
I agree--you should write a retail memoir. Just don't give it a cheesy/catchy name, call it Sin Eater or The Hater or Confessions of an Opium Thugee...
And for what it's worth: I dreamt that I was a teacher at a high school and kept on having visions of a terrible event that was going to happen in a certain classroom. I think something bad with lots of blood was going to happen to the students. The villain was a faculty member and I really needed to tell someone but was afraid to. Then I was afraid that it was me that had done the deed, and then it was like I was remembering it...
Like those aren't cheesy...sigh.
Weird, I posted in response to DU just as yours showed up--both your dreams are amazing. Recently many friends and family have reported a variety of vivid and unusual dreams. I think it's because of Fasnacht Day.
As for the book--I'm too fucking lazy, but the McD's experience alone provides a wealth of material. I could write a novel about Shedana, Jaquetta and Kotosha alone that would sell to pervs everywhere.
Ok, c'mon I'll go first if it'll get you started!!! I don't even have as much good stuff as you--all the outrageous raunchy and scary stuff happened to you!
Here goes...
I worked the grill at the 2nd busiest McDonalds in the state. Most of the time I was so busy that I didn't know who was getting fingered back in the walk-in freezer. But, I'm pretty sure it was Scott's red-headed step-sister Samantha.
We were one of those rare McDonald's establishments that was still an actual franchise, owned by a Danny DeVito look alike named Charlie who drove a candy apple red Porshe. Whenever we broke a record for sales he would come in and give everyone a crisp 5 dollar bill. We even once broke a $1200 breakfast hour. Everyone knows that breakfast don't sell for shit so that was the real deal.
Charlie was amazed by my Big Mac technique. He used to stand and smile and watch me. I had rigged a way using the reg toaster and the mac toaster to do 12 macs at one time. Normally you could only do six so that's double the run. I could put down the regs on two grills, and finish toasting and dressing 12 macs with the collar on by the time the meat was up. First came the special sauce gun, fast. Then lettuce shot cradled from cupping your hand; onions and pickles that you could never wash out of your hands, even with toothpaste and Listerine. It was a race! The grill was the ref and when the time was up--Pssh! the top would pop up. Fuck yea! I'm not embarrassed. It was one of the first times I was actually really good at something.
I can't take all the credit for the mac set up, Bill C. invented it and I just perfected it. I think he pretty much passed the torch to me. That was a compliment since he was so fucking amazing. There wasn't a system in McDonald's that he couldn't evolve to the next level. Too bad he was so messed up, he might have gone far. The burgundy cadillac parked in the parking lot? That was his home. Poor dude was addicted to the Primatine Mist that was eternally in his back pocket. He'd kind of fake cough and take a big old suck on that shit. Crazy Bill C.
I don't think he ever totally made it up the corporate ladder because he didn't get on with Jim. I didn't get on with Jim either. No one did, everybody really hated him. Jim was the Corporate Guy. He had this grey color all over; his hair was grey, his eyes, skin. His teeth were yellow though. One time I was trying to grow a goat-tee sans mustache. The regulations say only mustaches allowed. There was a laminated poster on the wall illustrating this very fact. Jim came up to me and kind of tickled his finger underneath my chin and said "That Shaggy shit might impress the ladies but it's got to go." I can't believe he fucking touched my face with his finger, yuck man I was so mad. I'm mad now thinking about it right now! What a loser that Jim guy was. Now that I think about it, he had the OhDon'tEven voice down pat even before it was invented.
There was this manager named Charles (not Charlie, that's the owner), an African-American guy with a mutant scabby goiter on the side of his head. Right in his hair so it really stood out. He wore glasses and was real quiet but he was allright. Charles could eat a 40 pc nugget for dinner.
Jerry was another manager. He had gotten his foot caught in a grinder or something at a chicken slaughterhouse. It had never healed even though it happened years ago. It was still an open wound. What is up with that shit? I guess that's why he was a manager at McDonalds. He was a pretty fun guy, he liked to describe play by play all of the pornos he watched with his girl friend (yeah, right!). He would hate it because I could guess the title of the movie before he could finish. "I rented this porno last night that was like the Addams Family--" "Was it called Maddam's Family?" I asked. "Yeah, how the fuck did you know that? Anyway, it had this bald headed dude and he was called--" "Uncle Molester, right?" "Yeah, fuck dude...anyway he was piledriving this chick..."
One time this red headed skinny guy took the canister full of scrambled eggs and started swinging it over his head in huge arcs. It was real cool because of centrifuge it didn't fall out. But then he fucked up and it spilled ALL over his long red hair. He just stood there laughing and we all laughed at him too.
On David B.'s last day Tony and I slammed a whole Devil's Food Ronald McDonald cake into his back. He went into the airforce. My best friend Brian could take a quarter pounder, walk in one side of the walk-in refrigerator, eat the whole damn thing and come out the other side all in one swift continuous action.
Samantha used to ask me where I lived so that she could stop by after she got off and make out with me. I was so nervous, I kept telling her to get it from my friend Kevin, the night manager. She never stopped by, but I had hoped she would. I would sit in our den peering out into the forest hoping to see her headlights. What the fuck I would've done with all of my family at home I don't know but I wish I had had the chance to try something.
Kim D. really liked me for some reason. I don't know why, I was such a clod. One day we were in the breakroom and her and some other girl were talking about hot guys. I was right there and she said "I think Nick is real sexy!" You could have heard a pin drop. I don't even remember what I said, I was so mortified. She was very pretty, what in hell was wrong with me??
The toilet paper had run out in the bathroom and a guy was calling for help. Another Kevin brought the guy a roll, they were rolls of toilet paper from the Stone Age, from The Flinstones, huge immense rolls of the worst paper imaginable. Kevin rolled it under the stall door like he was bowling with it and the guy let out the most resounding "THANK YOU!" I've ever heard. Are oh ell ayy eye dee ess spells relief you know!!
I don't know why anyone cares, but by request, here's some random McD's vignettes:
The owner of our franchise was Wayne--he owned six or seven McD's and several Jiffy Lubes and he was one of the biggest dicks I ever knew. He was co-pilot on Air Force One for a few years when he was in the military. He used to come in and scream at me "I'll fire your ass!" for the stupidest shit. His regional managers were all pricks too. Donnie drove a Porsche and looked like a blond Ron Jeremy. He'd come in and start throwing the food in the bin onto the floor in the kitchen, telling us "This is shit." Dougie was a Jabba the Hutt looking muthafucka who impregnated four or five white trash cashiers at four or five of Wayne's restaurants. Sharky was a tanned and leathery old chain-smoker with a USMC tatoo on his forearm and slicked back salt 'n peppa hair. They all drove me nuts. I used to see Wayne occasionally at Borders and he'd always ask me to come back.
Eric Armstrong was about six foot seven and made enough money as a shift manager and part-time drug dealer to buy a workout machine. He was thin as a rail but every strand of muscle on his body was developed to the max. We all used to change into our uniforms in the breakroom and when he took off his shirt it was like he was wearing a skin-tight pinstrip suit with all those crazy deep bands running across his chest, abdomen, and up and down his arms. One day I was running the counter and some mumbly mother fucker asked for two Bacon Egg and Cheese biscuits and "a oinge soda." I got his order, he paid, and two minutes later he came back to the counter, flung the sandwiches at me, started cursing me out, and told me the bacon was cold. Next thing I knew I was wrestling this guy over the counter because he'd grabbed my shirt. Eric came out from the kitchen, put his finger in the customer's chest, said "you wantcho nose broke muthafucka?" in a perfectly calm, rational tone, and the guy left without another word and without getting a refund of anything. One time I went down to North Ave to play basketball with Eric, Terrence, Tony Hawkins, and Isaac. I was the only white guy for blocks. Terrence told me to leave my shit with Kotosha and Ann because "them muthafuckas here gonna steal it; not 'cuz they bad guys, but 'cuz you white." Every time I touched the ball the crowd in the bleachers went fucking nuts with hooting and catcalls. We won because Tony Hawkins and Eric could each dunk like nobody's business.
Tony Hawkins was always in and out of jail--I always thought he was a helluva nice kid, he just couldn't stay out of trouble, and had a propensity to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. One day on his first day back from jail he was making salads and dropped the big metal tomato slicer on the ceramic handsink, and the sink shattered in four or five pieces and fell off the wall. Jeff Bachman, the store manager at the time, started screaming at Hawk, who calmly and cooly took off his uniform, changed into his street clothes, punched Jeff in the nose, and went back to jail that evening.
Burnt and I used to smoke a lot of doob in the walk-in freezer because the exhaust would take away the smell and working there when high was better than working there straight. There was nothing better than getting Burnt all baked and playing pranks on him; he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed before toking up, after he was even better prey. He was a slender kid, really nice, who used to date my sister until she broke up with him because he wanted to talk to me when he came over our house more than he wanted to hang out with her. Then he got a stomach ulcer and went on a steroid treatment and started lifting weights and turned into a big ass musclehead, but I still loved fucking with him. One of my favorite pranks was the most basic--hotcake syrup in the employee Coke cup. Dump out most of their soda, then pour three or four packs of hotcake syrup onto the ice. Always a hoot. I also liked taking packs of Equal and dumping them in a Coke and putting the lid on. Equal has the same shit that causes Alka Seltzer to fizz, so if you gave an employee a Medium Coke with a lid and five packs of Equal in it, when they put the straw in the Coke would shoot out and squirt 'em in the eye. If they didn't put the straw in right away the lid would pop off and foam all over the place. But after months of this shit the staff caught onto me and started to use these clear plastic drink cups with sealed lids from One Potato Two up at the Food Court. They'd fill it with Mountain Dew and I had a hard time fucking with it because it took too long to get the lid off and back on. The guy at One Potato Two would give us free refills because we hooked him up with stolen Big Macs and shit--occasionally Burnt would score a free broccoli 'n chedder too, and after we got all stoned he did so. While he was savoring his tater at the sink in the back, I managed to get the plastic top off his nice fresh Mountain Dew, dumped out the drink, and poured pickle juice from a 5-gallon plastic barrel of pickles in over the ice. It looked a bit too green at first but I diluted it with some Sprite from the fountain and then it was ok. He took a huge ass gulp of that pickle juice, gagged rancid vinegar juice out his nostrils, coughed twice and barfed in the trash can by the grill. While he was rinsing his mouth out at the sink I put ketchup in his hat.
Don used to call me his evil twin. He transferred down from the other redneck McD's our owner had up in Jacksonville, and his mullet and fang mustache were even more advanced than mine. He always got the best skunk bud and we'd smoke it in the freezer and get idiotic. One night we were working the kitchen and buzzing along--that day we'd had to change the filters up on the roof of the Mall and we smoked too much skunk up there by the big glass pyramids--Don was so high he thought he was in Egypt and I asked him why he was bugging out so much and he told me he ate some mushrooms before work. It took me an hour to get him down the ladder and back to the kitchen. But anyway we were back in the kitchen and someone ordered two Double Cheeseburgers plain. Don cooked 'em up, dressed the buns with the standard mustard, ketchup, dehy onion flakes, pickles and sent the order up. It was promptly returned because it was supposed to be plain and we started laughing like hyenas and he made them again and again dressed the buns and he had to re-toast the buns and then he cringed and looked at himself in the reflective stainless steel of the vent shaft above the grill, apparently disagreed with what he saw there, and addled by psilocybin and strong weed, started yelling and ran into the break room. I started to freak out and dressed the buns and sent them up, then realized they were supposed to be plain, and started cooking them again. Don ran out into the Mall and was so scared by the weird talking Xmas tree display that he never came back that night. Our manager at the time was a one-armed motherfucker and he came back with those two sandwiches cradled in his stump and gave me hell.
I wish I could remember the one-armed manager's name but I can't. We hated each other, but he couldn't do anything to me because I was the glue that held that place together and was the darling of all the other managers. One day he gave me so much shit that I decided to get his ass good. Eric had a hot fudge sundae from Friendly's sitting up on the prep table that he was slowly savoring, and he left it to get something out of the freezer. I pointed it out to Stumpy because he didn't approve of employees eating in the grill area and he thought it was Burnt's or Don's and threw it away. When Eric came out of the freezer and saw his ice cream gone he hit the roof and picked Stumpy up by the shirt and was shaking him around like a 5-lb bag of fries.
Jim was our store manager for six weeks. He talked with a drawl and had a bruised lip from dipping snuff 24/7--he used to spit in what he called "m'iced tea cup." One day I was trying to wash the dishes and realized there was no hot water. I went back to the hot water heater and sure enough the pilot was out. I couldn't get it to light and reached in and found six clear plastic daily deposit bags jammed up in the chute, the deposit slips still in them. Since three of these slips had my initials on them, I called Wayne and told him what I'd found. The next day Jim got arrested; he'd stolen over $20,000 in a month.
Bill Courtney was one of those shrivelled up old men, divorced for decades and miserably lonely, who had no skills whatsoever but managed to work their way up after 15 or 20 years at McDs to a management job. One time he argued with Burnt about pro wrestling because Burnt told him it was fake. He got so mad he started wheezing and had to sit down. He was a dry drunk and one night when Burnt, Don, and I were drinking rum in the grill area he grabbed my cup and slugged it down in two sips. He got all fired up, pulled the french fry tray out from under the heat lamp, slipped on it, and cut his hand to the bone. I fetched the First Aid kit and used all the guaze and fake clot spray and still couldn't stop the bleeding.
Shedana wanted me from the first day she started, but Cha and I were already going out. She was really, really hot, and when we closed one night--after repeated refusals by yours truly--she claimed to have missed her bus and asked me if I could take her home. I remember vividly sitting in the cash office doing the nightly reports and shaking my head at her. She took her top off and said "we don't have to go to my place anyway" and started kissing me and tearing at my greasy smelly uniform. After getting her to stop I drove her down to West Baltimore and she kept pawing at me the whole way but I managed to get her out of my car without things proceeding any further. There was another girl, a redhead from Jacksonville with a great ass who also had a thing for me. She kept grabbing me in the most inappropriate manner, and one day Cha saw her and started slapping her in the face and punching her in the breakroom. Shedana was impressed and started to back off after that.
We used to dump all the grease from the grills and vats into huge barrels stored at the back of the store. Every week Noxell would drop by and pick up that rancid shit to use in makeup. Once Burnt was taking an overly full grease trap back there to dump and he slipped on some ice and ended up with ten gallons of grease all over his uniform and his hair. He stunk for days. Another time he tipped the whole barrel over trying to move it to paint behind and it took him months of daily scrubbing to get the floor in the backroom clean. Another time he was filtering the fish filet vat grease and he dropped his keys in the hot oil and without thinking he reached in and grabbed them. I happened to look over and see him staring in horror at his own bright crimson hand. "Burnt! Did you put your hand in the vat?" I yelled. He nodded, obviously in shock. I grabbed the ice carrier we used to take loads of cubes from the maker to the counter, filled it, and stuck his hand in there. That night when I washed it there was his skin all over the place.
Maurice was an Assistant Manager transferred to suburban Hunt Valley Mall from North Ave. He didn't wear the typical polyester uniform provided by the company, but rather actual silk shirts and pants off the rack at Nordstrom's. He also had a real gold tiepin and several gold rings and an alligator skin briefcase. Immediately I took a disliking to him because he checked the labor percentage of sales and sent everyone in the kitchen home but me just before dinner rush, and with five cashiers running he kept yelling at me "Clean as you go asshole!" and I could barely keep up with the food. I took a tray of dressed reg buns and dropped them at his feet and told him to fuck off, he stormed back to the office and menaced me with a handgun he pulled out of his bag. The next day he was arrested after I told the owner what happened. They found several bags of coke in his car.
Tony went to Hereford High with me and Burnt and Cha and he was mildly retarded but a nice guy. His cousin Dukie was in a local heavy metal band with another guy I knew from out in the sticks and Dukie told me at a party that Tony's nickname was "Boots." I asked him why and Dukie said one time he walked in on Tony sitting at the kitchen table wearing his mom's knee-high fur-lined boots with a hard-on and nothing else. Months later tony bought his girlfriend Melinda a Valentine's Day gift and gave it to her in the breakroom. In the mood to tease her I asked what it was and she wouldn't tell me, but when I said "Did he buy you a pair of boots?" she wanted to know how I guessed.
Donna was a petite knock-out blond divorcee and ex Navy-brat in her late 20s. She worked with us for only a half year or so and when she asked me out I was freaked because I was only 18. I agreed to go on a date with her but the night before we were supposed to go out I got snowed in at the Mall with some other friends and we got a room at the Embassy Suites and some girl I didn't know gave me a hickey and Donna saw it the next morning and never came in again. That night Burnt showed me a dozen roses and a note he found in the trash bin in the back and I still have the note to this day.
Chumley was a good friend, a big loveable huggable mound of doofiness, also a transfer from Jacksonville. He'd known Don and some of the other crew since they were kids. On New Year's Eve 1989 he left at 6pm and I was teasing him about something and he said "Get outta my face, Godfrey!" The next day he was late to work and then very late to work and then Jeff B. called his house and his parents said he'd left for work on time and he was found dead on the side of the road in his car by Julio's father. He'd been rushing to get to his fucking McD's $7/hour job on New Year's Day and hit a patch of ice on Sweet Air Road and gone into a ditch. Within 12 months three other crewmembers died--one of ovarian cancer at age 16, one of meningitis her freshman year at Syracuse, one of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head. I'm glad they knocked that fucking Mall down.
That was great--thanks! The pickle juice trick was pure genius, Cha slapping and punching!?!?!, and "Boots" is my all time fav. Rrroww!!!
Last I heard Boots and Melinda had a baby--one of Cha's Green Party chums was talking about weird cousins he had up in Hereford and he mentioned Boots's family name and I was like--"no way! You're related to them!" and I told him the Boots story.
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