The Fast Food Saga: Part Six- I AM THE MASCOT.

Yes, you read the title correctly. My life's goal has been completed. I am the mascot at The Franchise.

On Being the Mascot

It's just as much fun as I thought it would be. The suit is about seven feet tall, and the only visibility is through the giant, creepily smiling mouth and the giant, never-blinking eyes. Seriously. This thing's creepy.

The limited visibility in the suit makes things such as walking a lot more interesting. The operator of the suit has to constantly bob his head around and crane his neck to get any kind of idea of what's going on around him. When the operator takes the suit off and attempts to walk, he must remember to cease bobbing his head, as he is now a normal person, and people who walk like seagulls are generally known as idiots. I may or may not have learned this the hard way.

Once I have the suit on, I become another person entirely. I hand a lot of balloons to little kids, give a lot of high fives, and engage in an inordinate amount of dancing. This is another thing I have to adjust to when I take off the suit. You see, when there's a seven foot tall ice cream cone doing the Macarena in front of a group of kids, they squeal and giggle, and the parents find it amusing.

When it's a seventeen year old kid with glasses enthusiastically doing the Macarena for the kiddies... Not so much.

I had to consciously restrain myself from dancing in front of several children after I clocked out tonight.

My co-workers warned me that it wasn't always fun. They were right, to some extent. It gets very hot in the suit. The air you're breathing is the same air you've been breathing for the past two hours, mixed with sweat and the smell of fast food. Not extremely pleasant.

Also, the suit is pretty heavy, so your shoulders get tired quickly. And the arm holes are out the front of the suit, rather than the side, so you have to walk around kinda like a zombie. A zombie seagull.

(As I composed this post, I thought I'd check and see if there are any image results for "zombie seagull" from the Googles. There are.)

This was the closest thing I could find. It's a zombie-skeleton-surfing-bird... thing. You're welcome.

Overall, though, it's a fun job. The hordes of kids swarming around you provide something of an ego-booster, albeit a strange one.

See you guys next time.

Quote of the Day:

"Mommy, I don't wanna hug the giant ice cream cone!"

-A traumatized four-year-old

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The Fast Food Saga: Part Five- Back on Track

Last week was a bad week at work. I wasn't doing well for a number of reasons, and then a guy got fired. With this in mind, I didn't feel like posting last week, because there was nothing funny or entertaining to say.

This week has been much, much better.

My boss was much happier today, which made work much easier. Somehow I also had much more energy to power through the day, so that was nice.

The Mascot

The fast food restaurant where I work has a mascot. This mascot roams around the dining room on select days, entertaining the kids. If I told you exactly what kind of mascot it was, I'd pretty much divulge what company I work for, which is something I can't do. Suffice to say that the mascot is a giant walking food item. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

I want to be the lucky guy in the suit. I love working with kids, and being the mascot looks like a lot of fun. So I've set that as my goal. My life ambition right now is to get inside that suit and walk around the dining room scaring entertaining kids.

Other co-workers who have done it before tell me that it isn't fun. "It's really hot in there," they say. "You'll start hating it after a while," they tell me.

Perhaps, deep inside, they've lost their childlike spirit, growing cynical and jaded as time robs them of life's simple pleasures.

Or maybe they're right and it is no fun.

Either way, I'm not going to let them crush my dreams. I will be the mascot one day. Just you wait...

Cooked Hand

My hand was cooked today. I was reaching into a fryer and grabbing some onion rings and a glob of oil splashed onto the inside of my hand. Ouch.

I probably shouldn't tell you what deep fried hand smells like.

I'm telling you anyway.

It smells like chicken. Fried chicken.

The only thing missing was batter and a bit of salt and pepper. It would have been enough to make any common cannibal's mouth water as they fondly remembered cannibal picnics on warm summer evenings with their cannibal friends, sitting on cannibal blankets and feasting on chocolate covered aunts, while the cannibal children laugh and frolic on the playground in their game of swallow the leader...

Wow. That got a bit out of hand.

Anyway.


Quote of the Day:

"Seth, you're getting pretty good at fryers. I guess that makes you Lord of the Fries."

-Person for whom I am too lazy to think of a fake name

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The Fast Food Saga: Part Four- Epic Pep Talk

I just finished another shift at The Franchise. It's the second one since my last post, and I apologize for not getting a post up after that shift. But between school (gotta graduate somehow, right?) and work and school and more school.... OK, actually I don't apologize because I had a perfectly reasonable excuse for not posting. So there.

Best Pep Talk EVER

I arrived, clocked in, washed up, donned my fashionable kitchen attire, and walked into the kitchen ready to rock and roll. My manager (it was Marvin this time) said, "OK, so today, we're gonna have you doing fryers by yourself. That means you'll be responsible for all of the fryers and this guy over here is going to help you only when you're falling way behind."

Fantastic.

It was a Thursday night and Thursdays are usually pretty slow. This was not a slow Thursday. This was a mind-blisteringly busy Thursday. I guess everyone in town decided they needed food that had been immersed in oil. Immediately.

I launched into the endless stream of orders and was making food when Marvin said, "Listen up!"

I listened up, but I was not prepared for what he was about to do. He was about to deliver the greatest pep talk in the history of them all. Here it is:

"OK, so, uhhh... Drive thru orders were a little slow, so... speed those up a little. And... we need to, umm... make some good quality food. Tonight. So... let's do that now."

Dead silence filled the room and drowned out the chaotic din of the fryers, the grill, the vents, and everything else.

Somewhere, in the distance, I could hear a fly walking up the wall. It stopped and rubbed its hands together in that fly-esque way.

Outside, an errant tumbleweed drifted and rolled across the parking lot.

Then, one person clapped. Very slowly, we all joined in. It was exactly like this video:

And then we continued our work, comforted by the knowledge that we had such a fearless and inspiring leader to guide us through the narrow paths and hazards of the fast food industry.

Fun Facts:

• Onion rings are absurdly difficult to put into bags. They are shaped weirdly and they are unreasonably hot, so the process of putting a serving of onion rings into a bag is not an entertaining one, to say the least.
• Seriously guys, stop ordering onion rings. Or I'll make you come back here and bag them yourself.
• I'm not quite ready for the big leagues when it comes to running fryers. We've got five of them, and the multitasking required for the job is intense. 
• Note to self: Play more Cake Mania before next shift.
• Lucifer is still as lucifer-y as ever. I had to refill him. This involves holding him, tight, pulling his lid off, and pouring in new salt. This causes fourth-degree tissue burns at minimum. 

Until next time, THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!

Quote of the Day:

"...we need to, umm... make some good quality food. Tonight. So... let's do that now."

-My Manager

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The Fast Food Saga: Part Three- Pressure's On!

Tonight my manager told me we'd focus more on Time of Service (The Franchise's code for "Your job is not hard enough, let's make you work FASTER!!")

I did not do well in this area tonight. I guess the added pressure made me nervous enough to mess up more. So my night was filled with fry fumbling, cheese curd craziness, chicken tender turmoil, and onion ring... Something. I've lost interest in the alliteration now, you can figure something out for yourself.

Nicest Guy in the Fast Food Industry

The aforementioned individual is not me. I'm a pretty nice guy at work, but there is one whom I have met, who outshines the nicest of the nice. It's almost scary.

Aaron (I'm going to call him Aaron) was assigned to train me tonight, and he was really good at it. He even made the really scary task of cleaning the fryers seem like a barefoot midnight stroll through a mossy woodland trail. Yep. That's totally what it felt like.

This guy deserves a raise.

Fryers Actually Work by Magic

I asked "Caleb", another of my co-workers, exactly how the fry oil filter system worked. He started to go into a long, technical explanation, but then stopped himself and told me it's essentially magic. He doesn't know how it really works. Our managers don't know how it really works. No one knows how it works.

Hence, it's clearly magical.

That's all for now. See you next week, and remember, anyone who says "nothing is impossible" has obviously never tried to staple jello to a tree. I'm not sure what bearing this fact has on this blog post, but there you go. It's true.

Quote of the Day:

"There's just a bunch of wizards in there, contemplating magical algorithms and stuff. That's how it works."
-Caleb


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The Fast Food Saga: Part Two- More Fryers.

Hi again. 

Today I worked another shift at The Franchise. It was a good one, as it was a pretty slow day. The weather was pretty snowy and it's New Year's Eve, so I guess a lot of people decided not to eat out tonight. 

I did get my new pants. Hooray. Now I can work in at 28 inch waist without constantly reaching down to adjust my rapidly slipping uniform pants.

I did actually learn a few things again:

Cleaning the fryers is terrifying.

In order to clean our five fabulous food fryers, one must don a heat glove, turn the fryer off, remove the grate from the bottom of the unreasonably hot oil, send it back to be washed, remove the backplate, send that back to be washed, pull a valve to empty the fryer, and scrub the walls of the fryer out with a piece of steel wool. This is pretty simple as long as you avoid getting small patches of your skin cooked by the oil. Then comes the terrifying part: You've got to connect a hose to the pipes under the fryer, run it up to the fryer you're cleaning, and pull a valve to spray ridiculously hot oil all over the inner walls of the fryer. This isn't like a normal hose. This is like a high pressure fire hose spewing out fiery hot doom all over the place. I'm told this makes the fryer clean somehow. One wrong move, though, and you'll spray searing hot oil all over the kitchen and your three fellow kitchen workers. Easy right? Yep. Piece of cake.

People need to stop ordering onion rings.

I can bag fries now. It's pretty easy to me since I've learned the touch of the fry bagging masters, and I long ago abandoned all the pain sensing nerves in the ends of my fingers. But onion rings are a different matter altogether. With fries, they usually sit for a few seconds before being bagged. But onion rings have to go straight from the fryer to the bag, with no time to cool off. Also, they are bigger than fries and harder to insert into the bags. These factors combine to make it really hard to bag onion rings. I guess I'll get better with practice, but for now I still fumble around awkwardly every time. So do me a favor and don't order any onion rings while I'm working. Ok? Thanks.

Well, that's what I've got for now. If you were expecting a profound thoughtful New Years message in the post, you're not going to get it here. Click this link for the 2012 post, and replace stuff with things pertinent to 2013. I'm lazy.

Quote of the Day:

"Hey, can you clean the fryers for me?"

-My Manager



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The Fast Food Saga: Part One

Great news: I recently (and by recently I mean yesterday) got a job at a fast food restaurant. I've needed a job for a very long time, so having one unexpectedly is a huge thrill. You'll notice by now that I haven't mentioned the name of the restaurant, and I just want to get a few things related to that out of the way before I start:

• I'm not going to mention the name of this restaurant. Ever. Those of you who know me in real life will probably know which one it is, but I will not be using the name of the restaurant online, since the company frowns upon that sort of thing. I will refer to it as The Franchise.
• The views, opinions, and narratives I'm expressing in my posts do not reflect those of the company for which I work (which will of course remain nameless.)
• Any comments mentioning the name of the company for which I work will be deleted immediately.
• All names of coworkers and guests have been changed for reasons which should be obvious to you by now.

With that over with, let's begin the Fast Food Saga.

Day One:

I showed up for my first shift dressed in uniform pants several sizes too big for me. To put my dilemma in perspective, I'm a very tall, skinny guy who usually wears a 29 inch waist with a 34 or higher inseam. These were way bigger than that.  But this was the smallest they had, so it would have to do.

After a brief tour of the place, I was plunged into my first task: Making fries. It's a simple job in theory. There are several fryers, and frozen potato sticks are poured into baskets which are then plunged into the extremely hot oil. And when I say extremely hot, I'm talking heat levels that make me seriously confused as to why the oil isn't actually on fire.

When working fries, you must stand in front of these fryers, put batches of frozen potato sticks into the baskets, drop the baskets in the oil, set the timer, and wait for them to cook. After the timers go off, you pull out the baskets, shake them, and dump the fries onto the fry table. Once there's a pile of fries, they are salted and scooped into bags, then placed on the chutes for distribution into guest's orders.

Like I said, a simple job.

But, this being my first shift, it was not simple. I learned one thing very quickly: 

Everything is hot.

The kitchen is hot to begin with, considering most of the real estate is taken up by a giant, extremely hot grill and giant, extremely hot fryers. Most of the things in the kitchen are made of metal. And that metal gets very hot. 

• There's a scoop used to insert the fries into the bags. That scoop is hot. 
• There are metal baskets used to submerge various foods into the absurdly hot oil. Those baskets are hot.
• There are fries coming out of the absurdly hot oil. Those fries are hot.
• There's also a saltshaker. A big, metal, demonic saltshaker sent from one of the outer circles of Hell, specifically designed to blister, burn, sear, and otherwise cook your fingers every time you touch it.
• I do not like this saltshaker.

Another thing I learned:

Scooping fries takes more skill than is initially expected.

All I have to do is take things and put them in bags. How in the world can that be difficult? I've put lots of things in lots of bags before, but somehow, bagging fries is different. There's a certain touch you have to develop to join the ranks of the expert fry baggers. I do not have this touch. 

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the only thing shielding my delicate Caucasian basement-dweller hands from a raging inferno of deep-fried death is a thin paper bag. Once I hold a medium bag of french fries for about three seconds, the scalding begins. 

In addition, after every batch of fries is dumped onto the table, one must engage in the delightful activity of grabbing Lucifer (that's the saltshaker, I've named it Lucifer) and shaking it upside down to dispense salt on the pile of fries. This involves grasping Lucifer for more than about thirteen milliseconds, at which point one's fingers start to cook.

All these factors combine into a nice little medley of circumstance that makes it very difficult to accurately ensure that the correct number of fries, or any at all for that matter, end up in the bags.

Despite all of the above, I'm beginning to like my job. After a while, most of the nerve endings on my fingers were sautéed to the point where they ceased to register pain. Once I reached this point, I was able to bag fries quite quickly.

The moral to this whole thing, if there really can be a moral, is that you should think of the guys in the back next time you order your burger and fries. It's more work than you might think, and I've found that out on my first day. 

That's all for now, folks. Be sure to tune in next time for more tales of the fast food kitchen.

Quote of the Day: 

"We'll put you on fries to start out with. That's the easiest job."

-My Manager


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