Bold at the Second Window

                                                                                                                                                                         (from USA Today)

In support of the fast food workers who went on strike for higher pay this week in more than 50 U.S. cities, I reprint this post of mine from April 2, 2012:

An example of serious courage:  at a McDonald's I drove-through fairly late one night last week, an apparently-teenage girl with a heavy Spanish accent was taking the orders, taking the money, making the change, pumping the milkshake, handing out the bag, handling one customer's money while taking another's order – all in a language that is foreign to her.  It was impressive to me.  Inspiring.  I hope she gets everything she wants in life.

 

 

And this post from Oct. 8, 2009, titled, "The Courage to Hand Out Hamburgers"

I’ve long thought that the people who work the fast-food drive-through windows are superheroes. They have to take an order at the same time they’re delivering another order and making change. If I hadn’t seen it a thousand times, I’d swear it was humanly impossible. I think it takes a lot of gumption to take up that kind of juggling at all.

There are examples everywhere of such everyday courage. Flipping through an old Sun magazine last night, I ran across an essay about the kind of emotional fuel such work requires.

From “They Always Call You ‘Miss’” by Alison Clement:

“There’s more to waiting tables than you might think. It takes courage, for one thing. You walk up to a table, and everyone turns to look at you, as if you’re about to deliver the opening line of a play….You have to act as if you know what you’re doing and everything is going according to a plan….You have to remember: Gin and tonic to table 8; man at 12 is late for a meeting; nut allergy on 5. You have to remember it all and not get overwhelmed.”

If I start to feel down on human nature, I think about the ordinary things that people muster the courage to do every day. 

 

Categories: 2013

Tags: Alison Clement, McDonald's, sun magazine