We Love to see you Smile™

“I only want twelve ice cubes in my coffee!”—
“I want a fish fillet with Mac sauce and one with ketchup and mustard!”—
“Crispy chicken. . . .No, grilled…No, crispy. . No. . . . Wait!” —
My cousin and I awaken to the sweet songs of morning as the sun flows through our New Hampshire summer house window, waves crashing against the dock. Reality hits hard as the clock clicks 7:15. “Time for work!” my aunt smirks as she comes through the door. Rolling out of bed, I put on my large high-waisted black pants, button up my crimson red shirt, and tighten the uncomfortable black visor.
Riding into the McDonald’s parking lot, yellow towering arches greet us. While positioned at the drive thru window, promptly packing the food, watching the time and greeting customers, I pleasantly met a melting pot of people. Cars pull up all day with a variety of customers: the think-they’re-better-than-you type; the high-maintenance can’t-get-them-to-leave type; funny, random question-askers; and the downright kindest people. Each one is different, some don’t pronounce their Boston R’s and others cannot stop jamming to their favorite country song.
McDonald’s is not all fun and games but a thrilling, stressful, and noisy workplace. Orders to be memorized pop up on the screen, heart pounds from pressure, buzzers screech like sirens, as we rush to keep time under 120 seconds. In a race against time, employees dodge for sauces, napkins, and spoons while customers repeatedly hassle them. Cars’ guzzling engines never cease flowing through the drive thru, like water flowing out a pipe, like Geronimo at Water Country. I remember climbing the stairs higher and higher, heart racing with each step, the top higher than expected. Fear overtook this Nervous Nellie, but still I dared to lie on the slide’s heart-shaped marker. Heart stopped, eyes closed, arms and legs crossed, I fell mid-air onto a cool refreshing slide taking me to the bottom feet-first.
“Beep, Beep, Beep!” calls the fry basket, dragging me back from my cool escape. My manager slides the food down the counter and jokes, “Here comes another heart attack in a box!” Laughing, I promptly pack the food and send it out the window with a polite “have a great day” and a bright smile!
My experience shows the lack of courtesy and negative attitudes many people have for McDonald’s employees, prejudging them as uneducated and unambitious. Quite the opposite. McDonald’s employees are like one big family who care about each other. When someone has issues, like an employees family problems, or the manager’s husband troubles, we are supportive of each other. And McDonald’s employees make painstaking efforts to please customers—there was never a day I went without smiling. One day, I accidentally sang over the McDonald’s drive thru speaker. The customer outside chuckled, “McDonald’s Idol!” At first humiliated, I later realized customer’s opinions and attitudes don’t matter to me as long as I put a smile on each face. Leaving there at the summer’s end, they will remember me as the girl who always smiled.
What you bring to the table is what you will obtain from the table. Having realized how hard it is to work at McDonalds, I now respect McDonald’s employees as hard working, determined, and caring people. The food slides down, the last order is packed and all my work is complete, satisfaction comes over me like the slide at water country, like heading down Geronimo feet first.
“I want a burger, hold the pickles.” What kind of sandwich I asked?, “NO PICKLES! Cheeseburger, no pickles!” . . . “Can I have a side of pickles with that order please?”—
“Can I have a Big Mac… without the meat?”—
“That store across the street says 70,000 gifts; do you know who counted them all?”—
“Can I have some ketchup, can you poor it into a cup because I don’t like the packets”—
Geronimo!