TOADTalk: McDonald's, my Mother, and Me

Rewind to 1975 - In my family, it was expected that we would get jobs as soon as we could. There was no extra money in our home, and though I never felt that I needed much, for my brothers and me spending money was earned. I started working at McDonald’s after school in my junior year of high school. The minimum wage was $2.00 an hour back then.

I really liked the job. I learned some new things, made new friends, and enjoyed making my own money for the first time. I began as a counter girl and I was proud of my speed and efficiency in handling customers. I was often at the cash register next to a girl named Amy. I would keep track of the amount of customers I served in half an hour and then would count how many she served. I’m afraid my competitive nature knows no bounds! Amy was super sweet to each customer, sometimes even striking up a little conversation. I, on the other hand, was a let’s-get-the-job-done kind of girl. When job review time came, I was shocked that I didn’t get the 10-cent raise that Amy got.

More accurately, I was outraged. I think I’m more outraged now remembering it as my 50-something-year-old self than I was as my 16 year-old self. After all, I’ve told this story for many years and with increasing embellishments, but nonetheless….this was worse than my father’s ridiculous policy of giving my brother a later curfew than me because he had to drop his girlfriend off before he came home. (A story for another time.)

The assistant manager called me in for my review and what I recall was that I was criticized for not following the sacred McDonald’s guidelines.

Rule number one: if a customer did not order French fries we were supposed to say, “Would you like fries with that?”. I had always thought that if I was the customer and someone asked me if I would like fries with that, my sarcastic reply might be, “No, if I wanted fries with that I would have ordered them.” So I just didn’t ask.

Rule number two: when a customer gave you his cash you were supposed to enter it in the cash register – for example, $10, enter, and then the register would tell you the change to give. I preferred to just count back the change in my head as I took it out of the drawer. So I regularly broke rule #2.

At the end of your shift your cash drawer had to balance. Money in the register had to be equal to total sales.  If you were off by pennies that was fine, nickels and dimes occasionally OK, but if you were off by more than that more than once you were either pulled off the register or possibly let go. I wasn’t perfect, but in the time period they were using for my evaluation my drawer balanced every day but one – when I was off by a nickel! (Which probably fell on the floor!)

I had my defense all ready. I’m good at this. What did it matter if I asked if you want fries with that or if I inputted the cash received as long as my drawer balanced and I served more customers than other employees – wasn’t this a fast food restaurant after all? Really how could they give Amy a raise and not me??

So I asked the assistant manager if I could talk to the manager and he said NO.
 

So I wrote a letter to the manager. When I didn’t get an answer, I talked to the assistant manager again who told me basically to go away and just do my job.

So then I went to my mother. My mom had always been the solver of all problems, my protector and supporter. I told her my story to get her on my side or at least make me feel like I was justified in being outraged. I expected her to tell me a new way to plead my case and get that raise. My usually calm, reasonable mother said, “Really, Gallia? You know sometimes it’s just easier to do what you’re told.”

Jump ahead 8 years or so. I’m 24, newly married, living in New Jersey and working at an all girls boarding school. I’m teaching dance and choreographing for the first time and not too sure of myself or satisfied that I actually have a curriculum and proper goals and objectives. So I did a little research and found dance was usually associated with Physical Education in public schools and that independent schools had a vast range of dance programs, some associated with arts, some with sports. Thinking that this would be a great thing to research more deeply at different schools and come to some pedagogical conclusions and defend the value of dance in arts education, I submitted a proposal for a Klingenstein Fellowship to do just that. I spent a long time on the proposal. I thought it was original and worthwhile. I didn’t get the fellowship and was, of course, really disappointed.

A few weeks afterwards I was talking to my mom and she thought I sounded down. I told her I was really depressed about not getting this fellowship and couldn’t get out of this funk I was in.  Mom’s advice, “Really, Gallia?” (somehow I always remember my mother’s most profound moments starting with a bit of a sigh and a "Really, Gallia?”) You know you just don’t always get what you want; maybe it’s time to grow up.”

Jump ahead another 5 years. Many of you probably don’t know that Mr. Vic and I lost our baby “Sara” from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at six weeks old. Of course it was tragic and our grief lasted a while. We had great support systems, our parents, siblings and friends, and over time things got better. We got lots of advice and too many platitudes. But, again, after time passed I remember a conversation with my mother. I said that the hardest thing for me was not understanding why? And not having any answers to my questions. And my mother said, “You can move forward with your life you know, even without an answer to those hard questions.”

Fast forward - I’m in my forties.  My mom gave me a birthday present of a book called writing from the heart. It was a writing journal with some thoughts to help you get started and the first section was about gratitude. The idea was that each time you write you begin by listing five things that you’re grateful for. Realizing that my writing, journal entries or the like, was usually a place to vent, complain, or question, I found this task surprisingly difficult. Often I couldn’t come up with five new things so I just listed some of the same things: family, love, health, good chocolate, a rewarding job, a safe home. But the more often I stopped and thought and made myself do it, the more different things came up for me. When I asked my mom why she chose this journal book for me she said, “I just thought you might want to think more about being grateful.”

So we start with McDonald’s and end up with me getting sentimental about advice from my mother. The value of TOADTalks - something else I’m actually grateful for.

I’ll leave you with 4 of my little life lessons with advice courtesy of my mom.

1.  Sometimes it’s easier to just do what you’re told.

2.  When you don’t always get want you want, maybe it’s time to grow up.

3.  You can move forward with your life even if you don’t have the answer to a hard question.

4.  Be grateful.