Whopper Freak Out

Passing along a YouTube video, with a SnakeLadyLibrarian story to go along with it. But watch the video first: http://youtube.com/watch?v=WVm84MD4vU4
’cause my story makes more sense that way. The first 30 seconds of the video pretty much tells the whole tale.

I worked at Burger King three times. Two full summers and most of one school year. I also worked at McDonald’s (Genuine drive-thru Princess here. That’s the choice position for workers who care about their status at fast food restaurants – they only put the fast, hard workers there. Me, I worked the drive-thru. Because my status as a hard working McDonald’s employee matters.) I also worked at Pizza Hut. I once fell in a puddle of fry grease and finished out my 8-hour shift dripping lard from my waist to my ankle without asking to go home early*. But, OK, back to the story related to the YouTube video.

The broiler – “flame broiled Whoppers” (it’s true) – at the restaurant where I worked was on its last legs. The franchise owner didn’t want to buy a new one. So, not so unregularly, the broiler would die and we would not have burgers of any kind. We would have:

• BK broiler (chicken – different broiler)
• Fried chicken sandwiches
• Chicken tenders
• Big Fish

And no, we weren’t allowed to put up a sign saying we didn’t have hamburgers. We had to tell everyone individually. This is when I worked the front counter (there wasn’t a drive-thru there where my talents would have been better utilized at this location). The lines on the days when the broiler died were the longest. Folks just couldn’t get it through their heads that they couldn’t get a Whopper and all the transactions took three times as long.

“Whopper meal.”

“I’m sorry ma’am, our broiler is temporarily out of service. I can offer you a BK broiler, a fried chicken sandwich, chicken tenders or a Big Fish sandwich.”

Blank stare. “I’ll take just a hamburger then.”

“I’m sorry ma’am, we have no beef entrees this afternoon.”

She looks behind me, thinking maybe I had them hidden. “You have no beef?”

“No ma’am, but we have a variety of chicken and fish options, we have french fries, and we have a choice of lemon or apple pies.”

“This is bullshit.” She throws her purse over her shoulder and glares at me. She wears a business suit and heels but doesn’t hesitate to swear at the Burger King attendant in the basement Burger King of downtown Ann Arbor (yes, it’s a basement Kinkos now).

Blank stare from me while I think, “I hope the person behind her is listening so I don’t have to repeat all this.” But inevitably I did. The person in front of you being denied a Whopper is not you. That’s a reality happening to someone else. Surely the broiler reality will have changed in the 15 seconds it takes for your turn to come up.

“I’ll take a Whopper junior meal,” wise smile on his face – he has ordered neither a Whopper nor a hamburger.

“I’m sorry sir, we have no beef entrees this afternoon. I can offer you a BK broiler, a fried chicken sandwich, chicken tenders or a Big Fish sandwich.”

“Then I’ll take a hamburger,” looking in his wallet, not at me, while he makes this last-ditch effort for beef that even he knows is not going to work but I guess he figures he has to try.

Repeat the part about chicken, fish, fries and pies. Anyone with even a vague spark of humor about the situation would get my special, secret, authentic Burger King employee knowledge: ask for the lemon pie right out of the freezer, better than the defrosted ones in the counter fridge.

People really do freak out when they can’t get a Whopper. And then they really do tell you that they’re high and need a Whopper.

*Note on finishing out my shift dripping lard and not asking to go home. This is a family thing. My great uncle worked all day having a heart attack and died, flat out expired, ten minutes after getting home. But he finished his shift.

It’s All Method

Remember that time I talked about how I fear killing people by not sealing jam jars properly so I am reduced to begging homemade jams and jellies from others (hint). Behold the fruits of my labors. Jams are kind of like Christmas cookies that way. It doesn’t take much ooooing and ahhhhing to keep it coming. Raspberry, blackberry, currant, mixed. I got it going on now.

Thank you everyone!! and you can totally depend on a tin with double chocolate-dipped macademia nuts for next year.

Oh yeah, there was the one currently in the fridge, too:

That would be a total of six (6) jars of homemade jam.

Family Legends – Working the Union

We have a third-generation family story we tell of Frances William Schryer – my maternal grandfather. To the right, Frank and family.

Frank had 7 brothers and sisters. He married my grandmother when he was 23 and she 19. He was apprenticed as a tool and dye maker at the time, and earning a good living. They spent their wedding night in their own home – they had 20% saved between them at 23 and 19 to buy a house.

I rented until I was 34 and borrowed almost 90% on my mortgage. OK, but this isn’t about me.

Frank left Detroit with his family to become superintendent at a new tool and dye shop in Hillsdale, Michigan. After a bit he came up against a UAW line worker who wasn’t carrying his weight. Just couldn’t make the grade, but, y’know, union. Couldn’t fire the guy.

But, like all unions, there are lots of rules, and there was a pertinent union caveat. If you decked somebody on the job, you would lose it (at least in the 1950s). So, one day, Frank pulled him off the line, in front of everyone, and spoke quietly to him for less than a minute. Guy decked him. Knocked him to the ground. Frank picked himself up, said, “You’re gone.” Walked away. Mission accomplished.

Lingering family mystery: What could he say to the man in less than a minute that would work like that?

Fred!

Nooooooo! Fred Thompson has dropped out of the presidential race.

Fred! Fred! Where for art thou, Fred? How could you leave me like this, Fred? Ohhhh, Fred.

Yeah, right.

Voted for Hilary in the Michigan primaries. Plan to vote for her contentedly at every opportunity. First time since Clinton 1 ran that I feel satisfied by my presidential options.

1. I know what I’m getting

2. I expect very few inexplicable moves from her and I like that, a lot

Is she perfect? No. Does she recycle and support hybrids and can be relied on not to put pro-life judges onto the Supreme Court? OK then, good enough. This is the presidency. At the age of 35 I’ve finally realized that my perfect candidate is not going to be elected. Yeah, it took 35 years for me to get that through my head. When the war got going I was so disgusted by our system of government that I nearly bowed out completely. But there are some very practical issues that I will protect with my vote including access to safe abortions and freely accessible birth control, movement toward recognized gay and lesbian marriage and equal adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples, respect for America’s civil rights legacy, a hold on the religious right, movement toward more equitable health care, a national hold on Intelligent Design in public schools, and a president I can ignore for months on end ’cause they’re generally holding up the bargain I made with them when I voted for them.

Yeah, I’m voting for Hilary.

And I don’t care who they sleep with. That’s between them and their primary partner. Am I their primary partner? OK then. But, you know, decorum is good, too. Appreciate the president not starting wars with countries that aren’t any threat to us and dragging us into decades-long relationships involving the deaths of tens of thousands of people, though, if you can dig what I’m saying.

Snobby Quote of the Day

There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.
- Don Herold

Damn, I hate it when somebody nails my particular snobbishness so well.

Steven Saylor ROCKS!!

I named our cat Bethesda after a first century Roman concubine (actually, she was a slave, then she was manumitted and married the man who formerly owned her. don’t get all political on it, its not porn and the books work and I can’t believe I’m defending a book where a manumitted woman marries her former master. yet, here we are.) So, yeah, she’s not a REAL concubine, she’s from a book, a series of them, by Steven Saylor, about a first century Roman detective named Gordianus the Finder, his wife Bethesda, and their various children and slaves (yes, more slaves. but seriously, its not like that. of course how far from “like that” could it be when they’re slaves? here we are again.). And then there’s Caesar and Cleopatra and all the other characters of the time.

So, over the break I thought, y’know, I should let Steven Saylor know about my Bethesda. I sent him off a little email with a couple picts of Bethesda and he wrote back and said I had pretty kitty and thanked me for the compliment of naming my pet after his character.

And then.

And then I looked at his sig file. DO YOU KNOW WHO HE QUOTES IN HIS SIG FILE?

SEVEN OF NINE!

Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One.

(Star Trek Voyager, for those of you are bored by Sci Fi babble but continue to read bravely on.)

He quoted her thusly: “Impossible is a word humans use far too often.” So, the picture above is of Seven and it is totally stolen from Star Trek.com. It links there, too, to kinda make up for the fact that I right-click saved it right from their site.

Woo-hoo! Steven Saylor wrote me back and quoted Seven of Nine! I can’t figure out which part is more exciting. Totally buying him in hardcover from here on out.

What I’m Reading

Hubby and I are reading

Dark of the Moon by John Sandford

and

The Judgment of Caesar : A Novel of Ancient Rome

I’m reading

Chrysalis (Star Trek Voyager, No 12)

The last Star Trek Voyager book I haven’t read. A moment of silence. I’m nursing it.

and I just finished re-reading

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

and now I’m re-reading

The Fountainhead

I re-do Rand every few years. If you’re interested in her on either side of the political spectrum I recommend the tell-all below by one of her lovers – Nathaniel Branden – who tries to act like its not a scummy tell-all, like it’s some elevated tale of their deep and profound relationship and Ayn Rand and her greatness and foibles and his own greatness and his own greatness and his own greatness. It’s a scummy, scrape the bottom of the “everything unflattering I can remember about you” barrel while speculating on the twisted emotional motives of your ex by someone who can write. Y’know that whole concept of “self-esteem?” He either invented the modern movement of it or was instrumental in it. In any case, I tried to re-read him, too, but I just couldn’t stomach the arrogance. Definitely recommend it though if you have an interest in Rand. Or well-written scummy tell-alls. If you can’t find it at your local library, holler, I can loan you my copy.

My Years with Ayn Rand

Ego follow-up

As long as we’re on the topic of my ego (and we are; we so, so are), my graduation picture from library school:

Ego Coming ‘Round Again

Going into the polling station this evening we were approached by a man with a petition. I signed and he said,

“Is this your father?”

“No,” I said, “Husband. He got lucky.”

“Damn straight he did,” the guy said under his breath, his eyes lingering not so long on my chest that Hubby would need to deck him.

Never, ladies and gentlemen, never underestimate the power of a $120 dye job and a padded, push-up bra. And genes. Below, heritage beauty: my mother in her 20’s:

Bar Food Dinner

Once I posted about our super-food-co-op dinner. Last night we had home-made bar food. I didn’t want to leave you with the impression that we’re all healthy and routinely compare the subtleties of organic orange and yellow carrots. We’re not. We don’t.

We had:

• Buffalo wings
• Potato skins
• Mozzarella sticks
• Yeah, we threw some raw carrots and cauliflower and grape tomatoes on the table (to dip in the three choices of dip we had).
• Hubby had Brownie mudslide ice cream for dessert. Later in the evening, over an episode of Big Love, I had left-over frozen Christmas cookie crumbles (word of advice: don’t make 13 kinds of Christmas cookies unless you’re feeding 75 people. Trying to feed 35 people on 13 kinds of Christmas cookies means you have a whole lot of cookies left in your freezer, even after giving them away to people like the folks in your neighborhood who did your favorite Christmas displays. Note: definitely make your own brown sugar with white sugar and molasses, special touch much commented on. Don’t wait too long between making homemade chocolate-dipped Oreos and delivering them. Don’t freeze them.)

With all the unhealthy ingredients and accoutremonts, a bar food dinner usually makes me slightly ill. Last night was no particular exception. Was it my imagination, or was my skin oily this morning?

Why eat food that might make you ill? If you have to ask, you haven’t had my potato skins.