Jobs I’ve Had – Burger King Serf


Only days after my 15th birthday, I did something stupid. I don’t remember just what stupid thing I did, but I remember the consequences. I did the stupid thing and Dad decided that it was time for me to get a job. He didn’t care what job it was, just that I got one. And soon.

As it happened, a girl I’d “dated” early in junior high was employed at the local Burger King. You can’t really call it dating if you’re counting on parents and youth ministers for rides. This is one of many reasons why she and I weren’t dating anymore — with or without quotation marks. But she was still mostly friendly, so I asked her if Burger King was hiring. Sure, she said. I just needed to come by and fill out an application. So I did.

I was hired on the spot. I’m positive that it was my charm that won the manager over. That and my pulse. Before the week was out, I was issued a uniform and sent to Redbank for three nights in a row for an experience known as BKU. And yes, the “U” in BKU does stand for “University.” No lie. Three nights of watching videos in the back room of a larger than usual Burger King.

The uniform. Suits and business casual aside, I’ve only had to wear two uniforms in my entire work life. And the first of these two was the worse, by far. Imagine the least breathable polyester ever extruded. Now shape that into an ill-fitting polo shirt in maroon with coordinating pants of the same material. To seal the deal, top off the outfit with the cruel choice of a visor or a mesh-backed trucker hat. The uniform was positively impenetrable as far as any comforting breeze was concerned, and yet it managed to pick up a variety of food smells from any six to eight hour stint in the Burger King kitchen. So did the hat. The miasma of burger, fry, fish sandwich, milkshake and Pepsi combined to form a scent that bore a distinct resemblance to melted plastic. Plastic that had been dipped in grease. And broiled.

Grease really was the word at that place, if you’ll forgive me. It got everywhere and it went with you when you went home. On your skin, in your hair, on your clothes, in your car.

Turns out that a kid from my neighborhood worked at the same Burger King. Michael. A few days after I started working there, I noticed that his Lakeview High class ring looked like no other. The stone was black and had a white streak down the middle. “How’d that happen?,” I asked him. “Fry vat,” he answered.

Turns out, he’d watched the ring slip off his finger and sink right into the bubbling torment of the molten fry vat. Luckily, he didn’t follow his immediate instinct to plunge his hand to retrieve it. Instead, on his next break, he told his manager — now my manager — what had happened. She said that he was welcome to drain the vat that evening after closing, just to see what he could find. The ring, for what its worth, was little the worse for wear. All but the stone, of course, because it used to be blue. An aquamarine, supposedly. Like my class ring. Which I left at home from that lesson on.

My assignment after graduating BKU, suiting up and arriving good-and-early for my first shift? I was given the task of feeding the broiler. Or rather, The Broiler. Respect is due. The BK Broiler — the contraption, not the latter day marketing gimmick-sandwich — is a giant metal box that measures about a meter across, a meter wide and stands on four sturdy legs with a semi-permanent fume vent that is mostly attached to the ceiling. When you drive by a Burger King and catch a whiff, this is what you are smelling. Beneath the box is a rolling deep freeze with a sliding lid. It rolls so that one can push it mostly out of the way under the broiler. Filling the rolling deep freeze are patties of two sizes. You have your frozen normal burgers and then your frozen Whopper burgers. Ever see a Whopper burger before it becomes the primary component in one of the highest calorie sandwiches ever invented? The frozen patty is almost the size of a 45rpm record. Or rather, they were when I was a fresh BKU graduate. So the broiler feeder stands behind the broiler — the “In” side — plucking patties from the deep freeze and placing them on the metal conveyor grill that never stops conveying. With a rather solid clang, the patties start their relatively brief journey through the box. This journey will take them over a small sea of yellow flames, just long enough to send a one-side grilled burger out the … well, I guess the “Out” side, as it were.

One of the most important lessons I recall from BKU was to always place the burger on the bun with the broiler stripes facing upward. It’s true.

How long was I at Burger King? Maybe five or six months. Our manager left to take on a marginally better job at the local Pizza Hut, so several of us followed suit. I suppose we figured that waiting tables had to be better than breaking down shake machines and scraping salty grease-skin off the fry bin.

And it was. Sort of. But that’s another job. For another post.

This post was inspired by Rusty Tanton’s on-going “Jobs I’ve Had” series, a trend also followed by Garrett “They Call Him Big Papa” Vonk. (Oh, hai! Sara is on board as well!)


14 responses to “Jobs I’ve Had – Burger King Serf”

  1. I love reading all these stories. It never occurred to me to think about how big the Whopper patties must have been before they were cooked, since they’re still pretty big after.

  2. Me neither. I think that was my first lesson in fat content. All of the mass just melts away and leaves the BK in a tower of smoke.

    I’m going to keep doing these. I’ve fallen far off the blog-wagon, so this is a great way to hop back on. Thank you.

  3. I had a uniform for Disney that I forgot to write about that sounds quite similar. It was a cotton golf shirt made out of something one step above cardboard, and then those awful impenetrable polyester golf style pants. We had to pick up a uniform every day and drop it off at night, and there was another woman in my store who was my same height and size, so about once a week when most of the pants of our shared size were in the laundry, whichever of us got there later in the day would be left without any without pants that were the right size. It was usually me, so I often had to either wear ones that were way too small or way too short, and either way it looked really stupid. That was my first and LAST uniform experience, thank God.

    I often wonder if people who worked in fast food as teenagers can eat at those restaurants later on after knowing what goes into the food. Do you eat BK Thomas, or do you just avoid it as a bad memory?

  4. I’ll probably have to have a whole post for stuff I forgot about in the original posts. In the car porter posts, I was remiss in not mentioning that the Snap-On Tools truck was like the ice cream truck for mechanics.

  5. Good post! These are great! It’s funny how someone’s “mundane” job that they took for granted can be interesting to others. Love it.

  6. […] Like I said before, I followed a decent manager from a fast food job to a somewhat slower food job. The Pizza Hut was about a half a mile from the Burger King, situated right on the busy intersection of Highway 27 and Battlefield Parkway. (Practically every street in my hometown refers to the nearby Chickamauga National Battlefield, the Parkway being only the most obvious.) Next door to the Pizza Hut was a Wendy’s. It’s still there. The building that housed the Pizza Hut remains as well, but it is now a Mexican restaurant. […]

  7. […] GRABBINGSAND Jobs I 39 ve Had Burger King Serf Posted by root 3 hours ago (http://www.grabbingsand.org) This is one of many reasons why she and i weren 39 t dating anymore with or without quotation marks i think that was my first lesson in fat content a comment trackback uri 2009 thomas powered by wordpress plaintxtblog theme by Discuss  |  Bury |  News | GRABBINGSAND Jobs I 39 ve Had Burger King Serf […]

  8. […] GRABBINGSAND Jobs I 39 ve Had Burger King Serf Posted by root 2 hours 35 minutes ago (http://www.grabbingsand.org) We had to pick up a uniform every day and drop it off at night and there was that the snap on tools truck was like the ice cream truck for mechanics a post a comment trackback uri 2009 thomas powered by wordpress plaintxtblog Discuss  |  Bury |  News | GRABBINGSAND Jobs I 39 ve Had Burger King Serf […]

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