Reflecting on Culture Defined
When I was in high school and old enough to drive I got a job at McDonald's. I really liked that job. I learned many life lessons there that had absolutely nothing to do with flipping hamburgers. This morning I was thinking about one of those lessons.
I often worked the “truck” shift. That shift started at 4AM when the huge McDonald’s semitruck arrived to deliver whatever supplies where required by our store for the next few days. Truck was hands down my favorite shift.
There are a lot of hard transitions in the truck shift: unloading truck, opening the store, breakfast conversion to lunch. Plus you dealt with whatever surprises the closers left you from the night before. It could make for some harried days.
That was one reason I liked it.
My truck shift typically ended at 2pm. By the end of the day I was often dragging a bit. One afternoon, around 1:30pm, I was in the back washing dishes before my shift was over. I was using the handheld sprayer to gently direct the remaining food particles down the drain of the huge sink.
Suddenly, the owner of the store was standing next to me. He came in occasionally to straighten up whatever part of the store needed straightening up. He reached down into the sink, scooped up the bulk of the floating food particles with his hand and tossed them into a nearby trash can. Then he said, “Sometimes it’s faster to just reach down and scoop it out.” and was off to whatever was needing doing next.
I remember standing there thinking, “He could have told me to do that.”
Keep coding, you know I am.