By November, 1987, I was raking in the dough, I had a girlfriend, I was a junior in high school looking toward college, and I still enjoyed working at McDonald's! But, gentle reader, if you recall, I began working here in January of that same year. Remember also that this McDonald's was in the biggest mall in the area at that time.

I became known as a Truck person, since I was one of the few people who actually wanted to subject themselves to physical adversity each Monday night when the massive delivery came (on a Truck, as you might imagine). It was completely idiotic, and I would never now do that without some better equipment (like gloves, a lifting belt, and some sort of padding, and insurance!), but at the time, it was really fun. One time this idiot threw (!!!) a box of frozen hamburger pucks at me, and I caught the corner in my chest. $3.85 sure seemed like a lot back then...

So I was fully entrenched in the McDonald's life style. In the summer, we had all gotten into the habit of going to drive-in movies en mass, so we all actually had a little social clique, which was really interesting since we all came from such diverse backgrounds. Actually, this is all just rationalizing, since the job and the environment were essentially horrible, and the people were (with several notable exceptions) utter failures up to that point in life. No, I'm being too harsh, but at the same time I might not be. In the end, this scenario that had built itself up actually made it more difficult to leave in the end, which I still find to be somewhat frightening.

Shannon (the only one of the Shannon's to actually go by that name) and I had become fast friends by this time, and we even stayed up talking on the phone one night for about 12 hours. I recall that as being the first time I ever stayed up all night and went to school the next day. I had met my girlfriend there and we both still worked together, and I was still very close to Adam and John, which just drew me in more.

But then Thanksgiving Weekend came along, and the busiest shopping day of the year introduced me to the sheer hell that is working at a fast food place in a mall. The closest thing that I can think of to describe the experience would be perhaps being an orderly in an emergency room at an inner city hospital, where there are nothing but gunshot wounds for hours and hours, and no one qualified to deal with them. This was definitely the beginning of the end of my McDonald's career, to be sure.

Some time around there, I learned about the true nature of that short circuit in the registers. During the holidays, additional registers were added on that stainless steel countertop, but they were completely manual, which meant that only people capable of counting out correct change and of entering memorized prices could work on them. Only the best. I learned around that time that it was much easier to exploit the fast pace for monetary gain, since there was no computer tracking of sales, and certainly no price displays to worry about. It was something that came to be known as The Bonus Program.

On one particular occasion, I was assisting in this artful dodge (remember, I was young and without fear or moral entanglement) when a customer called one of the managers aside and informed them that the person I was working with had taken money from the register! Seemingly from nowhere, Joyce and Michelle (two store managers) appeared and sent us on break, switching the till from the cash drawer in the process. Thirty minutes later, when we returned, it was explained to us that we had been accused of something, so our register was audited and the cash drawer counted. We were absolved completely when the cash total in the drawer was within $0.01 of the expected total. We went back to work, apparently innocent.

But wait, there is more to this story, since there was indeed some nefarious activity taking place. Here's how The Bonus Program actually worked: A casual customer, presumably in a rush, begins to place an order. The items are entered into the cash register computer and the running order tally reads the correct price. Once the order is complete, the total key is pressed with the sub-total key (the short circuit I mentioned earlier) and the cash drawer opens! The register is unaware that the sale has taken place, however, so one needed to be adept at counting back change (which, sad to say, is not a skill all McDonald's employees share) without appearing nervous to any onlookers. The drawer was closed, and as the unsuspecting customer picked up his tray, the just-entered order would be cleared out item by item, just in time for the next customer. The cash drawer would then be positive.

An alternate approach involved memorizing the order and not charging the correct amount. When the customer added up the total while staring quizzically at the menu board, the fact that he or she was receiving a special price quelled their concerns immediately. They walked away none the wiser, while the money they just contributed to the growing bonus program fund was destined to be spent on movies and food at Denny's later that night.

But there were two tricky parts. First, obviously, if one did this continuously, the hourly register reports would surely reveal the plot. So, careful monitoring of the bonus rate had to take place. The second part involved withdrawing the funds so that they would not get stuck in the till. This was easily done without arousing suspicion on the part of the customer by periodically having the backup person take a $20 bill and go back to get change... returning with the pocketed bill when the next customer was at the counter. Simple.

That day, when our register came back within a penny of the expected total, there was something on the order of $80 extra, which somehow disappeared. The cheaters had been cheated, but the level of corruption, which (since Joyce was second from the owner!) was huge. I learned after that time that the bonus program and various other schemes were carried out daily, at all levels. I myself assisted in many cases, but found the one time that I took $5 to be too guilt-inspiring. In other words, yes I helped to do bad things, but I couldn't bring myself to go all the way, as it were.

After the rush, as my time at McD's was approaching a full year, I entertained the thought of quitting and even wrote that fateful resignation letter on at least two occasions (scrawled on the back of a tray liner, to be honest) but both times it was removed from the time-off-request-can by well-intentioned coworkers. I did, afterall, have a car to support, along with a girlfriend, and money did not grow on trees back then.

To bring a less painful end to this story, I'll end it here by simply saying that I was eventually allowed to leave, but on good terms. I found myself returning to McDonald's on more than one occasion, keeping in touch with Shannon and Sara well into my college years. A recent visit back there revealed a closed store, soon-to-be renovated, or perhaps reshaped into another restaurant. I'll never forget some of the things I learned there, only some of which was alluded to in this work. I guess it might be that much more cathartic to actually jot down some of the things that I think I learned by working at McDonald's.