WINTER 2008Shawna Roberts
Your Steering Committee likes to include at least one article each issue that connects to the wider world of Quakers.
The following excerpt is from a September 2008 in Shawna Roberts' internet blog.
You can visit the blog at mysticspoetsandfools.blogspot.com.I live with my husband and five children in a little white house on a windy hill in Ohio. I am a member of Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends. I am a conservative Friend, a convergent Friend, a Christian, a mother, a wife, an overnight crew member at my local McDonald's, a maker of beeswax/honey-based herbal bodycare products, and a belly dancer. I think that all this qualifies me as "post-modern" — or maybe just odd… take your pick.
The Author
But don’t even get me started on that “Supersize Me” idiot. ... It was his job as the person ordering the food to make decisions about what he wanted to eat. Not mine, as the order-taker. I have learned that lesson, much to my amused embarrassment. I remember one early morning (it was probably about 4:30 am), explaining to a trucker that I thought the new McSkillet Burrito tasted really good, but that it was nearly 600 calories, so I only ate it occasionally as a treat. He smiled down at me, and said, “Do I look like I worry about calories? Gimme two.” So OK.
But other customers do worry about calories… [Like] the trucker who walked in one night, and asked me what we had that was easy to eat while he was driving and wasn’t “all fatty and junky.” After a bit of thought, I came up with our apple dippers. I showed him the bag of sliced fruit, and he was tickled. “Do all McDonald’s have these?” Well, yep. Or the trucker who came in one night mostly because he was bored and lonely, and hassled me goodnaturedly for 20 minutes about how terrible the McDonald’s menu was, and how it was all junk, and how he couldn’t get anything decent to eat… and I finally suggested a plain grilled chicken breast… and he made me explain to him how he could order it at other McDonald’s “so the idiot behind the counter can find it.” And he went off to his bunk happy, clutching his carry-out grilled chicken breast. “I’m so glad I came in to hassle you!” were his parting words. G’night. Hurry back…
Soon after I began working, I started to make a point of touching the hand of each person briefly, either as I was giving change, or as I was handing them their food. It seemed important to make that human contact with each person. I’ve probably touched a thousand hands since I started working at McDonald’s… some hands more than once, of course. I suspect that that is the only human touch some of my customers get all day.
It’s the human contact I love so much about this job. I have never worked anywhere that had as diverse a group of employees, or as diverse a clientele as McDonald’s. It’s a microcosm of the United States… even the people who don’t like to eat at McDonald’s walk in the door on my shift… there’s just not a whole lot open in my part of the state at 3:00 in the morning. My McDonald’s is on an interstate freeway, so I get to talk to all sorts of travelers and truckers. The truckers often come in regularly; we have a big parking lot for trucks, and I have been told by one of my regular truckers that they choose not to stop at any of the other food places for a hundred miles up and down the freeway, “cuz ya’ll take care of us here.”
The travelers are often never seen again. Last year, I waited on an Australian with jet lag (which, he explained, was why he was driving at 2:00 in the morning—no point in lying in the motel staring at the ceiling!). Last week, I waited on an African (maybe Somali?) family… the wife and little girl had beautiful henna tattoos on their hands. As I handed him his coffee, the husband told me, “I really need this.” A long trip? I asked. “I’ve been driving since New York,” he said, “but I started out this morning in Africa. I just have to stay awake long enough to get home to Indianapolis.” And there are the traveling couples on the frayed end of their trip, snapping at each other or not talking…. I try to give them a kind word if I can. Most of them know that it’s just the trip fraying nerves, and they appreciate a little friendly acknowledgement of their temporary difficulties, and whatever little extra attention I give them. But I remember one gentleman… his wife had just walked out of the restaurant in some discontent, and I turned to him and said, “It will all get better.” “No, it won’t,” he said. “When we got married, my momma took me aside and told me that she would go ahead and shoot me whenever I’d had enough.” He smiled ruefully as he took his food…. “I’m about ready.” Once, a poor traveler spent the night quietly propped in an inconspicuous booth. It was a cold night, and there aren’t a lot of options at our particular freeway exit. So I pretended not to notice him, and let him get what sleep he could. In the morning, before I left, I bought him a little breakfast and dropped it off at his booth, where he was nursing his cup of coffee and looking pretty shaky. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I saw that he was standing at the onramp, thumbing for a ride West. I hope he got safely where he was supposed to be....
Sometimes they need a little extra attention. I remember one woman who stopped by for something to eat on the way home from the hospital, where her father was dying. For at least ten minutes, I listened to her mostly unintelligible explanations of how he came to be dying in the hospital, and how she had spent the day there, trying to get answers from hospital staff.
And then there was the woman who came to the drive-thru window one night, and said, “I have sort of a weird order. It’s kind of special. It’s for a last request.” And she told me what it was, and I figured out a way to order it for her, and explained it to the grill person, and made sure she got the special order she’d asked for. Now, I don’t know what sort of “last request” she was talking about; I don’t know of any prisons near us, offhand, that were executing anyone. Maybe she was an acting student practicing. Who knows? But she gave every impression of someone holding themselves together through sheer force of will, and her voice cracked when she took the food and said, “You’re a Godsend.” I sent her along with a prayer.
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Saturday, November 22, 2008 at 04:02 PM
