As the Burger Turns part 3

Monday June 29,2020 at 6:00 a.m. I slept in today, us old folks do that from time to time

Here are the morning COVID numbers - straight from the google. All USA only. 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ 

Cases of the virus	2,637,180	Cases with an Outcome	1,221,965
Deaths	128,438	Recovered or Discharged (89%)	1,093,527
Recovered	1,093,527	Deaths (11%)	128,438

Disclaimer: The title of this post is the start of my soap opera for old people called "As the Burger Turns" or it could be titled "Tales from the Grill" or maybe even "Flipping for posterity", not sure what to call it yet. Anyway, to make this clear right from the start, everything in this post is wholly created from my own recollections, which may be faulty because I am old, or because I choose to lie about it, take your pick. At any rate, everything I post here today belongs to me, the good the bad and the ugly, and is a product of my highly developed imagination. If I use a situation that you know about and it was actually different, then SHADDUP! , just read it and don't ruin a good story with a correction about some trivial things called facts. It's a story, stories are based on what people think and everybody knows that people lie.  

So anyhow, the next day I had no idea what to expect. This gorilla of a man who was probably the most nonverbal manager I had worked for at that point, asked me if I wanted to keep my job and when I answered the correct way I suppose, he bought me new uniforms after I pled poverty and took me to the barber. Then took me back to the restaurant, told me to get out, and left me standing there, looking stupid. 

The next day I got up early, not my usual rushing at the last minute, will I make it to work on time nonsense, took every short cut I knew, and pulled in the parking lot a full 15 minutes or so before I was supposed to be there. It didn't matter, John was already there, coffee half drunk, half the line set up doing my job again. So I went into the door and had no idea what to expect next. I also knew something was very very different about this man than most folks I had ever met up to this point. He had a manner about him, I can't exactly explain it, but just the way he approached things. 

I once saw him tear up the delivery ticket from the bread man, called him a cheating bastard to his face. The guy was livid, got pissed off and red-faced, and was angry as hell and John just smiled at him.  The guy just handed John his pad and said "Well hell, you fill it out, whatever you want John". I also saw him chase the coffee man back into his truck because he told John to move "He had work to do". That guy was an idiot. I also saw him help an older woman from her car, helping her balance up onto the curb and into the building. He was shall we say, an anachronism. 

I didn't know what to make out of this guy. I remember thinking, there is going to be a line of fire with this guy, he reminds me of my Dad. Very gruff, beat your ass in a heartbeat, smack you upside the head, walk old ladies in from their cars. Weird as hell, but in the same way, I learned to stay under the fray so to speak, kept my head off the chopping block, and watched the world around me transform in a way I have never seen before nor since.

For the first few days, I wouldn't tell you I can remember exactly what happened. I do remember what John did because we talked a lot about it later on, but for the first couple of days he just watched us work. He cashed out customers sometimes, placed all the orders, did the administrative work (which I was glad because I was doing it up to that point for no extra pay), and otherwise, it was sort of uneventful. The crew would come up to him and ask him questions and he would say things like "What would you do If I wasn't here?", he said that a lot. A lot of the time they would say I would do this or that, and sometimes they would say I would go ask Mike because he was usually in charge in the mornings. Whenever they said that he would send them to me while I was working the grill and I got the idea I was supposed to make a decision about whatever it was, so I did.  I sent people on break, gave customers refunds, had the crew make food over, settled some minor disputes and etc. 

After a few days of that, one morning about 3 or 4 days later, John asked me to sit with him. The last thing he had said to me before that was "Get out of my car." At that point, we were pretty nonverbal (boy was that ever about to change!). He asked me how I thought it was going and what I thought about certain things and after I told him what I thought, he then told me I had too many friends on the crew to be a manager. Hell at that point I knew what my nametag said, and I knew what I did, but I didn't know what I actually was, so I just sat there. He said to me something like (I mean it was 40 years ago or so, I do not exactly remember verbatim what he said), what are you going to do when you come to work one day and one or more of your friends are ex-employees? I remember saying "I would come to work, what do you mean? I'm not stupid, they don't pay my bills", or something to that effect. 

Over the course of the next few weeks, I saw him replace every single ding dong, hard-headed moron and dumbass that was on that crew. Everyone that came to work every day looking for a fight, got one with John and every single one of them lost. Every single time. He didn't announce it to the world and only a few times in the whole time I knew him did I ever hear him make any kind of spectacle out of it. He would catch people on the way in the door mostly but I remember seeing him tell bus riders the night before that they needed to look for a different job. I learned later that it was about keeping them from taking the bus to a job they no longer had but didn't know it yet. He also told me much later that it was about keeping the drama to a minimum so somebody who had just ridden the bus to work would not have to wait for a way to go back home.  I thought maybe it was compassion but he just called it good planning. "Poor planning on your part, Does not constitute an Emergency on mine."

He would sometimes be forced to terminate someone for something they did, but it didn't happen often, but when it did, he would just hand them their time card. He would say does that look right? Then he would tell them to "Sign their timecard." Mindlessly most people would sign it and say what was that for? That's where he would say, "You won't be needing it to clock in and out here anymore because you don't work here. You just verified your hours are correct." They would stand there and be stunned thinking he was joking or something, he would just tell them to get their stuff and go home. It was an abject lesson in being calm under fire. I found out later that virtually EVERYTHING was a lesson with him. You do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because somebody is looking.

There were probably more people than this, however, Linda McCoy, Rita Groce, and I were the only ones I remember, and about 3 or 4 more I can't think of the names of still working at this restaurant after the first 10 weeks or so. Like I said there was probably more and I'm probably wrong about that, but it seemed that way. The people he hired to replace the ones that were terminated were all pretty good folks. Most of them worked out and I recall this store got easier to run and busier as hell as a result. The funny thing I remember in that period of time was unlike every other month I had ever worked in any other store, I never saw any higher-ups in the store. John would be on the phone from time to time but for the most part, no one from the Division Office ever came to see us. That was weird I remember thinking because everywhere I had worked before had visited on a regular basis and you could almost set your watch to it. 

As a matter of fact, sitting here and thinking about it, after Vern Tetrick was let go, I could not tell you who our District Manager was for quite a while. We probably had one, I just didn't know who it was. It was very strange. I was (was yeah!) very nosy and liked to know stuff and that was something that I never knew until much later. Apparently, John had first been assigned to the N. Keystone store and had at some point ran the district manager off, literally, telling him if he wasn't there to help he could go drink coffee somewhere else. I was never sure if this was a myth or it actually happened. Based on all the other stuff I saw in my time with John, I am certain that it was true. He probably threw the guys briefcase at him too for good measure. I've seen him break the earpiece off of a receiver on a telephone from hanging it up so hard on some poor soul, at the front counter in front of a line of customers waiting to pay, then he just says "I think this one is defective and walks off". I remember trying and losing my ability to keep a straight face while I was taking people's money. It was like a surreal episode of Saturday Night Live.  If you aren't part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. 

John did not put up with shit from anyone, he didn't care who you were. I asked him once if he just wasn't concerned with getting in trouble. He looked right into my soul and said "Michael, I was looking for a job when I found this one." I think he meant he wasn't going to change who he was, take it or leave it. Some people hated John for who he was, especially the ones that thought they were superstars that he canned. 

The rumor always circulated that John had been a high school teacher in a past life teaching math and calculus and stuff like that. Working with him I could believe it because the guy was a wizard with numbers. I never asked him about it though because I was too busy getting my ass worked into a frazzle and answering a lot of questions about products and cases counts and etc. If you worked for John you had to know everything about the products that there was to know. He studied the numbers in our store so intently that not only did we stop running out of products, but he eliminated overtime, MWD, the PnL fell into line (I think he scared it into line myself) and every other number you could think of to discuss in a restaurant. 

He would look at finished food waiting to be served so intently that I expected it to jump up and run away. I saw him, in the beginning, reject food by just pushing it off the Passover back into the cook line saying stuff like "We don't sell junk boys and girls". Whenever he was around the Passover the Dressing table person paid attention because nobody wanted a Chili 3 ways in their lap. After a while he didn't have to do that anymore, as the crew would do it for him, they would tell each other "I'll make sure he throws it at you if you try to serve that". If anything that was made from spaghetti wasn't steaming you had to make it again. He would not allow you to serve a spaghetti product that wasn't steaming hot, same with soup. No steam? TRASH!! Make it again. 

He kept everyone on their toes at all times because you never knew what he was going to throw at someone next, if they were a screwball it could be a metal pan or a straw. You just really never knew especially if you tried to make a substandard product and pass it off as a good one. My favorite was when he rejected a milkshake. Right up until the point where he made me help clean up the mess. 

The people whom he kept and the ones he let go were all pretty much the same unremarkable kind of person with the exception of these things. He kept you if you came to work on time, wore a clean and cared for uniform, were manageable, and took direction. Once you were deemed capable of being managed, he would push you to produce at levels you never thought was possible. He would push you harder and harder right up to the edge of insanity and sometimes right over the edge. He demanded exceptional effort, terrific work ethics, trust, honesty, and perfect customer service. There was absolutely no excuse for poor service and if you wanted to see someone disappear with intensity just let him catch you being rude to a guest, whoo doggie! POOF! YOUR ass was GONE, and I mean right now, out the door, and he would walk you to it. You could not apologize for a piss poor attitude, although I did see him give a few people their jobs back the next morning after everybody had calmed down. 

I also saw him take a boyfriend or husband who came into the store to fight with his wife girlfriend or whomever, by the back of the neck and the middle of the back of his pants and literally throw his ass out the front door and tell him if he came back he would beat his ass. If the person persisted, he would station someone by the phone with instructions to call the police if he had to punch the guy. I never saw him have to hit anyone, but man was this dude ever intense. I have no doubt in my mind that he would have if he thought he needed to. You could be married and but if you worked for John you were his and he would defend you against all comers. Although if you did something exceptionally stupid, he would let you get you ass chewed by whoever desired a piece of it. That happened to me once.

I was accepted into the actual corporate management training program (Turns out before that I was being strung along by those assholes) not long after that and began the actual arduous process of completing the daily, weekly objectives of the process. In the middle of the program, John decided that he didn't like the company plan and created his own, same length of time, but way different in terms of what you expected to learn. While I was in the middle of this program (which was 6 months long, a full 26 weeks), with all of the prior programs being crammed full of exciting days of station operations processes, completing food prep procedures, sweeping, mopping, doing dishes, and so forth. 

John said to me one day, sit down and go over this program and check off how much of it you can already do. He had me read the entire outline word for word and check off all the things I had already been trained on and everything I could already complete. Since I was service qualified from the beginning and was trained by Meredith Nunamaker, Franny, Linda and Becky at Madison Avenue, and John had pretty much worked the dog shit out of me on everything else, there wasn't much. I hated the fountain and told him so because it made you so sticky and no one knew how to work that station clean and keep it that way. He just said "Huumpff", gathered up my checklists, and walked away, he told me to go back to work. This guy was maddening sometimes. He would ask your opinion, you would give it and he would walk away. I was about 6 months in with John and still could not really get a handle on him. 

My Dad was retired military and could raise the roof with his voice, he was as gruff as John, maybe more, was as direct as John, and was as quick to anger as John. Later he told me that was one thing he really liked about me, he could yell at me and I didn't flinch, I just took it and went back to work. I sometimes got the idea he was really yelling at the guy one station over from me (metaphorically speaking) and not at me. I would think that because sometimes I knew I didn't do anything wrong and got yelled at anyway. It drove him a tiny bit crazy that I looked right at him while he was yelling at me, kept my mouth shut, responded calmly with a "yes sir or a no sir", at the appropriate times and when he was done or flamed out as we called it, he would just walk away and I would just go back to work. The guy next to me would get the idea, would stop shaking about 5 minutes later and say "I'm glad that was you, he scares me to death". Yeah, I knew that, man, I got it. 

One time I was about 5 minutes late coming in the door because I stopped outside to clean up a big trash mess by the dumpster before I came in. I knew I would have to do it later, so I just took care of it sooner, rather than later. It was snowing and cold and later would have been after sundown and screw that. So anyway I came in the door and was washing my hands and putting on my apron and stuff and John came around the corner and let loose on me from 50 feet away. "Jordan, god damn it what the hell am I going to have to do, get a tow truck to come and drag your ass here to get you in here and clocking in on time?" and so forth for the next 10 minutes or so. I just stood there calmly and let him flame out and then he said: "Put your jacket back on and go clean up that mess somebody made by the dumpster Since you were late when can do without your Mr. Tardy ass for another 10 minutes or so".

I remember smiling and finishing putting on my apron and just saying "You want me to go do that again? I did that right before I came in?" He just smiled and walked away.

So anyway I was in this corporate training program, and in the middle of it, I was one of about 30 people picked to take the bus ride to Bloomington IL to take a tour of the SnS distribution center run by a guy named John Runge. This point in time, we did a lot of the work of getting all the products to the stores ourselves, and very little of the work had been moved off to other companies. We had our own semi-trucks, our own warehouse, meat processing plant, etc. Everything was done in house. The beef was processed into these 25 pound round tubes that looked like big frozen sausages. The chili meat was poured into these 6-pound tins and the orange suet was allowed to settle to the top before being flash-frozen in the huge freezers. So anyway we got to walk through all the processes, watching the butchers work on the carcasses (they came in already dead I'm glad about that), after that we ate lunch, got back on the bus and headed back to the hotel In Indianapolis we all affectionately called "Musty Acres".

On the way back, the two lead trainers, Tom Forst(?) and the other guy David somebody, handed out this 5-page questionnaire, that was supposed to be anonymous and asked us to fill it out. For the hour prior to that, there had been this huge discussion on the bus while we were sitting still waiting on something, and Tom and Dave passed out 2 beers to each of us if we wanted them. We were only supposed to have two. Well, there were some people who didn't want any beer or didn't drink it and somehow a few of them (I really don't know how many) got passed to me. I drank everything that was handed to me. Stupid me. So anyway, they passed out this questionnaire, and I was sitting there on a bus in Bloomington IL, drunk as a monkey, it was supposed to be anonymous, and it was multiple choice, you know, A, B, C, D pick one answer. 

I added an answer. To every single question. 

And to the answer key on the first page.

 

X= Who Cares

The next day, for the first time ever I met the Division Manager.

A guy named Daniel S. Jarvis. That was a great conversation, John laughed his ass off at me afterwords and Dan came within an inch of firing me on the spot. That happened to me with SnS about 4 times in my career. I admitted doing it because, I mean, why lie? They didn't actually know who did it, because it was "Anonymous", yeah right. I guess I make distinctive X's or something, but anyhow they knew who did it. I must have had a reputation or something. Mr. Jarvis came right to me and later I learned they didn't actually know who did, but he was very very suspicious and John knew me well enough that he knew it was me too, and shit I did it, but in my defense, I was drunk, in the sun, on a hot ass bus in Bloomington with a bunch of posers who were driving me crazy. 

I guess the training guys were pretty pissed because they felt disrespected. Once they found out they got an underage (20-year-old) smartass manager trainee drunk, they let up a little bit. At the time you could enter the training program as long as you were 21 by the time you graduated. The funniest part was when Dan asked me how I got drunk on a bus and I told him that they gave out the beer, well the whole matter was sort of dropped, I just had to apologize, which I did, they got their ass chewed because they didn't bother to tell anyone they supplied the beer, all I brought was my smart ass attitude. 

Sometimes that was all I had to offer.

More tomorrow.

BigMike