As the Burger Turns part 7

Friday, July 3rd, 2020 at about 5:30 a.m. or so

Dude, Its Friday morning, I don't have to go to work, neither does the wifey poo, what a glorious day. It'll probably rain all friggin day long.

Disclaimer: The title of this post is the start of my soap opera for old people called "As the Burger Turns"  Anyway, to make this clear right from the start, everything in this post is 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 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 for the largest part of this week, I have been writing about my experiences at Steak `n Shake, talking generally about what it was like to be an employee and then a Manager in that company. I've expressed opinions that are my own to be sure, with some of what I have said being opinion, some being factual and some parts of it being conclusions I had drawn after having conversations with many many people. The reason I say this is because I am aware that I may be totally wrong in the conclusions I have drawn and the facts may be in direct opposition to what occurred. I get this and am totally responsible if I got it wrong. I mean, after all, a lot of it happened more than 30 years ago and some of it was over 40 years ago. 

Everything for example that happened at the old Madison Avenue store, for example, happened in 1974,75, and 76, and that was at best 44 years ago. It happened so long ago in some of those places that the stores it happened at, have been demolished, sold, and made into something else a long time ago. The same thing at the store they called Little East Washington (4105 E. Washington), that was the same type of store as Madison Ave and its been gone for 30 years or more. I can see both places in my mind having spent a lot of time at both of them, but sadly they are gone, and it won't be that much longer before I am going to be gone too.

I'm sure there were conversations concerning me that were held between my superiors and others that didn't include me. That's the way business works in the world. Decisions are made about you that does not include you in the conversation. I am not naive about what happened or why no matter what others may have believed at the time. There are no explosive revelations contained in these statements or paragraphs, however. No one is going to be revealed as the killer, there are no bodies buried anywhere, I don't have any earth-shaking things to say that will affect how the world spins. If that's what you are waiting on, you are going to be severely disappointed. 

Overall, I'm a pretty normal (normal? Yeah right!), and boring, very outgoing but severe underachiever sort of person. I lasted so long because I got my job done and provided results without causing too much of a fuss, but also I was a pretty lazy person. I would work hard and sweat if I had to, but usually, I wanted to do that on my own terms and not because of some silly-ass rule made up by some pencil pusher who couldn't do the job if they had help. Most of those people, but not all, couldn't find their ass if they used both hands. 

The absolute best thing about working there, however, was the people. The people I worked around, with and for were at the time I think, some of the best in the business. I am sure there were also a few disorganized grabastic pieces of amphibious defecation (to steal a line from a great movie) too but the funny thing is that it seemed as if those people didn't last very long and when they did, they were sort of walled off into their own little worlds, like an infection. I have always been a people watcher, I paid much closer attention to what was going on around me than some gave me credit for at the time and usually didn't get taken by surprise because of it. 

I always made friends of the bosses secretaries (all of them if I could), I smiled real big at their spouses at parties, said things to them like your Husband (or wife as the case may be) speaks very highly of you, and to my detriment even offered the wife of the VP of Operations a dishwasher's job when she remarked that she had no idea what it was like working in a restaurant and was bored half of her day anyway. Yeah, how do you think that one went over?

The one situation I almost always found humorous was watching someone else squirming in their seat to try to explain to me or anyone else what something had happened or why someone did or did not get promoted or why someone who was a friend of mine got terminated. I never spent days and days on pins and needles and on the phone trying to figure things out, but so many people came through my training store and I had so many people that communicated with me on a regular basis that sometimes it was like paying that "Six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon" game. I sometimes found a chuckle when I knew what was happening 2 or 3 days before someone got around to telling me. After what could have been called a bit of disappointing career news when I got passed over for a promotion one time, once I found out who got promoted instead I was actually OK with it because I thought they were better than me anyway. 

When my supervisor got around to telling me about it and delivering the news a few days later, he remarked at the time that he thought I would be more upset than I was. It really bugged him for several weeks though and he later admitted that my reaction or the real lack of it confused him a great deal because he was sure that I was going to explode. I just told him that was because he didn't know me as well as he thought he did and left it at that. The reality was that I was at peace with my career path for many years prior to that and was happy doing what I was doing. I couldn't see a need to get all bent out of shape about something that I couldn't envision and didn't want in the first place. 

The Division Manager at the time was a big old blustery loud man that was very smart but I didn't think he really liked me all that much. He cut me a couple of breaks when he didn't actually have to and I appreciated him for that, however, I think we would have clashed a lot and in the end, he would have tossed me out on my ear.  What a goofy mess those people were. I stayed on the edges with most of them because it looked like a much safer alternative than to keep your head on the chopping block at every Wednesday meeting with some of those guys. I understand competitiveness, but these people were ridiculous and some of the discussions they would have and some of the arguments that would ensue were all about testicle size and not much else. 

Moving on I remember falling into and out of some friendships over the course of time due to how separated we were and other times just because you know, when you are very young you are not the same person you are when you are just 10 years older. You don't want the same things out of life, you don't have the same interests, you don't have the same abilities and quite frankly you run out of time. Also as people start to age a little they begin to understand the world around them a little better and their alliances change. Sometimes for the better and sometimes it is just politically better to be associated with person A than it is to be associated with person B. You occasionally fall out of favor or another falls out of favor just because you have lives and you get busy. There are several people in Florida that I always wondered what happened to after I left that state and came back to Indiana. We agreed to stay in touch and for whatever reason we just didn't. 

That is one thing I regret, I wish that I was better at returning their calls, initiating contact, or maintaining friendships. There is one person in particular that I still think very fondly of and wish I had maintained contact with much better over the years. Years later I tried to begin a newer more updated friendship with them and it just didn't work. I was still me, the gregarious big mouth and they had switched how they thought politically. One day I said something very derogative about someone they really liked and POOF, it was over before it began. I got my friendship pink slip and they moved on. I don't blame them, it was my fault for not being more cautious, but as they say "Defecation occurs", and sometimes it impacts the high-speed whirling device with intense velocity. Oh well.

One thing I have tried to do in these stories is only using formal names when I can be either neutral or positive. I am not looking to trash anyone or talk badly about anybody's memory if they are not here anymore. To me, that is not right and is something that should not be done in a public setting without some sort of prior discussion or should just be eliminated if it is not germane to the story in the first place. Keep in mind I get that this is a work of semi-factual, semi-fiction and it comes from the faulty memory of one goofy old dude who has a warped sense of humor, to begin with. If I have said anything that embarrassed you, then Oops, my bad. Also, I am trying to not embarrass my children, grandchildren, and other family members who may read these entries and think "I'm related to this weirdo?" You know what I mean Sharon? Donna? 

I have lifelong friends that are scattered all over the US from my days at SnS, and also have a few from my days at The Krystal Company where I also worked for 10 years or so, except when I left them, they gave me a shitload of money to go away and then made me sign an NDA to keep their dirt undercover so I don't get to write about them. That's too bad because some of their stuff is way more interesting because the stupidity scale is way bigger. Ah, well such is life.

Occasionally I have trouble keeping it all straight. I worked in a lot of restaurants in 2 different states and still have friends scattered through the Western Hemisphere, that were a part of my life. Some of them from the 70s, for example, know some of the people from the 80s, and some from the 90s know some from the 70s, but not the 80s. There are several different eras represented, it gets goofy sometimes when I say something like "Hey do you remember person A and they say nope." Now I am looking like some demented old fart who can't keep it together, it gets weird sometimes. 

Other people I only knew at work and then only for a short period but reconnected with them through the magic of Facebook. It gets really weird when I try to reconcile my memory of them when they were 18 or something and now they have grandkids and grey hair. Except for Brian Lawless, I saw him when he was passing through my town once a few years ago and he looks exactly the same now as he did then. It's just not fair, that guy hasn't aged a bit. Other folks I would like to reconnect with and just can't find them or when I did, they just didn't seem all that interested. I understand, hell for most people working with me was one of their first jobs and now they are mature folks with relationships and kids and jobs and lives. 

Time passes on for all of us.

-BigMike