As the Burger Turns part 8

Saturday, July the 4th, 2020 - Happy Birthday America!

Hey !! it is 5:00 a.m. once again and I am writing about Steakburgers and all the stuff around my career at the time. It's so exciting! Unless you have paint that needs to be watched while it dries and then this will be boring as hell in comparison. 

Check this out. Do you know what this is besides wrong?
10 @echo on
20 type "Hello World"
30 on break goto 10
40 goto 20

I am sure that the syntax is wrong, as I haven't used this in 30 years or more. Back in the olden days when there was such a thing as a mall and a store in a mall, I would approach the display computers and then using the old BASIC numbered line code, I would type in this and stuff like it. It used to drive the manager the Radio Shack in Greenwood Park Mall crazy and out of his mind. He sold the computers, but for a long time, he didn't have a clue how to operate them. I can still see him in the front of his store, saying curse word after curse word, yelling out stuff like "Got Dammit, Who did this you little assholes?  going to catch you one of these days!! sonofabitch!" I had a blast sitting at a table a few doors down drinking a soda watching him try to make it stop without turning it off. I would sit there and giggle my fat little ass off.

I used to do stuff like this, that is to write a quick little program that would do things like change the color on the screen a random color, change the C:/ prompt to say things that you probably shouldn't say on a computer screen in public (Like I would change it to say "Hey baby heh heh"), put 40 sheets of paper through the attached printer with no printing through them, and so forth. Occasionally I would write something like this which would just fill the screen one line after another or print it once, or display it once, and then when he tried to pause it would just start over and run again.  The more I learned the worse it got until one day I went by there and the floor model was a non-working display and the display model was inside of a glass-doored cabinet. Go me, I was a butt wipe huh?

Well, at least I wasn't a shoplifter. I learned that lesson at age 5 (and so did my ass cheeks). Here is a pro tip for you. Never shoplift a Resse cup from the pharmacy down the street that your mother sent you to. I was there to pick up something, along with a note from my mother. She knew the pharmacist personally, he knew me and she had given me a CHECK with our name, address, and phone number on it to pay for the item. Yeah, if you are going to steal, don't fill out the stupid thief application first. 

I was sitting here deciding on what direction to go in and ran a few thoughts through my mind. I've been retired since 2014 and I'm not used to thinking anymore, so that hurts my brain, and being the old worn out useless ex-grill jockey with a bad back that I am, some potential avenues came to mind. I was thinking that I could write about locations and the experiences at that location. Like I could probably spend a couple of paragraphs telling you about Franklin Road and Bob and Patty Piper or Bobby Daws, or Gary Gross or Crazy Mary the dishwasher, or the eccentric dishwasher I had at Castleton Square named Larry. Larry used to work on advanced mathematical problems and whenever he was caught up he would be writing out these complex math problems on the stainless steel with an erasable marker and try to figure out the answers. He was a closer. I let him do what he wanted, he could close the back area faster and cleaner than anyone, and nobody ever waited on their parts when he was working. 

I just figured No blood, No foul. Leave him be.

Or I could talk about the separate jobs I had and progressing through the ranks learning stuff as I went. I was a sponge and loved to learn and working at SnS there was always a meeting or a seminar or a training session to attend. They loved that crap, and I ate it up. I still have all of my DDI notebooks and look at them from time to time. You couldn't overtrain me as it was just making my knowledge base bigger and bigger. I am not the biggest brain there was but I was a repository for "Stuff". One time I answered some obscure who the hell would know this type of question in one of Dan Jarvis's meetings and he just looked stunned and said "Who knows this kind of crap?" I just smiled at him in return, because knew I wasn't the one that was going to be forever known for PPS (Pucks per Sandwich) as my sales driver. But I digress, and I usually do. Forgive me.

I could I guess, just start going through people and tell you how stories about old friends I think of fondly and how I remember people like Charles Frederick Beck Sr, (we called him Charlie of course), and how kind and gentle that man was. He was pretty large however he was also the most nimble big man I ever met, hell the most nimble person I ever met. It turned out he was a ballroom dancer in the past and that why he could move so well.  He could move in the dining room and never bump into anything. Boy not me, I would drag a highchair across two sections with me trying to get by some of the butts we had who worked there, and then I would trip over straw wrappers on the floor. It was ridiculous. 

Here I am circa 1980 and 1989 at Frankin Road. The first Office ever had in a restaurant was actually a shelf in a tiny bit of stockroom. The round safe was in the floor under my chair or just about there.

Me and Rick Daily

My office at Franklin Rd

I could tell you about the time Charlie saw a child choking, and he virtually sprang into action and snowplow like he just moved people aside and barrelled right through them, about five or so people who were standing in his way, he swept them aside, just moving them with his big arm, forcefully took the baby from the idiot that had her who was blowing in the baby's face as if that would solve the choking baby issue (If you can believe it! that guy was a doofus) and then immediately started performing the baby version of the Heimlich maneuver on the poor kid. I can still hear him saying "Breath baby breathe!" to this child and all of a sudden the baby spit out something it should not have had in the first place, like a jelly bean. He gently handed the baby back to its mother and said out loud (very out loud), "You don't give a 2-year-old a jelly bean!", You see Charlie had seen the whole thing develop. He was probably the only one who saw exactly what happened and Thank God he was there. Outside of me and him, I think we were the only two people who were in the vicinity who knew what to do. The sight of 6'3", 325 lb Charlie Beck barging through a group of people and grabbing that baby is one I will never forget. He saved that baby's life that day, of that I have no doubt.

Also, in my brain is the image of him ready to kill "Crazy Mary", the homeless and psychotic dishwasher, because she would not take a bus tub out of the dishwasher tub entrance window and put one down on the floor to make room for more to be placed in the window. It made him think of seriously trying to pressurize a reverse Heimlich on her, I am sure of that. I was walking up the alleyway from the back room, just about got to that area (at the old Franklin Road SnS), and I heard Charlie ROAR "PUT ONE ON THE FLOOR OLD WOMAN!", then he just sort of lost it, came straight at me to get to her as she was behind me and around the corner, and I swear to rudy, his eyes were blood red. I got in his way, and while he was trying to spike me like a football, I handed somebody my keys and told them to go push Mary out the back door and lock it behind her and tell her to take a break. Whew! Who knew restaurant work was going to be so hard! (And so much fun). 

I have no doubt I saved that old woman's life that day. Me and Charlie, a pair of lifesavers, who woulda thunk it?

But then I thought I probably shouldn't do that either because it would end up being an all-male review. I was such a flirt (and worse), and I absolutely loved women (especially ones that were a little older than me at times) that some of the stories would probably get me in trouble or put me in danger, embarrass my children, piss the people involved off and make them come looking for me or all these things at the same time. I have since talked to all of my children about my past and apologized for who I was, however, I am not interested in writing a tell-all of any kind, as most of it would just be a recitation of how much of a shithead I used to be, and who would want to read that? Even if you wanted to read it, I don't want to spend all day, every day on the phone apologizing and answering lawsuits for saying stupid crap on the internet. I'm not bragging and am not admitting to anything at all, but there was a good reason why God saw fit to make me get divorced from my first wife, let's just leave it at that.

I was a pretty good manager I thought, a great friend, a great listener, and a wonderful father when I could be and a disciplinarian or a guiding force when I had to be, but I do not think I was ever a very good husband. It was too complicated, took commitment I didn't know how to give,  and my heart was just never involved in the whole process. I was too young, I liked having fun way too much, I drank too much (at the time) not anymore, I liked running around and probably shoulda been smacked around a little bit as a result. 

This picture was taken at the 21st birthday party that John had for me at the old Brown Derby on Franklin Rd in Indianapolis Indiana. That drink is a bloody mary. I had been drinking there for 2 years when they threw this party. The manager was pissed off when he found out how old I was. My shoes got ruined that night, because they drug me to the car passed out, toes down, in the gravel, and wore the tops of them slap out. I woke up on my front porch, freezing (it was about 65*) and couldn't find my tie, my name tag, and my shoes were toast.

What a night. Yeah, I drank a lot of that drink but couldn't finish it.

John Fair, Mike Jordan and "Terry"

I thank my lucky stars that I waited a while and then LaDonna magically came back into my life once again when I could be more serious and also be a good man, partner, husband, and father. I found out much to my surprise, that it's just as much fun and maybe better to be a great partner, a great friend to not argue and to want to hang out with each other. I'm glad I figured that out before it was too late.

Yay! Go Me. The smartest thing I ever did was getting my head outta my butt and marrying her. 

February 14th, 1998

Nobody ever gets a second chance they say, and I am here to tell you, that is a dead wrong concept. You cannot approach it the same way you screwed up the first one, but if you truly want a second chance it is there. All you have to do is admit you need to change to be able to accept it. We have been together now for 24 years and have been married for 22 years. I have known her since I was about 17 years old and while she probably wasn't my first girlfriend ever, even though that is the story I tell everybody, she was the first one I was ever actually serious about, especially since high school. I was never a good boyfriend either. (Let me apologize to someone here, I'm sorry, Debbie L.from High school),  but I guess you live and learn.  I tell everyone that I am glad LaDonna and I didn't get married in the 70s when we dated the first time because it would not have worked out as stupid as I was back then. It happened for us at the exact right time, the stars lined up, she was available and I wasn't so stupid.

Go figure. I love this woman.

So I think I am going to try to stay Chronological going forward, although, with as many places, stores, states, and jobs I had, It will be tough. I know I will get at least a few of the details wrong, but my heart is in the right place, even If my brain is too foggy to get the details right.

Being a Curbie and a Grill guy

So back in 1974, I had a hairstyle that looked sort of like the current Bieber haircut and maybe it was a tad bit longer. I had hair and was proud of my hair. Two years prior to this before I worked anywhere my hair length was almost to the bottom of my neck or maybe a little longer. My Dad being the retired military man that he was, absolutely HATED MY HAIR, but got sick of yelling at me to get a haircut and I avoided him to avoid the argument. Prior to that, I think I went from the end of 8th grade until I started working st SnS before I got my first haircut since I had started high school. 

I was a sexy beast, just ask me I will tell you. Yeah, baby!

So anyway after before started working at the SnS at 2935 S. Madison Ave, near the corner of Madison and Troy on the south side of Indianapolis, I was employed at a gas station, pumping gas at what was then called Golden Imperial oil company. It was at 3102 S. Keystone, and I think it is closed now or has been bulldozed and turned into something else entirely. It was the Imperial, another name like Firebird or something then another name and then it became a Speedway. It was a Speedway for several years until they put one on the other side of the Interstate that was bigger, and more updated. I worked there until the recession of the 70s hit, when long gas lines ensued, and overnight the operating model of the neighborhood gasoline station changed. 

No longer would we service your vehicle, We stopped cleaning windows, checking oil or air pressure and the pumps were updated so they cleared automatically after the last sale. You no longer need some pimple-faced guy to go and turn the knob with his special shaped key so you could pump gas. Everything was on its way to being automated and the guy working there went from being an attendant to being a clerk. We also almost immedialtely stopped all of the work that went with being the attendant as well. No longer was there a need for a guy to paint the islands and no longer was there a need to run the buffer around all the red painted areas. The windshield water that customers used to clean the car windows, went from being changed 3 times per shift to once a day (if it got changed at all) in the morning, maybe, if you were lucky. That meant the business only needed a few employees and about 10 of us lost our jobs as a result. 

I don't think the restrooms have ever been cleaned since.

The first place I applied was Steak `n Shake. It was a little drive-In style restaurant with blinking running lights that looked like they ran all the way around the building and back when they were turned on and had a window on the front of the store where the food came out to be picked up and delivered by the curbies. Now that would be called a vintage look, but it looked pretty normal to me at the time because my oldest brother and some others in my family had worked at Steak `n Shake for several years in several locations in several states. As a matter of fact, the reason I looked there first was because of my oldest brother. He knew the night manager, Mr. Duncan (Wayne Duncan), and got me the interview and I didn't blow it and got the job. It wasn't hard to blow on the mirror and be breathing and I agreed to get a haircut before my first day so I won't beat that to death as I've already talked about it, and the rest is history. If you can believe it, I still have one or two friends from way back then that I occasionally talk to on Facebook. 

Here is what that store looked like, but this picture isn't actually the store, its just one that's like it. 

One of these has a drive-thru window stuck on the side of it when I started there none of them had drive-thrus.

The unique part about working at that particular restaurant was it was almost exclusively separated into customer type by eating area. Older people and families pretty much ate inside the building and younger folks and mostly teens (especially at night) would park on the curb stations and eat and socialize outside. On Friday and Saturday nights from just before Dark until closing time, the cruising would start and sometimes it kept up the entire night non-stop. When I say loop I mean loop by god. It was a continuous stream of moving cars all night long, some hot rods, some teenagers junkers, and some just badass race cars. The loop would start when cars would start to continuously drive between the White Castle which was about 1/2 mile or less south of Madison and Troy, then come north to the Steak `n Shake where they would enter the lot and drive all the way around the building in a circle coming in one driveway, then they would go out the other driveway and go North to the Tee Pee restaurant which was about 3/4ths of a mile down the road on the other side of the street, then they would go around the Tee-pee, come back out on Madison and head back to the white Castle and start the cycle all over again. 

The loop when it was active back in the day, would go on 7 days a week and every weekend, but it was busier and more noticeable on Friday and Saturday. On those two days, we had to have parking lot security, and most of the time it was a guy we called "Brownie", I have no idea why except I remember he wore a Brown Uniform. He was firm and tough and kept the peace but also was a lot of fun, most of the time no one had a problem from him. I remember him vividly though and the fact that he had several missing fingers, had a lead packed blackjack, and his quick mean right hand. Many times I saw people start fights that he ended with decision and quickness. 

Most of the time no one went to jail though.

On the weekends I loved working the curb. It was fun and I made a ton of money, and you wouldn't believe how much money was there to be made if you knew what to do to and were willing to earn it. There was the regular money, the tips from doing your job which was about 75% of the cash, and then there was the coloring outside the lines kind of stuff. Nothing particularly dangerous or life-threatening but stuff you could pick up an extra 5 bucks or so doing. For example, girls were always wanting me to pass anonymous notes to guys who were out on dates because of one reason or another. Usually, it was because either they were jealous or they knew the girl and wanted to get under her skin. The giggling was contagious and they would get me laughing and then I was useless until it subsided.

If I thought there was a chance of somebody getting actually angry I charged at least 5 bucks to deliver stuff like that. Sometimes it was harmless pranks and it just a note saying hello to the girl from her friends. Occasionally it was a girl asking an embarrassing question of an ex-boyfriend or a female rival trying to provoke a reaction from the male or the female. The note would say stuff like "Ask Doug if his penis still bends to the left?", or ask Poor Doug if his "Premature problem" ever went away?, which would usually provoke denial and yelling from Doug or yelling from the girl, either way, I scooted as fast as allowed. 

Sometimes the challenge was the occupants of the car would want to see if you could run their order from the window to their car at full speed without dropping anything. That one was easy because I was an expert at running full speed, in traffic, dodging the cars, stopping and hanging the tray all in one motion. I made a lot of money doing this and also made money dumping things on people on purpose, fulfilling a service provided usually by their ex-girlfriends, although once or twice it was the wife catching their cheating spouse. This was the kind of thing I charged the most for as it was the most likely to get you punched in the face. I could do this once or twice a night and make an extra $10 or $20 bucks or so. Unless Sheryl was the manager on duty. She started working at Stop-11 road and knew all the tricks. I never did it when she was there because I didn't want to pay for their meal if they complained. 

Sheryl was the coolest manager I ever worked for at SnS, but she would bust you in a minute if she caught you. Sheryl didn't play. She was always very observant and she paid attention to even the slightest thing. I learned to screw around in different ways when she worked because she would give you extra work in a heartbeat if she caught you goofing off.  She was also the one that taught me to use the moving cars as a point of balance, bouncing off the front and using your hand to slide around the rear of the car. Out attitude was if you were in the loop and you were in the way, you knew we were going to use you as part of the act. I don't remember anyone really complaining because that was one of the reasons they came there, was because of the excitement. She also always had a cool car, the first one I remember was I think a Ranchero. It got smunched when some idiot ran all over her at Southern Plaza, I was glad she didn't get hurt. Later on, she had this wedge-shaped car, I think it was a Triumph TR7 or something like that. I got to drive it a couple of times, man what a car! Later on, I bought a motorcycle from her, the same one I rode all over the place on with Stormin Norman.

There were a lot of characters who worked there, and our GM wasn't a dumb man either. I cannot remember what the names were of these two Iranian girls who worked curb there, but they were beauties! I mean stark raving drop-dead gorgeous. He approved the hiring of a lot of gorgeous females and I'm truly not sure why I ever got a job there. The girls made a ton of money and never did one single thing wrong. That was typical of the people he hired. Polite, respectful, and they did their jobs.  He had a knack for that and I never did know how he did it. They also never dated a single American, but a lot of slobber got dropped in the parking lot over those two. 

There was this one old guy with a bald spot who came in there all the time and drove a gold corvette. I didn't know him all that well and thought everyone liked him until I heard these same two girls talking about him and how creepy he was one day. Turns out he was a perv always looking for young girls, he was about 40 or so and wanted to date (and when I say date I mean he wanted to have sex with young girls, the younger the better), 16-18-year-olds. What a creep. 

The system they had was analog, no computers involved at all, even when you paid your bill. For the era it was however, It worked perfectly. You would take an order, tear off the ticket (which was an original and a copy), open the window and there was this little sharp spike just inside the window. I don't remember if you said anything to the inside, not really, but I think when I first started you said order in and closed the window. The person who was working the window would grab the ticket and then call out the order, the human equivalent of the touch screen that you see above every work station in virtually every restaurant today. There really wasn't a specialized language to calling out the ticket, not like at say Waffle House or in the movies where some guy will say "Two ribs on a raft" and it's supposed to mean two hot dogs to go or some such nonsense. 

Our system was much cleaner as you just called what you saw. There was an art form to it and remembering what you heard was truly a talent and a skill at the same time. My good friend and then Store Manager named Denzil Hannel had the absolute best ticket call skills I have ever heard bar none. His voice pitch would rise and fall and it sounded like music or maybe a drill Instructor calling cadence, it was a thing of beauty to watch him work the window. When the outsides orders were ready and the food, condiments, napkins, straws, and everything else was ready including your receipt copy, He would grab the exterior microphone and you would hear your number come up, "Number 11, your party is waiting for you at guest services".  Pretty much when Denzil worked the window, all of your food was there provided you could write a ticket properly, and you almost every time had everything you needed. You would run-up to the window (If you worked curb for Denzil you ran - period), get the tray, put it on your balance hand, and take off with it, to deliver to the car window. Sometimes in the middle of the rush at the busiest point, I could hear Denzil calling for "One case of meat, one box of Fies and one coke tank", make it T O G O (spelling out each letter). It was comic relief and working with him was a lot of fun. 

Later on, after I had broken my foot and had to be off for a while, I came back to work 4 weeks or so later, and this manager we had named Freddie Burgess saw I was limping a tiny bit and said to me"You want to work inside for a while until your foot is better?". Of course, I did because for whatever reason every stupid curbie thought life was better if you worked inside. It probably helped my career, but I was a dumbass. I never sweated or worked as hard as like that on the curb! He had me working the grill right off the bat and my first night, I got 5 minutes of instruction and he was gone. Here is the spatula, and the fork, there's the meat, you are on your own. See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya. 

The next part of this paper is called "My Struggles on Grill".

So after struggling for a day, two of the day shift cooks stuck around one night to help train me. One guy was named Wayne and the other guy was Duff. They worked with me for about an hour each and after that, I was much better. Wayne, however, was the fastest grill operator I had ever seen to that point. Duff wasn't as fast but he was more accurate. He cut cleaner from the grill, was better at scraping off the surface, and he taught me a lot of things that helped me later on. Freddie did the paperwork to move my job permanently inside but didn't teach me shit. 

After a shift with Wayne and Duff, I started working on my technique and speed. Pretty soon I viewed working the grill like performing for an audience and I would play to the crowd behind me and do all sorts of stuff. I flipped each patty while making the steakburgers, then started adding a rhythm to my work, and pretty soon in my mind I was playing the hits of the day while working grill. I got faster and faster and more accurate to the point where I could "snow" anyone working the dressing table, except for guess who? That's right, good old Sheryl. No matter how hard I tried I could not bury this woman and I gave it the old college try about two thousand times. 

She was the fastest dressing table operator I had ever seen. I would cheat and have somebody toast buns for me and she would cheat right back and have somebody work fries for her. I remember her voice, "I wish I had food to serve I have customers that are waiting!." It was sort of maddening. I mean we only had singles and Supers (Doubles) with and without cheese, ham sandwiches, egg sandwiches, Han and Egg sandwiches and toasted Cheese sandwiches on the menu (Maybe Triples too although I don't actually remember), and I worked my butt off trying to bury her in burgers. It never happened with her on DT. I was able to "Snow" anybody and everybody else at will but not her. 

It wasn't until I was talking with her years later that she told me what I failed to observe. We dressed every sandwich to order, with specifically whatever you wanted on the sandwich. She observed early in her career that usually most people gt the same base of Onion, Pickle, Lettuce, and Tomato (OPLT), so she pre-prepped every plate OPLT and added and subtracted from there adding wet dressings as needed. Essentially I was just watching her take every sandwich to the plate make a quick one half second two-handed adjustment and moving on. It was to me at the time, fairly amazing. In order to get faster and produce more,  I had to get slower, stop all the flipping, and work more deliberately. I never beat her though, as she was and is to this day, much smarter than I ever was. 

I always did like that about her. 

I'm still friends with her 44 years later.

-BigMike