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 I became a McDonald's manager for a day. In mid 1994, I became a McDonald's manager on a dare/bet in Northridge, California. I wasn't doing much since I'd just dropped out of Pierce Junior College where I was studying English and Golf. I had to drop out because of a fight I had gotten into with a Persian guy. I wasn't sure which Persian guy but it was one of them. He wasn't sure which Jewish guy I was either. He was the archetypal Persian guy in the San Fernando Valley in the early 90's as I was the archetypal Jew. All of his archetypal Persian friends then tried to kick me and every vaguely Jewish looking guy's ass just because, in a lucky shot, I'd hit the guy in the nose. The copious amounts of blood had ruined an expensive shirt. Probably silk. And every Jew at Pierce College was paying for it. There was a pox upon our noses, as my friend Ryan Kimmler said at the time. It was true and the one thing you couldn't say about Jewish guys in the Valley round then was that we we're eager to kick anyone's ass. You could say it all the time and we probably would not've gotten that pissed, and definitely not have fought back. That's how afraid we were that we were going to get our ass kicked in any fight we entered. You could hang around any spot in the San Fernando Valley, except the schools and malls, and not see the same person once in the same week. It is a completely faceless place. The white guy with his fat kids and the Asian guy with his young wife all blend into the Russian guy and his friend the Mexican teenager. It's hard to come up with a simile for the San Fernando Valley but I guess San Fernando Valley to me is like a room full of generic prescription medicine. And every pill owns, leases or wants to own expensive cars. So, after I dropped out of Pierce I didn't see those Persian guys at all. But I'd still hear stories about them being pissed at me and harassing people who looked at all like me. The worst part was that whenever anyone was confused with me they were mostly pissed that someone thought that they looked like me. That was disheartening and in a lot of ways led to my current spiritual belief that our bodies are like an apartment we rent. I just have been in a hurry to move into this world and jumped into the first white soul I could find (Why white? Big mistake). It was sort of a trick because I ended up Jewish, which is cool for our connection to the birth of monotheism and Woody Allen, but bad, for our not usually prized physical features and being shafted out of Christmas. If you are ever single on Valentine's Day, you'll know what it feels like when someone says, "Merry Christmas, Jewy." But the guy who owned the McDonald's franchise on Balboa and Chatsworth in Granada Hills liked my looks just fine. He asked me if I was queer. That was probably because I was wearing a shirt and a tie and not working construction for decent money like any other able bodied young man in the San Fernando Valley in the months after the forty billion dollars in damage done in the Northridge quake in January. I also sucked his cock. No. I didn't but I wanted to. No. Actually I didn't want to at all. He's a big dude. And if that were the first and only cock I'd ever suck it would be for a way better job than managing a McDonald's. He told me I could start tomorrow and then he drove me to some secret McDonald's location. I was pretty engrossed in the conversation. He was telling me how he made his millions. It all started from a lawsuit he won against the Red Cross for negligence while he was donating blood. He tripped over a misplaced box. He took that money, 1.6 million after taxes and lawyer's fees and placed it in a bank account or three. Three years later, right before the earthquake, he bought a McDonald's franchise. He told me that most of his family wouldn't speak to him anymore because he took all that money from the Red Cross and didn't share it. He also couldn't hear in one ear and smell in one nostril because of the accident. I was trying to memorize the whole thing for Ryan so that when he paid off on the bet he would have a good story to hear. I was engrossed and was out of sorts completely when I realized we were in the middle of what looked like a military base/ movie studio. The owner told me to sit in the car and then slammed the door of the newer model brown Oldsmobile. Then he appeared almost immediately to ask if I knew Math. I told him that I had passed Calculus and tried to explain that I failed the second semester but he was gone. And back again in less than three minutes with three uniforms. They wanted to train me, he said. But all they do is read this, he handed me a short pamphlet, to you. He said he saved some money and time and he liked me already. He started getting jolly with the thought of me being a great manager. I love to make things weird for people so I said, "Do you have a son?" He told me he had a stepson who was a real dick. He went to Pierce College. I asked if his wife was Persian. He seemed a bit disgusted, as he said no. He didn't speak to me the rest of the ride. So I the next day I showed up for work. Ryan was watching from the parking lot to make sure I wasn't fucking around. He wasn't going to waste five lap dances on a lie. I walked into the restaurant, as the employees call it. I saw the owner and the older white manager who would be training me. The manager had a big moustache. If the moustache could speak, it would have certainly screaming, "Don't fuck me." It was a moustache to be reckoned with and I wanted nothing to do with anything like a reckoning. I almost walked out then. For my training, I would have to do every job in the restaurant in the next week. I was going to be paid like a manger but I had to work each job first. "Could we make it a day?" I asked. I told them I was a serious, quick learner. I wasn't about to enter some apprenticeship program. The owner liked that a lot. Saved him some Cash somehow. I was put on the fries first. The scooping of them was fun. I liked the taste a lot and salted them to the point of fantasy. What I didn't like is when I got some of the fry oil on my shirt. So after about five minutes on the job I disappeared, or that's what they must have thought. I actually went into the employee bathroom and doused my shirt with water. The oil wasn't coming out and shirt was a mess. I decided I better go out to my car and get one of the other shirts on. I tucked the wet mess under my arm and walked out to the car in my t-shirt. I was kinda nervous but became completely unsettled when I saw Ryan pacing beside his car. I couldn't help but smile as I walked toward him. When he finally saw me he ducked down and beckoned me toward him though I was only feet from him and heading his way. "What's up, man?" I asked. "Some Persian dudes just walked in." I looked in the restaurant but the windows were tinted like the windows on Ryan's lowered, black Honda Civic. "Oh fuck," I said. "Fuck. You got my back, right?" "Sure. But let's just get out of here, right?" I wanted the lap dances, I told him. So, I was going to work a day like the bet said. "Fuck, man," he said. "I want 'em." "One," he said. "Five." Here we were trying to Jew each other when the owner of the restaurant and the manager with the serious moustache walked out into the Parking Lot. He immediately saw Ryan and I knelt beside the car andhe began walking up towards us. I was being offered two and I was saying three when the manager came up over the car and scared the shit out of us. "Hey!" The owner said, now completely sure that I was queer and on drugs. "Let's get the fuck out of here!" I screamed in a high, girlish voice. Ryan was freaked but acted swift. We both ran in the same direction. He got in the driver seat and I ran across the front of the car into the passenger seat. Ryan then shifted into reverse as Da Lench Mob's song "Guerillas in Da Mist" boomed out the two eleven inch speakers Ryan had built into a box placed in his trunk. But Ryan didn't move the car. I locked the lock on my door. Ryan copied me and said, "What the fuck, man?" "This guy with the moustache won't move." "Rev the engine."Ê Ryan revved the engine anxiously. A spacey sounding growl purred out of the glass packs on his muffler. The moustache didn't move and now the owner was at my window. "Fuck, let's go!" "I can't!!!" Ryan said almost crying. But then he looked up and saw that the moustache was gone. He slowly started to move backwards. The owner slapped the window but not too hard, afraid of a lawsuit. I looked around and saw one of the employees of the restaurant arguing with one of the Persian guys. Manager Moustache was arbitrating like an old time Sheriff who doesn't like Persians. Oh shit. It was the Persian guy. The guy... at least I was pretty sure. "Go! Man go!" Ê Ryan shifted his car into second and we peeled out of the drive-thru, almost hitting a minivan filled with people from the Mandarin Baptist Church. We peeled out onto Balboa and didn't pull off to the side of the road until we were down the street from the condemned Northridge Fashion Center. Later that night four friends and I went back to the McDonalds and got my car. And I don't think I ever saw that Persian guy again. Recently: Ten years later, I checked my credit report. There was a collection notice on there for the some 78 dollars I owed him for his uniforms and the equivalent of a small fry. |
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