Hardees Fast Food thoughts, part 1

When I was 14 I worked at Hardees Fast Food Restaurant back home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. As I think about it from my kitchen at the job I've now been at for over 5 years, I kind of feel like Lester Burnham in American Beauty. The character is ruminating on the summer of '73, when he worked at a fast food joint, just partying and getting laid, with his whole life in front of him.

While I remember hating a lot of the job, I think that for about 3 months of 1990 it was the best thing ever. I was just starting to play in a band--even if I was only just drumming on buckets and crap at first until I bought my crappy-ass third hand drum set (which I still play). I was just starting high school, working this job at 3.75 an hour, living with my parents, truly with my whole life in front of me.

All I did was flip burgers, chop lettuce in a big lettuce press, wash pot and pans, just work in this little industrial kitchen. Its kind of weird but I was pretty happy with the work--keeping thing simple and routine, while still being very excited about the possibilities of life. I never thought I would still be in a kitchen so many years later, but I guess in a lot of ways my life hasn't changed. I'm still making music, being a drone, but excited about the possibilities of life. I still summon the inner 14 year old whenever I sit down in the basement and make music. Or whenever I get on stage and scream through a kiddie horn.

The bliss of Hardees didn't last,obviously. I became pretty sick of the place and the people, and after about 8 months (an eternity in a high turnover world of fast food) I told my manager I didn't need to work and I put in my two week's notice. A few months later the place shut down, pretty much with no warning, and now I think it's been turned into a used car dealership.

I started thinking about Hardees on Friday night when Josh and I, bored out of our minds at work, took out paper hats and wrote stupid shit on them. I wrote "Hardee's Head Chef" and he wrote "Hawk Tenderizer", all the while blasting Ozzy Ozbourne and collectively not giving a shit. I couldn't help but think back fondly to a time when this sort of shit was just a job and not a fate that I had resigned myself to.

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