The Mickey D's Manifesto by Matthew Moore

1st Place Winner, USF Bullitzer Prize in First-Year Composition

Whenever the media portray the working class, there is always a negative connotation. Rather than hardworking and dedicated, working-class people are depicted as lazy, uneducated, and sometimes even a burden to America’s "higher culture." For the most part, this description of blue collar workers is entirely wrong and misguided. I know this because for the duration of last summer, I worked at a McDonald’s restaurant in a reasonably lower class neighborhood. What I learned there, despite the grueling work, I will never forget. I realized that much of America’s perception of working class people is entirely wrong. From my experience at McDonald’s, I developed a greater understanding and respect for the nation’s blue collar workforce.

When I entered my local McDonald’s restaurant one fateful overcast afternoon in late April, I never would have imagined that this visit would be the catalyst to a plethora of knowledge that I would acquire as the summer months unfolded. My high school companions and I took our usual spot in line as we waited for our frozen chicken to be deep-fried and served. However, this seemingly mundane visit was different because instead of a normal paper tray-liner, our food was accompanied by a flyer that was emblazoned with the words "Immediate Hiring Today" across the top in a strong, bold font that pounced into my mind like a starving cougar eager to feed its emaciated offspring. As the words struck me, I began thinking about the possibilities that this job would bestow upon me. Since I would be leaving to attend college in a few months, attaining a job was not that high of a priority on my extremely short list. I was more concerned with wasting my last days of high school with thoughts of university life and finally severing all ties to my family and living on my own. The last thing I had wanted to do was spend the remaining hours of my carefree youth flipping burgers at a filthy and dilapidated McDonald’s restaurant. But as I studied the flyer, quotes from my disillusioned parents cultivated in my mind. My home seemed to manifest itself, especially since my waning years of high school, as a garden that specialized in growing negative feedback and support. But as I held that flyer in my hand, I realized that this was the answer for which I’ve been waiting. McDonald’s was a skilled farmhand, eager to come and pick the ripe negative fruits out from my home life forever. No more would my parents lecture me on how "ungrateful" or "selfish" I had apparently become in the epilogue of my youth. Since they had immediate hiring for that particular day only, I decided to give it a shot. Four hours later, I was at orientation and began working there the next day.

My time at McDonald’s led me to gain greater respect for America’s working class, and this was partially because the jobs they perform take lots of hard work and unyielding dedication, which I experienced firsthand. My time at McDonald’s was somewhat brief and extremely tedious, but I absorbed a profusion of knowledge nonetheless. Even though I was only employed there for about three months, I did more grueling and strenuous physical labor than I had ever done in my entire life. Since I was "The New Guy," the managers always gave me the difficult jobs that no one wanted, like patrolling the parking lot for trash and picking it up, or mopping down the floors. Even though this may seem like a normal operation of a typical high school job, for me it seemed like I was working for none other than Lucifer himself. Not only did numerous passersby yell and throw things at me while I was out in the parking lot picking up garbage, it would be my job to clean up the playplace and anything that was in there. And believe me, sticking a mob of toddlers into a hot and sweaty room with food for hours at a time creates plenty of things to pick up, including generous amounts of body fluids. I also would have to constantly carry large boxes of frozen meat and fry products out into the kitchen, and by the end of the day my clothes would be so immensely soaked in sweat and dirt that the champagne overtones of my McDonald-issued uniform had been subdued into a shade of milky grey. But however difficult the labor was, I found it strangely relaxing and inspiring, not unlike the mandalas of Buddhist monks. After painstakingly creating their sand art for hours at a time, these monks open the door to their monastery and have the wind blow the art away. As hard as the work was, I always thought of it as meditative to a certain extent. By performing these activities alongside of working class people, it helped me foster the idea that these blue-collar workers deserved respect and admiration for their unrelenting dedication to their job.

I was also granted a newfound respect for lower-class workers by experiencing their work ethic, which is the cornerstone of the "American Dream." Out of all the employees at that particular McDonald’s, I was by far the most educated, not including the managers, of course. But by working there, I came to the realization that education is not everything. To become a complete person, people need a sound work ethic as well as mental forte. Without these things, a person can never reach his or her full potential as a functioning and productive member of society. The people I met there came from every walk of life and many different nations as well. During early weekend mornings, most of my co-workers were of Hispanic decent, and at these times the kitchen would burst with business and life that reminded me of crowded South American street restaurants. During the late weekday hours, most of my fellow employees were among local high school students from diverse backgrounds as well as working-class people who hadn’t even graduated from high school. Because I was exposed to almost every kind of social group in this setting, I gathered a superfluity of knowledge about human behavior and about society itself. Coming from a modest middle-class family in the suburbs, I had my eyes opened to what other cultures, especially minority groups in urban enclaves, were truly experiencing. I learned that just because someone isn’t as educated or as well-off as you, it doesn’t make them less of a human. Most of the people I was in contact with were the most hard working people I have ever met. Many struck me as even more ambitious than even the most lucrative business person.

Although my time at McDonald’s changed my perception of working class laborers, it was not solely influenced by my time with the working-class people themselves, but also the patrons of the restaurant. Not only did I learn more about working class people, I also observed behavior towards those people by the customers who came in. I have seem some of the laziest, disrespectful, and scurrilous customers at that restaurant than at any other vicinity in my life. Executives, housewives, teachers, and other seemingly "well-off" members of society would make a transformation to common vagrants as they stepped through the entrance, a phenomena that I observed all too frequently during my employment. These people would constantly leave trash on the floor, as well as leave food lying everywhere, and not even consider the people working there who had to clean it up. For example, when I was out cleaning the lobby one day with a broom and a dustbin, I saw many "respectable" middle-aged people just throw their mess on the floor or leave it at their seat and leave, when I was clearly in front of them, picking up the same garbage that other people had left. The customers who came in acted as if they deserved to be waited on hand and foot. It was during these enervating times that I realized that when Karl Marx mused about the oppressive bourgeoisie and their nefarious crimes against the working class, he had a point.

I think that this setting represents the American social conscience in a microcosm. In order for people of a higher economic class to fully understand and interact with people who differ from them, they first need to offer up a bit of themselves in return for interaction between these people. To relate American society to the stock market, it is just the opposite. It is a zero-sum game. In order to take, one first must give.

My firsthand experiences working at McDonald’s influenced me a great deal, but a good portion of my understanding of our nation’s overworked and underpaid labor force came from a single person. The one person whom enlightened my social conscience was my manager at the restaurant, with whom I shared a great deal of time, a man named Herman. Herman was a friendly man in his late twenties, and came from a poor Jamaican community around ten years ago. Since coming to America, he settled down in the city of Sanford, Florida and took up a job at McDonald’s. He held the job for a number of years until finally getting promoted to manager. Herman was the epitome of America’s underdog working class. Hardcore conservative bureaucrats would probably label him, upon first glance, as the epitome of America’s downfall. But in my opinion, he is the archetypal American: loyal, hardworking, and ambitious. Just because he was a black working class man, many closed-minded, upper-class whites would probably immediately consider him to be lazy, dumb, and an average worker at best. But being around Herman for only three months gave me more wisdom than anything I have ever experienced before.

This man went to school five days a week at the local Seminole Community College and still worked an eight hour night shift at McDonald’s seven days a week. If that’s not enough, he also held a weekend job at the nearby Denny’s restaurant and was supporting his wife and new born baby at the same time. While he was working his shifts, he demonstrated responsibility and genuine hard work every single night and never complained about it. And believe me, the work was extremely intense. Being around Herman made me realize that working class people are more admirable than many rich people. Even though he had a hard life filled with tedious

labor and not many aesthetic rewards, he still carried on day after day and treated everybody he met with kindness and tolerance. This is what I respected most of all.

By spending time at McDonald’s and working alongside people from different backgrounds and cultures, I learned more about our nation’s so called "lower class" and gained a lot of respect for these people as well as the respect for good old fashioned work. I gained more understanding about how our nation’s social values are composed and realized that it truly is what is inside that counts. Status means nothing. As an ancient Chinese proverb says, "The taller the bamboo grows, the lower it bends." I think the same can be said of our nation’s so-called high class.