Fast Food

Fast Food Alex R.Jones I applied at the Taco BeU inVentura, California, because it was out of my hometown and not likely to be frequented by anybody who might know me. I was twenty years old then, a junior in coUege, and I needed a job for the summer. In smaU towns Uke the one in which I lived, jobs are had through friends and their fathers. Some kids worked for their dads driving delivery trucks around town for ten doUars an hour. Those were the good jobs. I'd never had one. I'd picked avocados the summer before for four dollars an hour, and I was glad to get it. But I was also aware that everybody I knew considered fast food work to be the lowest form ofhuman enterprise, and Taco BeU to be the lowest form of fast food. Low or not, I found myselfinterviewing with an assistant manager named Rick who wore a clean white shirt—blemished only by a single spot of red sauce on his breast pocket—and aTaco BeU-issue tie. Instinctively I felt sorry for him. He looked to be about 40, which is Uke Methuselah by fast food standards, and as he sUd the paperwork across the table toward me, I had the feeUng that the application process had, for him, lost meaning through repetition and futility. After he gave me a math test, which I nearly failed, we progressed on to more vital issues, such as a code of conduct. He handed me a yellow sheet ofpaper with the Taco BeU version and told me to read it as he sadly stared out the window into the parking lot. I'd never had a code of conduct, and I scanned it with apprehension: One must always come to work on time. Being hung over was no excuse for absence. Employees showing up with wrinkled or dirty uniforms would be sent home. No tattoos could be displayed . No drunkenness would be aUowed. Serving free food to friends would result in termination. Coming out more than a doUar short in your cash tiU was also grounds for termination. When I finished, I looked out the 161 162Fourth Genre window and saw in the parking lot an employee sweeping up trash. That's going to be me, I thought. I left feeling nervous, but with an oddly comforting feeUng that I was in the gentle but firm embrace ofa higher institution : perhaps the Pepsico Company, which owned Taco BeU. Crucial to an employee's integration into the Taco BeU experience, I found, was the uniform. Back then, it was an excrement brown, edged with an orange trim thought to offer a Southwestern flavor appropriate to a restaurant serving Mexican food. A marvel of science, it was 100 percent polyester, absolutely stain resistant, and, in the absence ofheat or flame, virtuaUy indestructible. The required brown shoes were not provided. However, assistant manager Rick strongly recommended a trip to Kmart in order to purchase plastic imitation topsiders with the requisite no-slip soles. The uniform was topped off with a baseball-type cap that was also brown and emblazoned with the Taco BeU logo. With his hat puUed low, usuaUy out of shame, the average Taco Bell man half-heartedly clutching a broom looked like a weary CivilWar veteran: too young to be fighting, but already jaded. ? The mission ofTaco BeU then, as now, was to seU the food of a brown minority to a white majority hungry for the exotic and, in doing so, make a huge sum ofmoney. The design ofTaco BeU stores was therefore an amalgamation of Disneyland comes to Old Mexico. Just as our uniforms were supposed to lend the crew members south-of-the-border spice, when half of them hadn't been as far as Los Angeles, the store that I worked at was, Uke aUTaco BeUs, an elaborate prop. It was a cement bunker rusticated with a facade of uneven brick and a red tile roof. Inside, the dining room floor was tiled in earth colors and lined with Formica tables and plastic plants. Because most Americans considered Mexico to be synonymous with filth, care was...