I had one of those Undercover Boss moments at the Burger King in Lindale, Texas. Lindale is right off of I-20 about five miles north of Tyler. The Burger King I went to is just north of the freeway. Undercover Boss is a reality show where the owners of businesses drop by and watch their employees without their knowledge. It’s a great show.
Working fast food is right at the bottom of the food chain. These are jobs even Mike Rowe won’t take on. The job sucks and the people who run these places don’t seem to care that the job sucks because their workforce is instantly replaceable. When I was a teen looking for my first job, I couldn’t even get hired at McDonalds. That’s a blow to the old self esteem. But maybe the Manager could tell I didn’t think my career path including the phrase Would you like fries with that?
I travel a lot. So I end up eating at a lot of fast food joints. This helps to explain that twenty pounds I never seem to be able to loss. I don’t expect much from fast food places, but I do often sit down and watch the world go by for a few minutes before heading off to work.
“Do we have another one of these in the back?” a fairly round young man yells across the Burger King as I walk in the door. “This one’s about shot.”
The good old boy could easily be named Bubba. He is wearing slightly more professional clothes than the folks behind the counter and he acts like he owns the place. Maybe he does. He walks around telling people to do this and do that. Then he moseys over to a corner booth where he proceeds to talk on his cell for the twenty minutes I am in the dinning room.
He is still talking when I leave.
“He’s in for a rude awakening.” Bubba says in a voice loud enough to fill the entire restaurant. “This is my Burger King and you have to do things MY way.”
He proceeds to talk about an employee who apparently complains about the poor conditions in the Burger King, but doesn’t tell Bubba to his face how much the restaurant sucks. If this guy is the owner of the Franchise I have to be impressed, as he seems to own more than one Burger King. My guess is that his parents own the Burger Kings and he gets to be the Big Man by virtue of having been born.
“He was right about the place needing to be cleaned.” Bubba continues. “The back of the house is a whole lot cleaner than it was before he worked on it.”
I pause in eating my breakfast croissant and gaze into the kitchen area of the Burger King, I wonder if I have eaten here before-when the Back of The House was such a mess. Best not to think about it. And best not to eat here again.
“You have to have a firm hand with these people.” Bubba advises whoever he is talking to.
I am not the only customer in the dinning room while Bubba discuses the finer points of running a crappy fast food restaurant. His voice is loud and clear to all of his minions as well, who are scurrying around doing busy work to show the Boss how valuable they are. I’ve always been one of those people that would hit someone over the head with a frying pan if they told me-You’ve got time enough to lean, you’ve got time enough to clean.
Bubba talks with all the serious earnest of someone running a Fortune 500 Corporation with billions on the line. Well, for all I know running a handful of Burger Kings in Tyler, Texas is a Fortune 500 company.
Ok, I’m fine with The Boss/Owner sitting on his butt while the peons do the work. It’s the American Dream. I’m not so fine with Bubba sitting in the public area of the Burger King ragging on his employees and filling the room with his Nero-like advice on how he runs his Empire. Bubba, haul your happy ass out to your BMW and bullshit where no one else can hear you. I don’t need to know how the Burger King I’m eating in is falling apart and how you don’t give a good goddamn about it.
Bubba, if your are the Franchisor, you should be ashamed of your behavior and Burger King should give your shop a good once over. If your parents are the owners, they should fire you from whatever position of authorty you have been handed on a silver platter. And if this is a Corporate Burger King, well, this would be a good place for Undercover Boss to pay a visit.
