A Message of Love to Fast Food Workers

I recently saw a post borne of the minimum wage debate that deeply offended me. I'm not sure I'm qualified, either intellectually or as it pertains to common sense, to take a stance on the issue of raising the minimum wage, as my math skills are abysmal. But I know about common decency (even if I often fail to practice it), and that's why the post I saw infuriated me.

The post read, "If you've chosen flipping burgers as a career, you have failed."

Snobbish, elitist statements like this have offended me since I was a child. The reason the bitterness stems from my childhood is because my mother, Ann Gowdey, fed and provided for four obnoxious, homely sons - and me - with a career in fast food that lasted from 1969 to 2005, give or take a hiatus or two.

Glory days.

Though I don't know that my mom stepped into a Dairy Queen in high school and said, "This is what I want to do for the rest of my life," I do know that she often looked back at her life and said she wouldn't have wanted any other job, despite the physical toll it took on her over thirty-plus years (in those days, burgers were not yet synthesized holograms as they are now). She eventually became the longtime manager of both Dairy Queens in Seminole, Texas. When she went into a temporary retirement when my father died in 1996, the local DQs so declined in quality that one was shut down.
I'm immensely proud of my mother and her "mcjob" she loved so much, the same mcjob that paid for by mcbrother's contact mclenses, our mcschool supplies, the mcjob that paid for my mcpsychiatric care as a teenager, and the mcjob that taught me a person doesn't have to wear a suit or have college training to make a difference. (I probably shouldn't use the "mcjob" term, since she worked at Dairy Queen and not McDonald's, and that could be a huge conflict of interests.)

I'm a preacher, so I know nothing about work. I don't even work the two hours a week since I'm not allowed to preach out of an actual church building. But I do have enough good instilled in me by Christ that tells me if you go to your place of work every day and do your job with commitment, without indifference or bitterness, and with care for your customers, you have done something nothing short of amazing.
The Holy Spirit tells us through the apostle Paul: "And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ" (Colossians 3:23-24).

And, even if you despise your job, and drag your hungover carcass in there every day anyway, to feed your kids or just to get your transmission fixed, you've still done something awesome.

Fast food employees of America and elsewhere, don't let anyone belittle you or look down on you. You don't deserve such snobbish treatment - you're in food service, not congress. You are not an embarrassment, should not be embarrassed, you are not the shame of the work force, and should never be ashamed of your hard work.

Let's be honest. If every fast food worker in America accepted and believed the shame and scorn that's thrown their way, and walked out of their job today, this country would spiral into chaos and anarchy. Endless lines of cars would line up at McDonald's, Burger Kings, Taco Bells all across the land, full of angry Hyundai-jockeys who demand you fix them up a quick lunch, so they can get back to the job that requires two college degrees so they can sit in their cubicle and deride you on the internet some more for working in fast food. Soccer moms who smile with self-assured glee that they don't have to work in grease would be dismayed that no one is at Wendy's to take their order for their children's dinner. Entire high school football teams across the country, students given scholarships to college because they can execute an Earl Campbell-like tackle, would sit in their buses outside Sonic, perplexed at how they'll celebrate their 21-10 victory over the Permian Panthers without a chili cheese coney...until someone has the bright idea to celebrate with booze, and now look - we've got underage drinking.

You fast food employees are the glue that holds America together. Never be ashamed of your work.

"...the worker is worthy of his wages." -our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Luke 10:7

There's Nothing Wrong With Your Mind, Kid

Of my thirteen stays in various psychiatric hospitals between 2001 and 2008, six of them took place during my adolescent years. I was usually given the doctors that the other teens didn't see, due to the fact that my mental problems were more complex, at least for a teenager. Many of the other kids were either experiencing a more intense form of the already-daunting emotional storm that comes with being that age, or they were R.P. McMurphy types - accepting a stay in a mental hospital to avoid jail.

But, in this mix of genuinely troubled children, and juveniles savvy enough to exploit the system, there was always a third kind: kids locked in the mental hospital for the sole reason that their situation at home was no longer safe. They had been neglected, mistreated, or abused. Many of them were placed in the hospital to await placement in a foster home; others were there while their parents showed up daily for "family therapy" sessions; but more disturbing, others were there to begin a "residential treatment" program.

Even then, with my own troubles to deal with, I wondered, "What are they doing here?"

It's not as if I had some bitter notion that they were taking away from the hospitals' resources. It's not that I didn't understand that they needed somewhere to stay that wasn't ruled by an abusive relative. But there were deeper things that puzzled me, and still do, about these kids.

For one thing, why were they being given psychiatric medication? Don't misunderstand me - I understood it if the child had been driven into depression, anxiety, or some other post-traumatic or pre-existing symptom. But that was very seldom the case, at least in the experiences I'm describing. There were many others who were not mentally ill, but rightfully uncertain and afraid about the future. I felt back then, and I feel even more strongly now, "you've been abused! You've been wronged! You're not the sick one!"
What troubled me even more was that, as confused and as fearful as many of these children were, the sheer act of being given a pill for their minds was basically drilling into their souls a notion that there was something wrong with them mentally because they had been abused. Without a word, but with a pill, they were told: you have been mistreated; therefore you're sick.
I was never abused or mistreated by my parents, but if someone told me there was something wrong with my mind because I'd been abused, when it wasn't me who was the crazy one, I would develop the notion that the abuse I suffered had somehow been my fault.

And indeed, many of my fellow patients with whom I kept contact into adulthood (as well as others I met during my later stays in adult wards) harbor some guilt or self-loathing behavior due not only to what they experienced at home, but because someone told them there was a flaw in their minds when they were taken from that danger.

Growing up with so many stays in mental hospitals where these things were commonplace, I made many friends who wouldn't have been in those wards had it not been for a deliverance from an abusive home. But what were they delivered to? A hospital where someone tells them "you were neglected and abused by someone you trusted, someone who should have cared for you, so you're mentally unstable and need pills"? It made no sense to me.

And what's more, I watched many of them grow up from being abused children, to children convinced they were mentally ill because of that abuse, to adults who, because of what they were told, can't handle life and make a mess of it because they've been deceived into thinking "it's supposed to be this way - my mind is messed up, and I'm messed up." I've had many friends who don't have the strength to handle being an adult because no one told them they were strong as a child. No one told them, "hey kid, you've got more guts than me - I could never go through that and not lose my mind. But you held it together. You're a brave, strong person, and you've got a bright future ahead of you, if you believe it."

If anyone out there is reading this, and you've found yourself in a mental hospital as a result of having a bad home life, when you get out, keep in mind that you're not the crazy one. You're not the sick dirtbag who beat you, who preferred some poison or powder over your needs, who didn't care about the precious life they'd been entrusted to keep safe. If you developed some post-traumatic mental illness, address it by all means. There's nothing wrong with being ill. But don't let anyone tell you that you were the one who needed pills based on the fact that some maniac hurt you. Don't let someone tell you that you weren't strong.

Don't let some pill forced down your throat when you're a kid shape the kind of person you become when you're an adult. Let your bravery and strength shape you instead.

"What do you think you are, crazy? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average ***hole out walkin' around on the street!"
-Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)