The guys who owned the Arby's franchise where I worked went by the names "Mike and Cowboy." To this day I do not know their actual names, nor could I at the time distinguish one from the other. All I knew was that every so often these two jokers showed up in the back room of our store, where we worked as a well-oiled and periodically drug-addled team. They came ostensibly to check in on their investment, which was humming along just fine thank you very much. We were a streamlined operation serving two to three customers every two to three minutes and we were all very clear on the concept of "clean as you go." Compared to a lot of fast food restaurants, the crew stuck around. Years at a time. We had one family in particular whose offspring used Arby's as a rite of passage. When they were old enough to don the brown polyester dashiki, they were welcomed in and given a shift.
Mike and Cowboy didn't do the hiring. They were far too "busy" to be mired in such minutiae. Instead they turned their laser-like business focus on the things that really mattered. Like the time they used our prep area to conduct an experiment. They made a large order of french fries and a small in a small portable fryer. They weighed them both and were gleeful at the result. The small order was within grams of the large. The creepiest part about this was that they made this discovery at one of the few Arby's that did not serve french fries.
Mike and Cowboy were my window into corporate greed.
And over time, they served as a model for Derek Giacomantonio, the McDonald's franchise owner who invited a convicted felon to stage a fifteen minute training video at their fry station. While Mister Giacomantonio was quick to point out that the visit from the twice-impeached former "president" did not constitute an endorsement, he didn't have any response to questions about the fact that particular restaurant failed its last health inspection.
Then came the avalanche of negative Yelp reviews. Followed up by an E. coli outbreak that spread across the Golden Arches. Consequently, McDonald's stock plummeted.
I'm pretty sure Mike and Cowboy wouldn't have let that guy server fries without washing his hands or wearing a hair net. If they had been interested in staffing.
At all.
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