Calum Marsh on lacking the Big Mac knack,

I had endeavoured for three months to master the arts required of an entry-level McDonald’s employee. None of these I could seem to handle. –

I was dismayed to learn that I was not an ace in any place. I was 14 years old, reporting for duty with my usual reluctance to the McDonald’s restaurant downtown, where I had been employed now for nearly three months and was approaching the end of my probation period.

My manager – a slender man in his early 40s, bald and quite friendly – had invited me to speak with him in the narrow office he shared with subordinates. He said he had a problem. “We have a simple philosophy here,” he explained. “When things get crazy, we put our aces in their places. That means we get every person to do the job they do best. But the thing is, we don’t know your place. You don’t seem to be an ace at anything.”

This was hardly news to me. I had endeavoured for three months to master the arts required of an entry-level McDonald’s employee: the preparation of a half-dozen patties simultaneously, the swift assembly of a variety of burgers, the operation without injury of a commercial deep-fryer. None of these I could seem to handle.

The grill – whose heavy mechanical top would press down and sear the meat in seconds – would routinely singe and char my hands and forearms. Putting together a Big Mac – plucking processed cheese and slivers of dill pickle from receptacles and stacking them just so – was as onerous to me as a game of high-speed Jenga. And how I struggled with the deep-fryer – that volcano of boiling vegetable oil. It remains a fixture of my nightmares to this day.

So I was not an ace. It was a reflection of the indolence I’d cultivated over 14 apathetic years. I had not yet developed a healthy work ethic. Simply standing up for eight hours was an insurmountable challenge for me then.

What the experience taught me was that it was very hard work indeed, holding a job of any kind – even this minimumwage labour. What the experience taught my employer was that not everybody was cut out to meet the challenge of the grill or to endure the trial-by-fire of the deep-fryer. My manager concluded his remarks with the promise of another chance and the assurance that I would earn my ace-hood, yet.

I resolved to improve and hit the kitchen with renewed vigour – but in my heart I knew my career at McDonald’s was at an end. I did not have the Big Mac knack. I’d never be an ace anyplace here ever.