Golden Arches, Popcorn and Jack Nicholson

I got fired. I wasn’t fast enough packing the French fries into those little, white paper pockets.

The hot, summer day after I turned 16, I applied for a job working at McDonald’s in Encino, California, a suburb in Los Angeles known to have a “north or south” of Ventura Boulevard vibe. I had been working at my father’s pharmacy a few Saturday’s a month, but now that I had my license to drive, I wanted a job closer to home where I didn’t have to drive on the 405 Freeway.

I’m sure my love affair with French fries was one of the reasons I thought to work at McDonald’s. After all, I was brought up by a mother who did not like to mess up her kitchen. McDonald’s, Mike’s Pizza and Pioneer Chicken were staples at our dinner table. The other reason was that it was owned by the father of a friend of mine. She put in a good world for me and said it would be a “cinch” for me to get hired.

I got hired, and was immediately led to the back of the restaurant to a small, windowless office. I sat down in front of a television and watched video after video on how to flip burgers, be nice to customers, fill soda cups, clean floors, keep my hair out of the food, and finally, how make French fries. I already knew how to count back change because my father had taught me when I was around eight while working at his pharmacy. The cash register at Schreiner’s Pharmacy on Lasky Drive in Beverly Hills was an antique. A bell rang on the register and the amount was stored on a large dial in the front of the machine. I still had to add up the products on a separate piece of paper handed to me by my father. I can’t remember how my dad kept track of the purchases of the day, but it wasn’t digital, so I had to count back the change. My dad held out, shunning new technology as long as he could. I don’t think he got a computer in his pharmacy until the late-1980’s.

The manager in charge at this particular restaurant with the golden arches was a tall, lanky teen not much older than I. He wore a pink, short-sleeved shirt and a tie splattered with ketchup stains. On top of his head was a red and white paper hat that most McDonald’s employees wore in the 1970’s. I think they are now “vintage” on eBay.

He was very serious about his managerial job. After I watched a few videos, he handed me a clipboard with a test attached. I strived to be the perfect employee, not complaining, taking the test, learning the cash register, making sure my long hair was properly bound behind my head so a strand wouldn’t end up in someone’s Big Mac.

I had to watch the French fry video a few more times because, after a few days, I still didn’t get the hang of the one-handed way the fries were supposed to be swept up by the metallic whatchyamacallit scooper-thingy so they could slide easily into the white paper pouch. I was reprimanded for putting too many fries into the sack and for over-salting those fake and repurposed potatoes which, by the way, become hard and waxy after an hour. I think there was even a complaint in 2017 from McDonald’s workers (as quoted on grubstreet.com) stating that they were made to under-fill their French fry orders. Forty years later McD’s is still being accused of scrimping on the fries they sell their customers. Someone even said they were taught how to pinch the fry carton just right while putting the fries into them, so it looked like the carton was fuller than it was.

The most difficult part of the job for me was not grabbing a hot French fry when it came out of the oil and stuffing it into my mouth. I may have done that. That may have been the reason I was fired.

French fries were my demise. My job at McDonald’s lasted a mere two weeks. For an entire 72 hours after my untimely discharge, I let myself dwell on the fact that if I couldn’t make it at McDonald’s, who else would have me?

I applied to Bullocks Department Store in Sherman Oaks, but I didn’t dress the part. I’ve always been a jeans, t-shirt and hippie-style kind of person. Nylons and heels were for other ladies and people like my sister who had fashion style. I was perfectly content in a pair of Levi’s, Birkenstocks, peasant blouses and cotton Bohemian clothes with colored fringe and beads sewn onto the sleeves.

I wasn’t down and out for long because working hard had been drilled into my head by my father for years. He was always at work. He spent more time at the pharmacy than he did at home.

Shortly after my fry-firing, I was hired at the Encino Theater. I was much better at putting popcorn into a popcorn box than I was at slipping French fries into a paper-thin pouch.

The manager of the Encino Theater was a beautiful, long-legged brunette with wavy light-brown hair just past her shoulders. I can’t remember her name, but I remember the tailored suits she wore. Just after “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was released, Jack Nicholson came to our theater and sat in the back row, gaging the audience reaction to his movie. Of course, everyone loved that movie. It’s still one of my favorites.

I was stationed behind the candy counter handing out Junior Mints, M&M’s and popcorn to the theatergoers and wasn’t permitted into the theater to watch Jack Nicholson watch his movie. I tried and was told under no uncertain terms was I permitted to leave popcorn duty.

Just as the credits started to roll, Nicholson and the attractive theater manager came out of the theater and locked themselves in her office for about 45 minutes. I doubt he was asking her to critique his film. We watched him leave her office first. She came out a few minutes later, her perfectly coiffed hair a little less coiffed. I remember this because she was red-cheeked and wouldn’t look us in the eye as she told us to close up for the night.

I kept that theater job until I left for college in the fall of 1977. While working there I met some rock and roller with long, blond hair who took me to the sand dunes of a beach where we planned our escape. I remember a joint and a bottle of tequila were involved, and his condom-covered penis thrust sand into my va-ya-ya over and over again. Fuck did that hurt! I wonder if the same thing happened to Rupert Holmes and his own lovely lady when he wrote about escaping and making love in the dunes of the cape back in 1979.

Encino Theater was also where I came face-to-face one night with my horseback riding trainers from Foxfield Riding School in Westlake Village; Nancy and Joanne. I had ridden English at Foxfield for over 10 years and decided to stop when I got accepted to Humboldt State University.

They asked me why, after all that time and money my parents spent on my horseback riding life, did I just up and quit? I told them I was leaving for a new life behind the Redwood Curtain and would probably try and ride up there.

I never did.

I do remember those twin ladies, who were such a big part of my life, shaking their heads at the same time, sad that one of their riders with such promise chose college instead of jumping over fences for a living. I still feel their disappointment to this day. I really was a good rider, but the lure of getting out on my own and away from Los Angeles was stronger. Additionally, owning a horse and competing in the hunter-jumper category was very expensive.

We are all just one decision away from a completely different life. I chose college over horses.

I finally did run into Jack Nicholson again sometime in 1985 or 1986.

Literally.

I worked on the Paramount Pictures movie lot and was coming around the corner holding my lunch from the commissary just as he was coming around the same corner from a different direction. We ran into one another, my lunch spilling all over the ground, Mr. Nicholson gave me that sheepish and dangerous grin of his as he said, “Pardon me,” and kept on going. The last I saw of him was his backside as it disappeared into the commissary, no doubt on its way to make some million-dollar deal since Terms of Endearment was such a hit.

And no. He did not offer to pay for my ruined lunch. I scraped up what I could and trashed all of it. Had I been as brazen then as I am now, I would have walked up to him and asked him politely to please pay me for another lunch.

To this day I still love French fries but as good as some of them taste going in, the process by which my body digests fried foods isn’t what it used to be 20 years ago. I’m sure being fired from McDonald’s in 1975 had nothing to do with the my mental breakdown I had in 2001, but it was part of my history. Once in a blue moon I will order some fries from McD’s, but I order them extra hot. Even then I have to eat them fast because they still turn into a waxy un-potato weirdness that my connection in potato industry hasn’t been able to explain. The only thing he told me was that McD’s fries are ‘uncoated.’ That was all he could say because they have a proprietary recipe which is a secret and even he, an executive in the potato industry, wasn’t let in on their top secret potato recipe.

*Exerpt from “Empty Cupboards” Dangling Participle Press/2022. Available everywhere.