THAT is admirable, especially in today's America. So many people would have just TAKEN public assistance and not even considered taking a job at McDonald's. I hope your children were aware of this. That is awesome. And that is what it's supposed to mean to be American.
I just did what needed to be done at the time, nothing admirable about it. My takeaways from the experience were many but the things that still stand out are these.
1 Such jobs are physically stressful, standing on your feet for hours on concrete floors, working on a grill or standing at a cash register, sitting in a drive through window with car exhaust fumes in your face for hours on end. This was freaking hard for me, a well fed, reasonably fit white woman in good health, I cannot image how some of my co-workers managed.
2. The emotional stress of being barked at for hours on end ( some shift managers have delusions of grandeur & go out of their way to treat teens & disabled workers & foreign born workers like garbage. People likely to have the least in terms of internal coping skills being basically verbally & emotionally abused is routine.
3. After all of the above, even working more than 40 hours a week I barely had enough to pay rent. There wouldn't have been food on my table if it wasn't for the kindness of a manager who made sure I took home salads & yogurt parfaits that would other wise have been discarded. Forget extras like cable or cell phone bills, the job didn't pay enough to afford modest rent & food in the same month.
All of the above was soul killing stuff, I have nothing but respect for people work work in fast food & go out of my way to treat such workers well whenever I encounter them.
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