Blake Snow

writer-for-hire, content guy, bestselling author
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Tagged fast food

Fast food, hard work: What I learned as an underpaid Chick-Fil-A employee

Chick-Fil-A

Chick-Fil-A

I want all my children to work fast food someday. Why would I subject the little darlings to low pay, hectic dinner rushes, rude customers, demeaning work, ignorant coworkers, monotonous tasks, slippery shoes, and stinky clothes?

The short answer: Life is filled with the above, so you might as well expose ’em while they’re young. The long answer: Much of what I learned in business I learned from fast food. Not the creative stuff. Not sustained rejection. Certainly not cerebral problem solving.

But working fast food taught me the essence of hard work—livelihood’s version of basic training. After two years as a low-level cooking, toilet cleaning, truck unloading, chicken suit wearing, stench absorbing, fry serving, drive-thru calling, and overly perspiring wage-worker at Chick-Fil-A, here’s what I learned about business, customer service, teamwork, and life:  Continue reading…

My name forever immortalized as New Mexican fast food

blakes-lotaburger-new-mexic

Tim Ormond, a long-time friend and Smooth Harold reader, sent me a photo this week of perhaps the best-named restaurant chain in New Mexico. “I eat here every time I’m on business,” he texted from Albuquerque, referring to Blake’s Lotaburger. “They have a wicked good green chili burger.”

Unbeknownst to Tim, my mother has a photo of me standing underneath this handsome signage in a shoe box somewhere, taken when I was but five years old, as the family was passing through. Again, I’m kind of a big deal. In the southwest, anyways.