Forgotten Fast Food restaurants.

[MiddleFingerMom]

167. Howard Johnson's. Road trip restaurants -- ours was, as I think many or most were...

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... at the intersection of two major Interstates. Distinctive bright orange roofs. Terrible
fried clams (Lum's were incredible -- with a beer batter, I think). Fantastic hot dogs
and/or hash-browns (if you drenched either with butter on the grill). GREAT and almost
separate and distinct ice-cream parlor section (my best friend Bobby's job title was
actually "soda jerk&quot . Ours got a bar and live music years after I worked there.
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Ultimately failed, toppled from the status of enormous chain to few or none now.
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Worked a year or so in highschool as a dishwasher, moving up eventually to short-
order night cook. We "built" a campsite in the woods near the intersection and had
fantastic after-work parties/sleepovers there. MUCH busboy-cook/waitress, umm...
"socializing".
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Inexplicably, corporate sent both our day manager and night manager to longterm
training (a month or more) at the same time. These decent people to work for were
temporarily replaced with two fascist dickheads. Ours decided that the two night-cooks
would wear complete cook whites with the little white paper hats (like Army hats). For
years, our uniforms had been cook white shirts and jeans and hairnets (we both had
long ponytails). We believed (rightly so) that we'd look/feel like real goobers in the full
whites and refused. The assistant manager thrust our uniforms at us and ORDERED us
to go change into them.
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We sat in the employees' washroom for 5-10 minutes discussing this. We went back
out to his office and told him we both quit. The look of SHEER panic on his face was
worth everything -- it was approaching Friday night rush-hour and we were the only
cooks.
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"But-but-but-but... you CAN'T quit."
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"Yes... we can and we do."
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We went out to the parking lot and listened to music on the other cook's 8-track,
reveling in our bold act of defiance and smoking a joint or two.
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We went back in about an hour later and had some of the bestest banana splits EVER
while watching the night manager hopelessly flailing and failing at keeping dinner
orders going out.
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Then -- and all these decades later -- it was a GREAT way to leave a job.
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