Now. Brad stepped back and looked at the entire portrait. People were always saying he looked like a young Ronald Reagan, and Brad didn’t mind that a bit. Why, he could even see some moustache action coming in over his lip! And he was more trim now than at his best football weight. This was it, Brad thought. The Lean and Hungry Look.
The tone was set for a great day. Brad bounded through his classes, went home for an hour, and then drove to work at Carl’s.
Brad got along pretty well with his boss, Dennis Taylor. Dennis Taylor had been the assistant manager (the real manager had a desk job at the big Carl’s building downtown) for as long as Brad had been there. Taylor was thirty-three and still lived in his family’s guest room. He was obsessively clean. His Datsun was absolutely immaculate; he washed and waxed it constantly. Dennis would even walk around Carl’s with a Windex bottle. Sometimes Brad got the idea that Dennis bolted out of bed in the middle of the night wondering if he might have missed double-checking the shake machine.
A lot of people made jokes about Dennis around Carl’s. But those were the people whose hours he’d hacked, or the people who just didn’t know Dennis. You had to know Dennis, the way Brad looked at it, to realize that he was a pretty simple guy. He was just a franchise man, all the way. He was the type of guy born to wear plastic pen holders and carry bundles of keys. Don’t get him in trouble and he loved you.
Dennis Taylor was in a bad mood that night when Brad showed up. It was a Tuesday night, slow night, and just the guys were on duty. No Lisa at the intercom. There was a problem with the carbonation, and Dennis got more and more upset trying to fix it himself. He didn’t like calling in another franchise man.
There was also the matter of new uniforms—brown-and-white country-style uniforms for Bar-B-Cue Beef months. Girls were required to wear bandanas. Boys were asked to wear string ties.
“A string tie?” Brad balked. He hated wearing a tie unless it was something like prom or Grad Nite.
“We get older clientele in here, too, Hamilton. They like to feel they’re getting something special. Something they don’t get at home.”
“Hey,” said Brad. “Why not. I love looking like a golf caddie.” He turned to his buddies with the wild grin of a kid who doesn’t often think of such lines until two, three days later. “I love it!”
Dennis Taylor spun off to the back office, where assistant managers like to stay until they hear their title called for.
To any fast-food employee, an irate customer was an I.C. There were usually about two I.C.’s a night, at least on Brad’s shift. Brad had a philosophy about I.C.’s. It was all ego. Everybody was trying to impress someone. Everyone has to be a big man somewhere, and an I.C. was someone who had no better place to do it than in a fast-food restaurant, at the expense of some kid behind the counter.
The first I.C. of this night came into Carl’s Jr. at 9:30 P.M.
Brad knew she was an I.C. the minute she started to inspect the food before paying. She was an older woman with a silver-gray wig. She tried the fries last.
“These fries taste like metal,” she announced.
“I’m sorry,” said David Lemon, the clerk, following the customer-is-always-right party line. “I’ll get you some new ones.”
“No,” said the woman. “No. They tasted the same yesterday. They’ll taste the same tomorrow. I want to speak to the manager!”
Bingo. Dennis Taylor was out of the back office like a nine ball.
“What’s the problem, ma’am?” Even the irate customer was always right, Dennis liked to say. He would do anything to keep a complaint from reaching the franchise office downtown. One complaint and they called Dennis himself on the carpet.
“I said these fries taste like metal.”
Taylor looked at Brad, who had the duty of frying the potatoes. “Did you drain the grease yesterday before you started work?”
“Yes.”
“Have you changed it since you came in, on the hour?”
Brad was getting indignant. It wasn’t just ordinary frying, it was his specialty. “I change it,” he said, “every hour. And I always make sure that the potatoes are fried in new grease. I can tell by the color.”
Hamilton turned to the woman. “May I taste?”
The woman recoiled with her white-and-yellow Carl’s Specialty sack. “Are you calling me a liar? I’ll go to the head of the company if I have to.”
She had pushed a button with Dennis “Mr. Franchise” Taylor. The words go to the head of the company struck him at the very marrow of his corporate aspirations.
“Ma’am,” said Dennis through a Carl’s Jr. smile. He rang open the register and scooped out the exact change. “Here’s your money, ma’am, and I’m sorry you had a problem. The whole meal’s on us!” Dennis laughed, as if it were party time, but the I.C. was still shaking her head.
“No,” she said. “No, that won’t do. That’s not enough. I want that boy fired for calling me a liar. That boy right there.”
She was pointing at Brad.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Dennis Taylor, “but Brad Hamilton is one of our best employees.”
Brad was impressed. He found himself saying, “Thanks.”
“Brad Hamilton,” said the I.C. She reached for her purse. “Brad Hamilton.” She rummaged through it until she found a pen. “Brad Hamilton.” And a piece of paper. “Brad Hamilton.” Then she wrote his name down. “Brad Hamilton.”
Now the odds that the I.C. would actually write the letter were slim at best, everybody knew that. Most people were happy to have gotten a little attention; they usually forgot the hassle before they even arrived home. But the threat, even the threat of a letter, and the thought of having that letter sitting in his franchise file . . . well, you could see it ring up on Dennis Taylor’s face like a big No Sale sign.
“Hamilton,” he barked. “Go clean up the bathroom.”
It was an insult, sure, but that’s how Dennis Taylor worked these things out. Brad knew it was no big problem. Dennis took over the fryer. In five minutes he would beg Brad to come back and work it.
“I’m really sorry,” Brad said, and grabbed a scrubbrush. He went to attack the new graffiti: I Eat Big Hairy Pussy.
Life, Brad marveled there in the john, is like a chain reaction. Someone gets pissed and then takes it out on the next guy down the ladder. Everyone has to piss on somebody.
Later he went home, called Lisa, and broke up with her.
Child Development
One of Stacy Hamilton’s interesting new classes at Ridgemont was Child Development. Child Development was a new-age tax-cut class that combined bachelor arts and home economics into one big jamboree, “attempting to guide young adults past the hurdles of adulthood.” The class met in a double-sized room complete with fifteen miniature kitchens. The teacher was a fidgety woman named Mrs. Melon.
It was a typical contract class. On the first day Mrs. Melon divided all the students alphabetically into tables of four. She passed out purple mimeographed assignment sheets and signed each table to their contract of work.