The Fast Food Thread

Ah, Taco Bell nostalgia. I worked during the era of the Bell Beefer, bitches!

I've probably bitched about it in this thread already, years ago, but I worked at Taco Bell in the mid-80s, and it was probably the best high school job I could have asked for. Aside from actual teenagers working there instead of middle-aged foreigners (we had one old Japanese lady but she was awesome), it was just a lot of fun most of the time. And the fact that my first "real" sexual experience was with the super-hot 21-year-old assistant manager certainly helped. But the part that makes me nostalgic for the food is that we fucking made almost everything fresh every day. Beans were cooked in big pressure cookers and then blended up with an actual drill with attachment, 10 lb bags of raw ground beef were browned and mixed with seasoning, all the vegetables were freshly chopped every day, etc. Now all that shit comes in bags that they just warm up apparently, and it is vastly shittier tasting. Back then it was essentially the same thing as making tacos at home, just on a larger scale. We even sliced the fucking olives by hand because that's the only way the olives could be ordered.

I still go to Taco Bell because it is, generally, still pretty good. But the meat and beans in particular are so inferior to what they were that sometimes I get a particularly shitty item and it just kind of turns to tasting like cardboard in my mouth. Sometimes I almost believe those conspiracy theories about it being part sawdust or whatever (it isn't), that's how shitty it tastes at times. We never, ever had that problem when I worked there.

I'd pay double in a heartbeat if they went back to making everything fresh every day. They gave free food to employees when I worked there (my parents loved that reduction in their food bill) and even eating it before work, during work, and after work some days, 4-7 days per week for a couple years, I never got tired of it. It was easily my favorite fast food, no questions asked. I have probably eaten 10,000 enchiritos in my lifetime (ok I know that's impossible, but it feels like it, I got one every time I went for decades before and after working there too). But now I can barely stomach going there more than once or twice a month. Even for stuff like the Naked Chicken Chalupa.

God, now I'm depressed! I better go to Wendy's for lunch.

Shit, the Taco Bell memories you're reminding me of.

Strangely, most of them seem to involve my best friend (who is still my best friend to this day) doing something stupid.

One time we were throwing tortillas at each other in the back, trying to get them to fly like a frisbee, and he manages to whip one around the corner and THROUGH the gap in the steamer that held the various hard shells in it so the person working the front line can make them and the people in the back can reload them. So yes, that means as soon as it got through that gap it was out into customer territory, and smacked this dude right in the face. Fortunately this was in the era of people not posting it on Facebook and suing the fuck out of the company, we just gave his family everything for free and he was cool about it.

Another time we were throwing knives in the back at the giant bags of pinto beans and various cardboard boxes, trying to get them to stick. Don't ask me why. He misses a little low and hits a plastic container of bleach that we use to wash the white towels we used everywhere. No big deal, we just toss it in the mop bucket next to us so we can continue playing our game. It empties out of course, so we toss the jug away and push the mop bucket out of our playing area because duh, it stinks like bleach. Well, someone up front tells some random new guy to go mop the dining room. We didn't just use water, we dumped some ammonia in it too. New guy sees the mop bucket partly full so fills it up the rest of the way with water, then dumps ammonia in and proceeds to mop the entire dining room with it. We had to evacuate the fucking building and someone called the fire department due to the toxic vapors caused by mixing bleach and ammonia almost killing everyone in the building.

Then there is all the teenage sex shit that went on, of course. My best friend, again, supposedly finger-banged this one chick who had the whole innocent persona but turned into a whore behind closed doors thing going on, in the walk-in refrigerator, and then when he came out because a manager was yelling for him he dipped his finger/hand in the Sanisol solution we used to rinse all the dishes in (we washed everything by hand). He was known as Sanisol Man for quite awhile after that. He also refuses to say whether he actually did it or not, so I'm going to go with he didn't, but the story still got around. That same girl supposedly gave another dude head in the walk-in after close one night and they left the jizz on the floor for the morning crew to find. Seeing as how I was part of that particular morning crew, I know there was something that looked a lot like jizz there, so I'll go ahead and believe that one. And another dude that supposedly had a small penis would have girls literally drag him into the walk-in to see it. Whether he was small or not, I guess he had a decent strategy going.

Man, if that walk-in could talk. I'm sure there are tons more stories I never heard about. I know there are plenty I've forgotten over the years too. And plenty that I was personally involved in that never got out to the rest of the employees, particularly with the aforementioned 21-year-old assistant manager.

Sorry, I know this isn't the Fast Food Workers Nostalgia Thread.

Void said:

Sorry, I know this isn't the Fast Food Workers Nostalgia Thread.

Click to expand...

Shit, I'm starting to think we need one.