A towel will keep your station looking cool
But most of all, ya gotta have your tool.

Haha....

I love Dave Thomas. He was always so out of his element in his commercials. He was like everyone's grandad.

As a former Wendy's grill man circa 1985, that brought back a lot of memories. What the video didn't show as keeping the grill clean. You'd push the grease into the grease trap that emptied it into a 5 gallon bucket. You'd take that to the grease vat thing outside that. It was the grossest most foul thing ever.

We didn't call it the four corner press, we called it "splatting the patties". I was a master on the grill. And today when I cook a burger I will splat the pattie because you can't unlearn grill skills.

Also, in addition to the broken or overcooked patties being used for chili, we would give them out to people with dogs in the drive through. I was so fucking badass at the grill I wouldn't have enough broken patties so I would have to cook patties just for chili.

I would have dreams about the grill either having too much or too little patties ready if a busload of people came into the store (we were right off the freeway in the "stop for gas and food before getting to Oregon" on I5 so we'd get slammed at lunch).

I can't believe I don't advertise my grill skills on my resume. Sure, it isn't relevant in any work I've done in the last 20 years, but Dave Thomas said it was a skill.

Hey, birdherder, me too--my first job was at Wendy's around 1982. In those days, they still had table service--remember that? We were right next to the $1 theater, so we were the perfect dinner spot for junior high dates. God, I hated working the dining room on Friday nights.

By the way, they showed that video at Tuesday's bar/movie meetup.

I had a huge crush on the girl that worked the register and on weekends would dress up as Wendy with the red yarn hair in pigtails and would give out candy and balloons to the kids.

The current ad campaign Wendys has with the guys with the Wendy hair has ruined that memory for me. I'm certain Dave Thomas would not approve.

i remember the summer after my sophomore year of high school - i got a phone call from the manager of the wendy's restaurant in the westminster (ca) mall asking if i was interested in coming in for an interview literally two minutes after i was declared grounded for the entire summer and the first semester of my junior year over a really, really bad pot-influenced report card.

ah well. what the hell does someone who just got his drivers license need a summer job for, anyway?

(i found the video on cinemageddon, btw)

Sigh. My first job while in high school was at a McDonalds. A brand new McDonalds which was promoted as the LARGEST facility in the L.A. area. With a large crew with highly specialized tasks. I scored lowly on grill skills at the end of training, so I was put on Filet O Fish duty, deep frying the fish squares, steaming (not toasting) the buns, cutting the cheeseburger cheese slices in half to use to stick the fish to the bottom bun, and the most fun, weilding the tarter sauce 'gun' that shot out the prescribed quantity of glop. (Of course, the burger dressers got 3 guns, ketchup, Big Mac Special Sauce and a smaller mustard gun) Fun while it lasted, but the BIG McDonalds didn't get as much business as it was supposed to, and when they cut back staff, Filet O Fish Station was the first to go. A friend who was a burger dresser got the tarter sauce gun, but said the smaller crew and heavier work load was no fun anymore... and thus I first learned about corporate layoffs, and years later as a 'layoff survivor' I would agree with my burger dresser friend. But then, I used my Filet O Fish experience to get a part time job at a non-franchise Fish & Chips place just a block away. The owner was a bigger clown than Ronald McDonald (and not in a good way). Another business lesson learned at an early age.

Here's the skill I learned at my first job, in an Italian restaurant.