How I missed becoming the Taco King of the Midwest

The business that gave me my first job celebrated its 43^rd anniversary recently. Taco Boy had only been serving up Mexican food a couple years when they hired me on. I landed the job on the recommendation of my buddy Mick; he’d been working there three months without missing a shift.

I arrived at work, filled with sugar-plum visions of the many wonderful things I would buy with my first real paycheck. A new Corvette, maybe, or a house in the Hamptons.

I was a little vague on that whole “minimum wage” thing.

The manager appeared to be of genuine Mexican descent, which seemed to me exotic, and leant an air of authenticity to the place. I no longer remember her name, but it might have been Maria.

Maria patiently showed me how to operate the tortilla steamer, the lettuce chopper, the cheese grater…if you’re not responsible for payroll and taxes, there’s really not a lot to working at a Mexican fast food restaurant. I paid close attention anyway; this was my first job and I planned to work my way up to manager within a year, buy my own franchise, and eventually become a household name to rival Ronald McDonald. Mike Taylor, Taco-King of the Midwest.

Fifteen minutes into my first job, but I had big dreams.

After showing me the basics of taco building, Maria turned me loose on a couple customers. It soon became apparent that my math skills were such that I was never going to be able to make correct change or simultaneously carry two orders in my head without screwing up at least one of them.

Maria decided my skills might best be utilized in the kitchen steaming tortilla shells and chopping lettuce.

Now, this was my first job and I had never heard the word “hazing” before. Mick hadn’t warned me that Maria often played little jokes on new employees as a way of helping them “settle in” to the Taco Boy family.

So I was taken aback when she set an enormous bowl of pinto beans in front of me along with a spray bottle and kitchen towel and instructed me to clean each bean individually, making sure to keep an accurate count of each bean for “inventory purposes.”

This seemed a pretty humdrum job to lay on the future Taco-King of the Midwest, but I’m nothing if not a team player.

I removed the first bean from the bowl, sprayed it with water, rubbed it dry, and dropped it into a waiting container. One down, countless hundreds to go.

An hour later I had cleaned and counted 1,423 beans. The bowl was still half-full. Maria stuck her head around the corner.

“Hey Mike,” she said. “When did you say your birthday was again? I need it for the paperwork.”

“Um, November 26,” I said.

“And what’s your Social Security number?”

I told her; she made a notation on a clipboard.

“OK, thanks,” she said. “How many beans so far?”

“Uh…” I had lost count. “I don’t know exactly. Over a thousand.”

Sighing, Maria took the container of cleaned beans and dumped them back into the bowl of unclean beans.

“Sorry,” she kindly said. “You’ll have to start over. Management needs an exact count.”

I made it to bean number 2,012 before giving up. I threw my apron on the floor and stomped out the back exit. My career as Taco-King of the Midwest had lasted exactly 93 minutes.

Later that day, Mick explained the whole hazing thing to me. I felt too much a fool to ever go back for my paycheck. But I figure Taco Boy still owes me for that 93 minutes of bean counting.

Based on the minimum wage at the time, Taco Boy owes me nearly two bucks! Pay up, Maria.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.