A Salute to the 'Whopper-Floppers' of the World

I would personally like to salute that fifteen year-old girl at the MacDonald’s I go to at lunch. I’ve been going there occasionally for about a year now, and there she is. Pretty, big blue lovely eyes, dark hair, skinny as a rail, and pretty much looking a bit like she’d rather be somewhere else…

In my circles are a lot of teenagers and young people, it’s a coincidence of going to shows, clubs, and having a night life undeterred by the normal lives that those who chose family over mindless fun… (Okay, I'm a stalker already).... What I notice is something that is not new by any means but that has become more and more pronounced here in the US: The unbridled sense of self-entitlement of the majority of our kids, and young adults…

We have become so centered on cliquish snobbery these days that you rarely see a young person willing to do such things as work at MacDonald’s or Wal-Mart. It’s not good enough for them, they are better than that… They all have the same dream of postponing adulthood to go to an activist college then become a lawyer, an advertising executive, or a director; something that is okay to be according to pop-culture, something that their favorite TV star would be willing to play.

None have a will for the 'lesser class' acts of working a drive-up window, or saying hello to shoppers for money, in fact they usually prefer to not make a dime at all when confronted with the choice, and mom and dad don’t want a lesser child, so they oblige this…

I talk frequently with a young friend who bemoans the 'horrible job market', the lack of anything that pays a ‘living wage’ (don’t ask me where he got that term, but he sure loves it), he cannot abide this 'horrible economy' that makes it impossible for him to find a job in I.T. or a job at a law-firm… His ‘allowance’ doesn’t afford him the things I have, the things I do, he is desperate, just not willing to work for it if it means lowering himself to the scummy levels (that I had to)…

Yet tell him that ‘Wendy’s’ is hiring full-time and he will give you a look of disbelief… Tell him that if he goes to the orchards a few miles away, he will make 16.00 per hour for picking fruit, and he’ll tell you that it’s an ‘immigrant job’ and is beneath him, or he’d be taking away that income from some poor Mexican that really needs it…

He has no skills, he has paid no dues, he has spent years getting things for virtually nothing, and now finds himself convinced that college and being American means he should have to accept nothing as insultingly low as the same things that many of us have fought and strived and paid and bled for in the crappiest conditions and with the crappiest paychecks…

...Yeah I do what I love now, yeah I make good money now, yeah I have every toy I want now, but there were a hell of a lot of golden arches along the path, and without them I 'd have never made it...

So I congratulate that lovely little teenager at MacDonald’s who probably hates being there, and probably doesn’t get a lot of money, and probably doesn’t get much respect from her friends and family…


Because she has mine, and one day, she will have hers as well...