MEMOIR

It Wasn’t Easy Living On Minimum Wage

I couldn’t afford to eat the burgers I was slinging

This is way fancier than what I was eating. Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

I’ve always been amused by people claiming fast food is cheap. Even when I worked there, I couldn’t afford it.

Way back in the 1980s, when I was in high school and then college, minimum wage was $3.35. I put in my time at just about every major fast-food joint, except, oddly, McDonald’s.

I did my Hardee’s stint in 1987

It was the summer I married my first husband. He was spending the summer at home with his parents, but I had already moved into the place where we’d spend our first year of marriage and last year of college. We had the bottom half of a small bungalow.

Another couple rented the even smaller second story that was really just an attic. Their bed, tucked under the eaves, was the first thing you saw when you entered their space. It struck me as a suitable place to live only for poets.

The Hardee’s uniform in those days was hot, unbreathable brown polyester, and we were only issued one. I didn’t have a washer or dryer, but I washed it by hand each night and hung it up to dry. Some guys would let a disgustingly long time lapse between washings, even if they lived at home with their parents and had access…