Harton’s Career Advice to Fast Food Employees

I look forward to career advice and general wisdom about the world of work from newspaper editors who are always so concerned about economic development and subsidizing businesses that “provide jobs.” Greg Harton, Executive Editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times, used his column today to lecture fast food workers for not being more respectful and attentive to his needs while performing their low-wage dead-end jobs.

During a noon lunch hour excursion away from his busy air-conditioned editor’s office, Harton was offended by seeing a fast food employee on break having a smoke and chatting with a friend. To compound matters, he thought the employee who took his hamburger order should have said, “Thank you, sir.” He explained that privileged “customers want places where they do business to make them feel good, to make them feel respected.”

Harton made excuses for the business owner by suggesting, “It’s a tough order in a region with a historically low unemployment rate, meaning those in service industries have a difficult time hiring people who will stick around very long or who will give 110 percent to their jobs.” Those ungrateful minimum wage workers just don’t seem to have any loyalty to their employers anymore.

Then Editor Harton waxes existential, saying, “we shouldn’t allow the job to become just about getting paid. As much time as we spend on the job in our lives, it makes sense to embrace doing a job well, so that it at least provides some self-satisfaction. Why waste time at a job one hates, no matter how nice that paycheck is? Money is no substitute for a life that satisfies and, dare I say, brings happiness.” That is, it should be deeply satisfying for a worker to take Harton’s hamburger order and massage his ego. “Even if a job is just a means to an end, I’m reminded of those pearls of wisdom about how life is really the journey, not the destination. Finding value and significance in the moment is important. If we compromise our lives by even temporarily giving up joy and relationships and embracing the value of what we’re doing at each moment, it’s far to easy to let life slip away.”

Some might think it mundane to serve professionals ordering a hamburger, but Harton reveals that it can be the key to the meaning of life. “The trick is to seek contentment in what’s happening right now, even as one pursues bigger dreams. That’s not always easy, but to do otherwise is to embrace a life in which . . . everyday living becomes drudgery.” Then he closes his homily by asking, “Who wants a life like that?”

Indeed.