Finding Joy in Anything: Greg, McDonald's, and Greek Gods

Angry fast food employees

I’ve been traveling a lot again recently. When you’re traveling, when you’re on the road, you tend to end up in gas stations and fast food joints. If you go through a lot of fast food, particularly through the drive-thru, you start to notice that the people who work at the drive-thru are not always in a great mood.

Listen, I get it!

The first job, the only “real” job I’ve ever had, was actually working at McDonald’s when I was 16 years old, for a little over a year. I worked at the grill in the back. And let me tell you, it gave me a completely different perspective on life. I’m always so grateful that I actually had that position because it makes me so much more empathetic and sympathetic with people who are working in fast food.

The job is grueling.

It’s really high stress, super fast-paced, and you have to deal with rude customers who complain all day. You’re not even paid anything for it!

Greg, who was happy

A bunch of years ago I lived less than two minutes from a McDonald’s. I was always on the road, so I would often stop there real quick on the way out before I started a major trip, or sometimes real quick on the way home if I hadn’t eaten since the gig. This particular restaurant had a worker, let’s say his name was Greg.

Greg was middle-aged, and he was always in the drive-thru. He was the guy taking your money. He wasn’t the guy giving you food or taking your order. He was just the guy taking your money.

And Greg was always, without fail, in an amazing mood.

Every single time you pulled up and rolled down your window he’d be like,

“Hey, okay! So you got a snack wrap and a medium fry, a large Coke. That’ll be $5.43! It’s on a card? Okay, credit card it is! Boom. There’s your credit card. You have a nice day, sir!”

Greg was a beacon of positivity. It was impossible not to smile anytime when you rolled up to his window. And that reminds me of something I used to read in philosophy.

An exercise in futility

As a student of philosophy I read about the Ancient Greek story of Sisyphus. According to the myth, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to an eternity of rolling a boulder up a hill. When he got to the top, the boulder would roll all the way back down, and he would have to walk back down the hill and start again.

He had to do it over and over and over and over again. It was an exercise in futility.

The great existentialist philosopher Albert Camus wrote an entire book called The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus concluded that Sisyphus is a hero. In fact, he argued that Sisyphus is free, for even though he had been condemned to this monotony, doing the same task over and over again for the rest of eternity, it is in his walk back down the hill that he is able to contemplate his existence. Sisyphus is able to think about how he feels about his work.

“The rock is his thing.”

Essentially, Sisyphus gets to decide how he feels about the boulder, how he feels about his work. He gets to contemplate his own existence and insofar as he does that, he is free.

More importantly, Sisyphus can be happy.

He can choose to be happy because he can make the rock his thing.

Finding joy in the drive-thru

Greg is an anomaly in a world of surly, annoyed, rude fast food workers – people in a service industry who seem uninterested in providing any. I would sometimes stop at McDonald’s, even though I really didn’t want McDonald’s, just because I knew he was gonna be there, and it was gonna brighten my day. Even just for a moment, even just for a second.

Greg made the drive-thru his thing.

He’s not using McDonald’s like a 17-year-old kid to get their first job experience. He’s middle aged. He’s not climbing the ladder. He’s not going to become a manager. If he was ever going to be a manager at a fast food restaurant, he probably would have been by this point in his life. This is Greg’s career. He’s working in the drive-thru at McDonald’s.

And yet, Greg found a way to make the drive-thru window enjoyable, take pride in his work, and share his positivity and enthusiasm with everybody who comes through there.

I think we could all be a little more like Greg.