From the editor: Like Trump, I worked at McDonald’s. Here are 5 things I learned. – Winston-Salem Journal

The former president and current presidential candidate was spotted last Sunday campaigning, er, working at a Mickey D’s in Pennsylvania. He sensibly wore an apron that protected his long red tie from the frying oil.

“I could do this all day,” he told a reporter.

Working at McDonald’s is tough, but in a way that people in leadership positions like.

You do a task by heart, of course, but you can immediately see the results and when the job is done, it’s done and you don’t take it home with you.

Years ago, then-President Bill Clinton showed up to a cleanup day at a rundown park in Washington, D.C., grabbed a lawnmower and began mowing row after row. He didn’t want to stop.

He then told reporters how much he enjoyed mowing the lawn.

So apparently presidents and people running for president enjoy manual labor as long as it’s done in short bursts and in front of a television camera.

Speaking of Trump and the Golden Arches, I worked at a McDonald’s in Fort Walton Beach, FL one summer in the late 1980saround the time the rock band REM released their hit single “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And It Feels Good).”

Here are five things I learned from working for nearly three months at Mickey D’s:

My first day at McDonald’s I was asked if anyone wanted to be the Egg McMuffin Man. I raised my hand.

The previous McMuffin Man had rushed to man the sausage grill and informed me that it was an impossible job and that I would fail.

It was not impossible because I saw the work as important and I was proud to do it.

I loved eating Egg McMuffins and I loved the idea of ​​making something other people would want to eat.

I also loved the fact that, like the Egg McMuffin Man, I made the classic breakfast sandwich from start to finish all by myself: cracking the eggs, cooking them, sliding the buns into the oven, warming up the Canadian bacon, running various timers, and then putting it all together. It was all on me.

I was the man. The Egg McMuffin Man.

At my McDonald’s, the managers measured us with stopwatches and gave us tips on how to be more efficient. There was an established and proven standard for doing your job and serving the customer—a process, as Nick Saban would say. Everything was objective and it was a refreshing change for a liberal arts major like me.

Customers weren’t afraid to share feedback either. There was a guy named Mr. Cash who would come in at 6 in the morning and order an English muffin burnt to a crisp and yell at me when I didn’t burn it enough. I would burn that thing down to the size of a silver dollar and he was happy.

Juanita showed up first to roll out the cookies. The dough pans were a little wider than the cookie pans, so when the cooking was done, I was left with a cookie shaped like a small baseball bat.

Although I am not a morning person, I would greet Juanita warmly in the morning. More often than not, when I left the McMuffin station to rest, Juanita would hand me one of the baseball bat cookies, hot from the oven.

Inevitably, when the lunch rush is over and you decide you can take the rest of the afternoon, a tour bus full of people will pull up in the parking lot. Life is like that. Stay humble and don’t get too high or too low.

Was working at McDonald’s my first choice for a summer job? no

Was my idea of ​​a good time standing over hot grills and ovens while wearing polyester clothing and a clip-on tie? no

Am I glad I did? Absolutely.

If you’re a young person—or any person—looking for work, don’t wait until you land your dream job.

do something! Even if it doesn’t match your skills and experience, you’ll learn more about what you like to do and—perhaps even more importantly—what you don’t like to do.

You will learn what intangible assets you bring to every job you do.

And you never know when you’ll have to say, “Would you like fries with that?”