What do Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and I have in common? We both got our start working at McDonalds! Now, do him and I both probably wish we could have skipped the grease and crabby customers and gone straight into an office job? Well, 17-year-old me would have said yes, but 25-year-old me is grateful for the experience. I’ve learned since joining Happy Day that I am far from the only person who discovered that fast food teaches you more than just taking an order. As I sit here now, writing these articles for you, I frequently find myself reflecting on time spent working at a quick serve restaurant, and all of the unique skills it gave me. Even Happy Day President, Tobe Finch, agrees: A restaurant can be one of the first places someone learns to work hard and communicate with people that you could eventually be leading.

Jeff and I (we’re on a first-name basis because I’ve ordered so much of his stuff) aren’t the only ones who learned about business and people through asking “would you like fries with that?” In fact, 1 in 3 Americans work fast-food as their first job, and an impressive 1 in 8 Americans have worked at a McDonalds at some point in their lives. Like any other job, there are significant pros and cons to this kind of work, but fortunately, the pros outweigh the cons. You will learn the ins and outs of what to do and what not to do in a variety of situations. In most cases, this will create a drive in you to achieve more and grow as a person.

In today’s world, it is becoming increasingly common for people to be paralyzed by indecision, to an almost debilitating extent. One of the first things you discover working at a quick-serve restaurant is that everything is now. The customers want and need their food now. When there are concerns and conflicts, it needs resolved now. This fast-paced environment helps instill confidence in you. While you stumble your way through the beginning, something amazing is happening! Your resilience builds and your abilities grow until you’re no longer stumbling, you’re soaring.

These jobs are just as much physically demanding as mentally, requiring you to stand for hours, manage high volume of orders, and keep up with an extremely fast pace. Having consistent expectations and meeting daily goals helps reinforce discipline, often resulting in a stronger work ethic that is valued across all career fields. You learn to stay calm under pressure and adapt easily to changes such as new technology or frequent changes in menu items. Handling change without missing a beat has been a strength in Jeff and I’s careers, and likely many others. Additionally, employees learn to communicate effectively with customers and colleagues, often juggling a variety of personalities at once in challenging situations. This fosters strong communication abilities that will later be invaluable in other careers.

So, what’s with the stigma? One of the biggest cons of working in quick service is the degradation that often stems from wearing a name tag. Working at McDonalds, or any other fast-food restaurant, is much more than flipping burgers, but it can be a difficult task convincing others of that. At the time I worked at McDonalds, I was also teaching preschool. I worked at McDonalds in the evenings and weekends to help make ends meet while going to school and trying to get my life started. It truly felt like living the Hannah Montana double life. By day, I sang songs and taught children their ABC’s. Little eyes staring affectionately at me, parents telling me daily how grateful they are for what I do, but by night? I couldn’t tell where the faint smell of French fries ended and I began. With a simple change of clothing, your accomplishments, identity, all of them can disappear. Regardless of how articulate or kind you might be, sometimes, you’re seen as a nameless worker meant to cater to late-night cravings. In jobs like this, you’re working hard for a living, but you aren’t always able to be proud of what you do if it doesn’t meet a certain societal standard.

For many people, especially those just entering the workforce, quick-service restaurants provide an accessible first step into the working world. Despite the stigma that you will inevitably feel, quick service restaurants have provided opportunities for millions of people, as well as acting as a certain in a time of uncertainty. You quickly come to terms with the effects of the service life. It’s fun and good, but it really does wear you down, physically and emotionally. Often times, fast food businesses make crew member roles standardized into simple routines, lacking real skill, to create turnover proof jobs. That model relies heavily on replaceable employees, which pushes the idea that there is no real future in this field. The stigma needs to be eliminated.

That’s why the culture here at Happy Day is a bit different. Turns out Jeff and I aren’t the only ones who found more than a paycheck behind the counter. Take Pat Rogers, our VP of Quick Serve Operations. He got a degree in special education with a minor in coaching, not exactly the resume you’d expect from someone running restaurant operations. But when he took a job at Arby’s as a young adult, he stumbled onto the simplest truth: this was never really the food business. It’s the people business. You will always run into people who are unkind or unforgiving, whether they’re wearing a headset or standing on the other side of the counter, and our managers actually look forward to talking crew members through those moments and watching them come out more resilient on the other side. The soft skills; communication, teamwork, staying steady when someone’s yelling about their order, those are the ones that end up mattering most, long after the name tag comes off.

Then there’s Tobe Finch, who cut his teeth as a crew member at Taco Time and Arby’s before eventually running Happy Day, and he’ll tell you those early jobs taught him things business school never could. Our mission here isn’t just to give people a paycheck to get by on; it’s to build leaders, whether they stay in this industry for 30 years or use it as a launchpad to somewhere else entirely. Chase the easy money and easier hours, and you might just miss the growth that comes with the harder path. Think of it like lifting weights: a 5-pound dumbbell every day for a year won’t change much. You have to add weight to build capacity and that’s exactly what we’re in the business of doing here. It’s hard but it’s fun and it’s definitely worth trying.

Maybe that’s the real thing Jeff Bezos and I have in common. Neither of us knew exactly where our first job would take us. We just knew we were getting started. Take the leap, overcome the stigma. Working in the culture of a quick-serve restaurant is unique and joyous, and it can make a world of difference in a developing person. In 20 years, you might still be able to fry a burger or roll a taco from memory, but I promise that won’t be the only skill you carry with you. And who knows? Maybe you’ll end up building something bigger, too. Jeff did.