Things I Have Learned (Recently).

It truly has been a long time since I've written on here. No doubt all three of you have been on the edge of your seats, biting your fingernails to the bleeding quick in anticipation for my next post. Quite a few things have changed in the time that has elapsed between then and now, and the past few months have taught me a lot. So, this post is dedicated to the things I have learned since the last time I wrote a post for this here blog.

1. I look good.

Back in December, I took a long, hard look at myself and decided to make some changes. I'm not one to have New Year's resolutions, but when you work up a sweat from getting in and out of your car in the middle of a Utah winter, I made an exception to my rule and set a goal to lose some weight.
This is me last Thanksgiving engaging in one of my favorite physical activities. Some people jog, others climb rocks, I tried to see how much food I could shove down my gaping maw in a meal. The plus size...er...side to all this is that I was never hungry. The down side was that my physical appearance reduced my love life to smelling Marie's hair while she was asleep. In January, I dusted off the gym pass and began working out every day before class. I also started walking to UVU, which makes perfect sense because it takes about as much time for me to walk there as it does to drive (not only was I morbidly obese, I was also incredibly lazy). After a few months of hitting the elliptical, I started lifting weights, too. I gave up sugar on every day of the week except Sunday and began what people call "portion control" (see: borderline self-starvation). As a result, that shirt with the bursting buttons you see in the pic up there actually fits me now, and I was finally able to return all those bras Marie was letting me borrow.

This is a picture of me 40 lbs. later and on a hike up Squaw Peak in Provo. I wasn't exactly sure what a hike was up until this picture was taken. When Marie approached me and suggested that we go on a hike, I thought she was challenging me to some Madden on my PS3. I think my expression sums up how I felt when I found out what she really meant.
I love it when people ask me how I lost the weight. I could tell them the truth and say that it is as simple as exercising and listening to your body, but that would be too easy. I tell them that I throw up after every time I eat or I simply say, "cocaine is a heck of a drug." That last one doesn't seem to go over very well with the church crowd.

2. Working At In-N-Out Is Not As Fun As Advertised

I had the opportunity to open a new In-N-Out Burger in Orem last November. I gave up my job as a manager at Los Hermanos to do so. I wish I could say that I didn't regret it, but I did. There were a few things that bothered me about working at In-N-Out, and I will summarize them to give you an idea of what it was like for me. First and foremost, people take their job way too seriously there. It may have the best reputation in the nation in the category of fast food joints, but what a few of the people there failed to recognize is that a fast food joint is still just a fast food joint. A good example of this would be their order inputting system. There are several ways you can enter a burger into the computer and still have it come out the way the customer wants it. The cooks, however, only want it done a certain way. I entered an order for a burger and it wasn't to the cook's liking. He came up to my register and informed me that I did it wrong. I try to be a good co-worker, so I apologized, he said it was okay and we both went back to work. A little later, I made a similar "mistake." The cook came up again, grabbed my shoulder and told me to turn around. I didn't immediately do so, as I was taking an order for another customer at the moment. My attention paid to the customer and not the cook seemed to upset him (his burger-flipping time must be extremely important). When I was done I turned around to see what he needed. With a restaurant full of people waiting to make an order he stands on his toes to be at eye level, holds the ticket with my "incorrect" order on it in my face and says through clenched teeth, "That's strike two, bro."

Really?

Sir, I know In-N-Out pays you decent money to flip a burger. The burger is the business. However, you're wearing a paper sailor hat and kind of look like a gay elf. What do you think gives you the right to get in my face and snarl threats at me like you're a Colombian drug lord in a direct-to-VHS Steven Seagal movie?

The fun doesn't end there. Another thing that drove me nuts about that place was the sheer stupidity of the customers. Every shift, after a big rush, there would be quite a few dirty tables that needed to be wiped off and sanitized. Imagine for a moment this all too common scenario: You are out to eat with some friends. You have 4 booths in the burger joint, and all of them are dirty. There's nobody else in the restaurant but yourself and your friends. There comes along a worker and he looks like he's about to wipe off some of the booths. What do you do?
A. Wait 15 seconds and let the worker sanitize the table to give you a clean eating space
or
B. Go ahead and sit down at a booth covered in so much ketchup it looks like a murder scene.
Too many of those morons chose option B. Have some patience, people.
Speaking of stupid customers, they ruin everything. One night Danny Glover came in and just wanted to get a burger. He placed his order and stood waiting for it to come out. Some moronic BYU student noticed that it was really Danny Glover and all of a sudden he was mobbed by Napoleon Dynamite-quoting retards grabbing a bite to eat after their 80's dancing. I normally have a hard time with empathy, but I truly felt sorry for Danny Glover when he had to go wait in his car for his food because too many people were bothering him for pictures. Those insensitive jerks. I hate BYU students. Poor Danny Glover.
Not that everything at In-N-Out was bad. The managers there were pretty awesome, for the most part. I also got to meet some pretty nice and cool people there. Basically, if you worked at In-N-Out and are reading this now, then you are one of the cool ones.

I am out of time for the moment. I am going to continue sharing things I have learned with you at a later date. I will be in touch.