JOB ASSIGNMENTS
Backwoods Blog;
in the woods and on the road…
Bruce Springsteen at a McDonald’s circa 1981
A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk at the Unitarian Society titled “Job Assignments” referring to the diverse number of jobs we may have had over the course of our work lives; the interesting or not so interesting jobs, how did we perform those jobs while we were doing them, and then, the what comes next. I’m sure each of us have stories that we could tell (and some we’d rather not). Here is one of my job-stories I included in the talk. This story comes from 1978.
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One of my first jobs when I was in high school was working at McDonald’s. I used to joke that I worked for a clown…While I flipped a lot of burgers during my shifts at the golden arches, the most unusual and memorable job assignment I had while employed at McDonald’s, was serving as the handler or body guard of The Grimace during a July 4th parade in downtown Houlton. My sister and I were part of a PR team at McDonald’s, whose responsibilities included such tasks as hosting birthday parties in the Ronald McDonald Room, conducting customer surveys or questionnaires and assisting with special events. Any excuse to get out of our regular duties was a no brainer. We were okay with a variant job assignment no matter what it might be.
On this particular July 4th, the McDonaldland Characters were coming to Houlton to march in the parade, along with the big McVan, which looked like an oversized brightly colored Winnebago from McDonaldland. Characters included (and you may remember a few of these) the Hamburglar, Captain Crook, Mayor McCheese, Officer Big Mac, The Grimace, and of course, Ronald McDonald himself. We met at a local motel with representatives from McHeadquarters a week before the operation and they explained our roles and responsibilities. My job was to keep an eye on and escort The Grimace, who was one of the larger and less mobile characters. The Grimace was a large, goofy, purple, furry, giant creature that loved milkshakes. He had big floppy feet and little arms with hands barely large enough to even hold a milkshake. Besides having mobility issues, the person inside The Grimace costume could not really see where they were going. My job was to keep The Grimace from going off-course and wandering into the crowd. Well, it turned out to be one of the hottest days of the summer, and I was certainly glad I wasn’t the one inside The Grimace costume. All I had to do was keep him out of trouble.
Everything was going just fine until we made the turn in Market Square where George Washington is now (this is the part of the parade where you have your biggest crowd), when suddenly I saw one of the Grimace’s eyes pop out of his head and hit the pavement! I ran over as quickly as I could, picked it up and wondered “What do I do now?” One of the other handlers also saw what happened and alerted the McVan that… we have a problem. This was something we had not prepared for in our parade orientation. All I could think of was some young child watching the parade being traumatized for life by seeing The Grimace lose his eyeball. By this time the McVan had stopped, its back doors opened and we ushered the one-eyed Grimace inside the McVan so volunteers could pop his eye back into the costume without being seen. Moments later (which seemed like much later), the backdoors of the McVan open and out stumbles The Grimace, still over-heated and disoriented, but at least he had two eyes back in his head. I have no memory whatsoever of what happened after that, but I suppose for the sake of this story, we finished the parade route without incident, and probably ate at McDonald’s afterward. I always liked the vanilla milkshakes.
In the woods,
Dave
July 30, 2025
McDonalds’s in the 1960s
McDonald’s in 1978, same design as Houlton’s (Big Mac is 90 cents)
Working the 10:1 grill on a run of 12
