The Legend of Rich Goodburger, Pt. I

I fear that many of you will likely dismiss this story as untrue or absurd. Perhaps you'll even judge me to be a far-fetched dreamer, but I feel that I must tell this story despite how unbelievable it may be.

There used to be a small diner towards the edge of town many years ago, next to the old pharmacy and town cemetery that you pass when you drive out to the country. The shell of the diner’s building no longer exists, although its surroundings are so drab that you’d have to struggle just to even notice the lot today. Over time, its land has been transformed into an island of crumbled chunks of floating concrete and patches of weeds, surrounded by a sea of thick, black asphalt that serves as parking lots for new shopping plazas and office buildings. If you ask most people whatever became of the restaurant, they'll probably tell you some story about it going out of business due to stiff competition or hard economic times. Others may even tell you a concocted story about the diner's owner skipping town after one-too-many bad reviews. But a few discerning people will tell you truthfully that the restaurant no longer exists because of a strange thing that happened one summer many years ago, back when the Goodburger Diner became the source of a town legend.

It took place shortly after the diner’s owner – known to friends as Bud - hired his nephew, Alex, to come work for the summer and help his short-handed employees with common cleaning duties. Alex was a naïve teenager who didn’t know much about restaurants or cleaning and had spent most of his previous summers traveling to a regular rotation of summer camps and playing with friends at the city pool. Although he wasn’t thrilled about having to bus tables, empty trash, clean restrooms, mop floors, or sweep the entryway each day, he tempered his lack of enthusiasm with an understanding that since business was typically slow, the work effort required would be minimal at best. More importantly, he was excited at the prospect of earning some spending money during the summer.

Alex’s uncle was a happy but continuously preoccupied man who managed his restaurant by busily running back and forth between the kitchen and the dining area. He preferred to keep a simple menu so that he could hire inexperienced cooks. By doing so, he calculated that he could save money on their wages and instead teach them how to cook the few basic items that he offered on the menu: hamburgers, chicken fingers, grilled cheese sandwiches, French fries, onion rings, and tuna melts.

It was no secret that Bud was struggling to keep his little diner open. One problem was the food itself. Most people are familiar with the adage, “You get what you pay for,” and unfortunately the food at Goodburger Diner suffered the consequences of Bud’s refusal to pay decent wages for experienced cooks. The restaurant’s mediocre food was continuously disparaged by the local newspaper’s food critic who found an unmatched pleasure in repeatedly visiting the restaurant so that he could generate another scathing review for the next paper. The critic even gained a small following of fans who were amused to learn how the restaurant could cook French fries that were “too fried,” or grilled cheese sandwiches that were “too grilled,” or hamburgers that were “too hammy.” Bud’s stingy spending habits bled into his promotional practices as well. He refused to pay much attention to thinking of ways to attract new business. Rather than advertise on the local radio or print coupons in the newspaper, he insisted on simply using the small changeable-letter marquee sign outside the restaurant’s front door to announce its “Daily Special.” Since Bud also refused to create new Daily Specials, the sign outside always read:

"Welcome to Goodburger Diner
Burger
$4.99"

The first week or so after Bud hired his nephew Alex to work at the diner, things went as slowly as expected. Alex quickly caught on to his uncle’s preferences for managing a restaurant by minimizing expenses, specifically by hiring few staff to begin with and making sure the few staff were agreeable to low wages. Although Alex’s curious nature wondered what would happen to the diner’s success if his uncle focused on quality rather than costs, he mainly tried to get by each day by quietly tending to his work, asking few questions, and doing exactly what his uncle ordered.

That all changed one day when Alex reported to work to find his uncle in a panic, running back and forth from the kitchen to the dining area drenched in sweat as he took customers’ orders, cooked them as fast as possible in the kitchen, and ran them back out to the tables at a frantic pace, even with a small crowd. Although Bud usually maintained at least one cook and one waitstaff in addition to himself and the busboy, it was apparent to Alex that his uncle was the only one working that day.

“Where’ve ya been!” Bud gasped when he saw Alex come in through the door, “I’ve needed ya hours ago!”
“What’s going on?” Alex asked.
“The cook quit this morning!”
“Tammy quit?” Alex replied in disbelief.
“You heard me…she’s gone. She left to work at the bakery down the block.”
“Well what about the other cooks, George or Scooter?”
“I called them already, but George said he can’t take off from his other job until the afternoon, and Scooter’s sick.”
“Well, why are you waiting tables then? Where’s Fran?” Alex asked.
“Fran went with Tammy to the bakery - said they’ll be earning twice what I pay here,” Bud barked with an edge of resentment. Alex struggled not to let a chuckle escape but was saved when his uncle piped up again on his way from the kitchen to a customer with his hands full of hot dishes. “It’s just you and me today. You’re gonna have to learn how to wait tables on the fly, but first I want you to change the sign out front to ‘Now Hiring.’ You can find the keys and letters in the top drawer of my office desk.”

Alex hurried to his uncle’s office, a room that was normally off-limits to any employees whatsoever, and quickly found what he needed to change the marquee sign letters. In the intensity of the moment, he realized when he unlocked the sign outside that he couldn’t remember if his uncle wanted the Daily Special erased so that the entire sign would only read “Now Hiring.” Rather than bother his uncle with a simple question, he decided the sign still had enough space to include both announcements. It now read:

"Welcome to Goodburger Diner
Now Hiring
Burger
$4.99"

At the time there was no reason for Alex to realize it, but this slight change in a sign’s letters would soon bring big changes to his uncle’s small business.

...to be continued