“See, now I’m washing lettuce. Soon, I’ll be on fries. Then the grill. In one or two years, I make assistant manager, and that’s when the big bucks start rolling in!” If you don’t know where this quote came from, then the pic should have given it away. This is a famous line by Louie Anderson in ‘Coming To America’ starring Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall. Great, funny flick, if you get a chance to enjoy it.
Make Your Choice: College or McDonald’s
I only use McDonald’s as the scapegoat for all the menial, low-paying, last-considered jobs Americans begrudgingly take when there are no other options available. Inserting Burger King, Starbucks, Walmart, etc. will serve the same purpose for us. Society has led young students (and that is or was all of us) to believe college is the only route to success. Either you go to college or fill out that application at Mickey D’s. This faltered mentality is what leads inner city, underprivileged kids to join the military. Â They feel they don’t have any other option.
Knowledge of money and free-thinking are purposely extracted from our school curriculum to drill into our hippocampus that university is the only way to be a success. If we can’t get the good grades, we can’t get the get the good job. If we can’t get the good job, our lives are dispensable and unimportant. Will we believe what the TV news goons tell us, or fight for more.
Some of you devil’s advocate thinking people out there will say, “What’s wrong with working at McDonald’s? At least it’s a good living”. First off, minimum wage at 60 years old accompanied by 18 cent raises ain’t good! I’ll  relinquish (like Louie Anderson) that if we work hard enough over many back-breaking, slave-laboring years, we could make assistant manager (maybe even manager). These are our only options? F*** no!
Ask For The Secret Menu
In case you didn’t know it, In-and-Out Burger is a regular burger joint that serves up good but ordinary food quickly and at a good price, but what you may have missed is they have a secret menu which only the hard core fans of the restaurant know about. It’s not written down anywhere. We just have to know. Life works the same way. The only two things on the menu for us are a lousy low-paying job, or a lousy entry level job requiring a degree. If our view is this limited, we are unable to comprehend how people do great things, make awesome amounts of money, wrap themselves in a luxury lifestyle, and travel the world at will.
Most of us are unaware we can BUY the McDonald’s and have employees working for us! Like the great Jim Rohn said, “Profits are better than wages”. Profits are on average 3 to 10 times more than wages, sometimes even 100+ times wages. Which would we rather have: $7.35 an hour or $735 an hour? Not a difficult choice, is it? On the other hand, if we keep on believing the hype, nothing exciting, rewarding, or meaningful will ever come to your life. Don’t think I’m saying if we go to college or work at McDonald’s, we won’t find importance in our lives. I’m clearly saying, no matter what we do, we must look past the job, problem, or life situation into our own souls to find happiness and fulfillment. It will never come from external circumstances.
We can be happy and contribute to the world in any capacity we undertake. All we have to do is be cognizant of the fact it’s a choice. Being a millionaire, traveling the world, and having the best of things is not hard at all when you have the right habits. We don’t have to make the biggest, best, baddest invention in the United States. We don’t have to take on back-breaking work schedules. We don’t even have to think that far beyond the box. Just start the habit of doing little things everyday. When we look back after a year or two, we will have amassed an empire of our own making. An empire of what? Well, check your heart, I’m sure it’s in there.
Professor X