Gold Found At JFK

If you're ever at JFK flying American out to Las Vegas, take a walk to the Burger King upstairs by the gates (past the security check point).

Last May I flew to Vegas with a friend of mine for a weekend in Sin City. While we were waiting for the flight, we decided to get a bite to eat at Burger King. The line was huge and you could tell that their "A" team wasn't working this shift. Even a simple order like a Whopper seemed to take an average of 15 minutes and then it sometimes went to the wrong customer who was so happy he got any food at all that he just ate whatever he was given.

It was in this food service chaos that we saw the sign. A bright, shiny gold sign prominently displayed at the top right of the french fry machine. In clear, bold black letters it read "GOLD MINE."

We both burst out in laughter.

I've dealt with customer service and company profits for most of my employed life, so I get the significance of the machine, but the idea of the story behind how this sign came to be placed on this machine left too many possibilities in my mind.

I could see the franchise owner informing his less than friendly employees that they all had to add on the french fries to every order. "Ask every customer if they want fries" he would say. When he made the schedule and informed each employee where they would be working the following would have transpired:

Employee: "So I am fryer today?"
Owner: "No, you're working the gold mine."
Employee: "Yeah, de french fries."
Owner: "No. It is the gold mine and you will refer to it as such."
Employee: "Ok. I work fry."

The owner would then have gone out of his way to re-write all the new hire paperwork, manuals, etc. so that they all said "gold mine." Then a great idea would have come to him - a gold plaque proudly stating "GOLD MINE" so that every employee from this point forward would know the monetary importance of this machine and the product it cooks.

I didn't hear them ask ONE person if they wanted to add fries with their single burgers.

Some gold mine...