Reflecting on Joey Franklin's Experience at Wendy's

In the essay “Working at Wendy's”, Joey Franklin successfully contrasted the differences in the lifestyles between each coworker. Whereas not every person like their jobs, jobs help us grow as a person given that jobs teach us new experiences. As in my own experience, the job I worked at taught me a lot. In Franklin’s experience, we see how the job is not as pleasant as he wishes. In this essay I will be mentioning the differences and similarities about a job experience between working at Wendy’s and as a Secretary.

Since we began reading the essay, we realize that Franklin is looking for a job. It is not until later that we realize that he does not want that job. It is not something that makes him feel proud. Although it is an achievement, is not one that can be said aloud. In comparison to his job, when I was working as a secretary I didn’t feel embarrassed at all because it was a job that I could actually enjoy and learn from. Whereas Franklin feels embarrassed and uncomfortable because he is working on such a lowly job. He has the ability to work at a better job due to his high qualifications. Franklin is confronted by a man who asks him about his job, but he can't tell him anything because he is very self-conscious as he states, "I want to tell him that I'm in the top 5 percent of students at my college, that I am two semesters away from graduating, and that I'm on my way to grad school to get a Ph.D. in English literature." (27)

Throughout the rest of the essay, Joey keeps telling us about the reasons of his coworkers who are working there. One of them is there to be out of jail, another because of the need to pay bills, and another applied because she knew she was going to get hired. Joey's reason is that he has to do it for the welfare of the family. "There is food in the fridge, and I have a job that pays an honest wage." (30) In comparison to his experience, in the office I was working at my coworkers where there to actually make money and help themselves be better at their job. They weren’t there just to stay out of jail or situations like that.

Consequently with my experience, I had a job that paid good money. I was working as a secretary it wasn't my dream job, but I had to do it for my own good. I needed money and also I wanted to feel the experience of working and getting money for myself, without the need to ask my parents for money all the time. I had to learn the way of doing things in the office. If I didn't do that, I would be like Joey and his job. As when Danny asked him to cover for him, Joey didn't know how to do the sandwiches in a fast way as Danny. Therefore, he was already predicting that he was going to fail and not do such a good job. The same would have happened to me, if I didn't learn how to file documents and make phone calls to schedule an appointment.

I agree with the author in the sense that sometimes we have to do a thing because we have to, even if we don't want to. We won't always get the job we dream of having, but at the end it is going to be worth it and it will teach us new things as well. For example how to deal with coworkers and their different situations as Franklin did and as I did in my experience. It’s true that we don’t always like our jobs but at the end of the day we have to do our best to get what we want.