DALLAS – Off a bleak and empty interchange midway through the Dallas sprawl stands a Burger King. It's past midnight, the rain sizzles on the parking lot blacktop like frying bacon. A young woman is working the lobster shift at the drive-through window. She is overweight and wears pink lipstick.
"Nothing special," she says of herself. "Nothing much."
From the car window, the whole fast-food experience is a numbing routine. Pull up. Order from the billboard. Idle. Pay. Drive away. Fast food has become a $120 billion motorized American experience.
But consider the life inside that window on Loop 12 in West Dallas. There is a woman with children and no health insurance, undereducated, a foot soldier in the army of the working poor. The fry cook sneezes on the meat patties. Cigarettes go half smoked. Cameras spy on the employees. Customers throw their fries and soft drinks sometimes because they think it's funny.
"I hate this job," Castillo says with a smile. "I hate it." It is her third drive-through job. First it was Whataburger. Then McDonald's. Now here.
Castillo works from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. She earns $252 a week before taxes. There is no chance of overtime, because the boss doesn't allow it. To make ends meet, she and her husband work split shifts, he at an auto parts place during the day and she at the Burger King at night. And so the children, ages 7 and 8, are alone for a half-hour in the morning, left to wash and dress themselves.
Castillo arrives at her two-bedroom rental house on a tough street at 7. She takes the boys to a McDonald's for breakfast at 7:15 – the same place she used to work – before dropping them off at school at 7:45. A man named Carlos works the window there. They used to work there together.
Every morning, the boys' order is the same: one sausage, egg and cheese biscuit; one bacon biscuit; two hash browns; and two orange juices. Castillo could take free food home from Burger King, but the boys like McDonald's better.
"Regrets, yes, I got some," she says. She wishes she would have worked harder in school. Not gotten pregnant at 13. Again at 14. She wishes she would have thought about life instead of letting it come at her, one dead end job at a time.
Since this story was originally published in the New York Times, I presume the purpose was to cause us to feel sorry for this woman. After all life has dealt her a tough situation, right? Maybe she should be entitled to some government program so she could make some progress and improve herself. Sorry, I don't feel sorry for her. She made her choices and now she is living with them. It is not the government's responsibility to fix her problems. My taxes should not pay for her lack of planning. I do feel sorry for her two kids, however. They couldn't choose their mother, and they didn't ask for this life.
