The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order - New York Times

Like many American teenagers, Julissa Vargas, 17, has a minimum-wage job in the fast-food industry , but hers has an unusual geographic reach.
Carmen Sanchez, Julissa Vargas and Elizabeth Gonzalez work at a call center in California that fields orders from as far away as Hawaii. They must be polite
while urging customers to buy more food. 'Would you like your Coke and orange juice medium or large?' Ms. Vargas said into her headset to an unseen woman who
was ordering breakfast from a drive-through line. She did not neglect the small details 'You Must Ask for Condiments,' a sign next to her computer terminal
instructs and wished the woman a wonderful day.
What made the $12.08 transaction remarkable was that the customer was not just outside Ms. Vargas's
workplace here on California's central coast. She was at a McDonald's in Honolulu. And within a two-minute span Ms. Vargas had also taken orders from
drive-through windows in Gulfport, Miss., and Gillette, Wyo.

The only thing that made McDonald's even slightly palatable in my view is that it provided local, albeit shitty, jobs for kids. Well, that and the free ski trip for four I won to Jay Peak Ski Resort 20 years ago at one of my few forays into Mickey D's. I'm probably the only person in the world who got more from McDonald's than I ever spent there.

via Bits and Pieces