Welcome to Dee’s Hamburger Drive-In, may I take your order, please?

Indulge me in some ancient history…

When I was sixteen, my friend Debbie told me about a job opportunity at Dee’s Hamburger Drive-in in Provo, Utah, an iconic fast-food restaurant in Utah that served burgers, fries, and shakes well into the eighties.

At $1.90 an hour, it was irresistible.

I had just purchased my first car, a 1969 Chevy Impala that my grandma sold me for $200, and I needed a job to pay off the $19 monthly loan.

When I told my dad I was planning to apply for a job in Provo, his first question was, “Why do you need to drive so far away when there are jobs right here?”

I didn’t think a six-mile commute was a problem, and the $1.90 hourly pay, more than the $1.20 rate at the drive-in near our house, made it worth it.

He couldn’t argue with that. So off I went to Provo for the big bucks.

I learned a lot from that first “real” job, not the least of which was the power of upselling.

If someone ordered a burger, I learned to ask, “Would you like fries with that?”

Well, of course, they did!

“Would you like a soda?” Again, of course!

“Could I make it a large?”

And so, it went. Who could resist an apple turnover ala mode for heaven’s sake?

This taught me to be wary of salespeople and their many tactics to upsell me.

No, I don’t want fries with that, and the small drink is fine, thank you.

And I don’t want upgraded floormats or the extended warranty or the deluxe car wash, and the list goes on.

“I’m on to you,” I smugly think, “I know about suggestive selling. Hello! I worked at Dee’s!“

I’ve taken a lot of teasing for that Dee Dolly counter-girl job, mostly because my friends and siblings are jealous.

I mean, I got free burgers that they paid twenty-nine cents for except on Mondays when they got them for nineteen cents.

And not everyone got to wear a red polyester dress with white piping around the neckline and a crisscross pattern on the bodice.

Do I need to mention winning burger-wrapping contests? I still have that skill. I never have a reason to quickly wrap dozens of burgers, but still…

For my birthday this year, some friends sent me a Dee’s Hamburger apron, complete with a picture of the mascot, the Dee Burger Clown. I was so excited when I opened it, I put it on immediately and wore it around the house all day. Then, I spent the day texting a photo of me wearing it to all my friends.

I think I might sleep in it.

That job not only helped me pay for my first car, but it helped me save money for my first year of college and pay for a lot of nice shoes. My mom told me I had expensive taste in shoes and said if I had to have fancy shoes, I had to pay for them myself. So, I did. Thank you, Dee’s, for all the shoes.

Dees taught me some critical mental math skills too. I mean, it’s not easy to quickly multiply six burgers by 19 or 29 cents. Try it and see for yourself. (But don’t ask me if I remember all that math.)

I learned about eating on a budget from the BYU students who came through the drive-up window and ordered dozens of 19-cent burgers and wanted uncooked patties with the buns in a separate bag. Oh, I see what you’re doing there…

The people lessons are too many to count…how to deal with difficult customers, how to ignore the students who mooned me in the drive-up window, how to keep busy by cleaning every spare moment so that the restaurant was spotless, which made people want to eat there.

I had a boss, Kathie, who always handed me a cleaning cloth or a broom if I had the slightest break between customers, and said, “Make yourself useful.” My kids probably hate that I learned that line or that concept…

Every time I go to a nail salon and see all the technicians on their phones between clients or lounging in the spa chairs, I want to hand them cleaning products and say, “Make yourself useful!” I mean, can’t they see the dust, fingerprints, and trash cans that need to be emptied? Don’t they know the message they’re sending to their clients? Clearly, the Dee standard does not exist everywhere.

I learned that if you are driving home after midnight, you don’t have to come to a complete stop at stop signs. At least that’s what my mom said.

She said to slow down and look both ways but keep on driving just in case there was somebody lurking around who might try to get into my car. (Judge for yourself whether it’s wise to coast through stop signs, and keep in mind we didn’t have automatic locks on car doors in the days of yore. So, she worried that I’d forget to manually lock the doors.)

My mom also threatened to call the highway patrol if I wasn’t home within 20 minutes after my shift ended. I never tested her on that because the woman always meant business, and she wouldn’t have hesitated to organize a posse if I wasn’t home on time. “For all I know, you’re dead on the road somewhere,” she’d say. “So, if you’re not home on time, I’ll call the highway patrol.”

One of the greatest things I learned from Dee’s was the catchy jingle from its television and radio ads. I even taught it to my daughters when they were growing up. Some things are that important. Go ahead, ask them if they know it. I did my best to teach them the important things in life.

You can listen to the jingle here.

If you grew up hearing these jingles, you’ve probably never forgotten them. If you didn’t, beware, you might not be able to get them out of your head.