Sometimes, the smell of coffee reminds me of the summer…er, well, month…that I worked at Hardees in Roanoke, VA.  I took the job, knowing I could only do it for a month…thankful for an employer willing to hire me for just a month.  I started at 6am, and most days worked until 4pm, with a half-hour break somewhere in there, if I was lucky.  It was where I decided that I love bacon, egg and cheese biscuits with tomato and mayo (I later learned that you really can’t request tomato on breakfast sandwiches anywhere north of VA without getting strange looks).

Despite being long hours, I don’t remember it being incredibly stressful.  In part, I think that was because I knew there was an end in sight.  In part, it was because it was fast food and, in all honesty, it wasn’t hard to meet  expectations.  And in part, I was happy to be earning money…I was leaving for Guyana at the beginning of July and this was my only chance to get any income before going back to school in August.

And you know what?  God used even that month at Hardees.  He helped me see how important it is to be different.  He reminded me that I need to give my best effort even when I am exhausted by early mornings and long days.

And, though my time there was short, I have some memories that have stuck with me – the lady who brought her $1 burger back up to the counter, with the top bun taken off, and asked me “Does this look appetizing to you?”; the elderly man who insisted I had shorted him $.10 in change, thus prompting me to get my manager to give him $.10,  only to have him later acknowledge that he’d been mistaken, return the dime, and thank me for being gracious through it all; and the not-so-pleasant memory of a middle-aged man coming through the drive-thru 3 times during my shift one day and commenting on how pretty my hair was each time…kind of creepy. 

But anyway, I thought it was funny that coffee prompted those memories.  I think it’s amazing how the mind and memories work.  God is so creative.