Cathy Wade

The best career advice I've ever received is basically just to do what I think I can do and give it a try, and if it doesn't work, then I know I didn't go the right way. My boss has always told me to just do the best that I can. She says it's just fries and burgers, you can't get really complicated with it. That advice has helped me approach my work with confidence and not overthink things.

Don't let a man tell you that you can't do a job just because you're a woman. If you've got the strength, the knowledge, and the ability, you are able to do that job just as well as a man. I've had many men try to tell me I can't do something, and I'll show them that I can do it. There's nothing - as long as you've got the strength and the knowledge and you have the know-how, there should be no reason there ain't nothing out there you can't do. That's what I taught my girls. My one daughter ended up being a nurse and she's high up - she's got her RN and she's the head of the hospice in Akron. My other daughter has 4 kids and works at Amazon delivering packages. I told them both, you can do whatever you want, dear child.

The biggest challenges in my field right now are keeping up on all the new procedures and things, because things change on how food is processed, so a lot of times the times and temperatures change. We have to go through food certification every 5 years, so it's hard to keep up with a lot of times when they change things. They also decide to change packaging - like we went back to putting the Whopper in the box again, where we used to use it back in the 80s. Now we only wrap half of it in the wrap and put it in the box so it's not as tight. I guess they figure it's keeping the bun more plump and it doesn't get smashed in the bag as much. Another major challenge is the quality of workers - a lot of the young kids nowadays can't make simple change even though our registers tell them how much to give. They don't know how to sweep, they don't know how to mop. It's like they've never been shown how, and I try to teach them these basic skills.

The values most important to me are trying to teach the young people how to do things so they're not being totally stupid, and making them use their brain when they're working. I try to teach them simple things like how to make change, how to sweep, how to mop - basic skills that somehow they've never been shown. When they're doing the register, I try to teach them to just count the change back. In my personal life, I raised 5 kids - 3 stepchildren and 2 natural children - and when they hit a certain age, they started doing big chores. By the time they were all out of the house, they all knew how to clean, do dishes, cook somewhat, and do laundry, so they could at least survive on their own. I drilled into my kids that your children come before anything - your job can be replaced, your kids can't. That's the way my girls are now - they've told their bosses a few times, I can replace you, I can't replace my kids.