There's a list of "life lessons"
falsely attributed to Bill Gates but apparently
originally created by an education reformer, one Charles Sykes. Number 5 is:
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grand-parents (sic) had a different word of burger flipping. They called it opportunity.
Flipping burgers
wasn't beneath James Franco's dignity, either:
In
1996, I moved to Los Angeles from Palo Alto at age 18 to study English
at UCLA. I soon realized that half the city was working in the movie
industry and the other half was trying to get into it, and because I
hadn’t applied to the theater department as an incoming freshman, I
would have to wait two years to even apply.
Two years seemed like
an eternity, so I dropped out of college and went to a hole-in-the-wall
acting school in the Valley. My parents, who both had master’s degrees
and valued education, told me I would have to support myself if I wasn’t
enrolled in college.
I didn’t have a car, so I tried to get a
job at all the restaurants within walking distance of my post-dropout
Valley apartment. (I shared it with two other aspiring actors and slept
on the couch.) I had very little work experience. In high school, I was
fired from a coffee shop for reading behind the counter and from a golf
course for reading while driving the cart on the driving range. All the
waiter jobs were taken by more experienced actor/waiters.
Someone
asked me if I was too good to work at McDonald’s. Because I was
following my acting dream despite all the pressure not to, I was
definitely not too good to work at McDonald’s. I went to the nearest Mickey D’s and was hired the same day.
I
was given the late shift drive-thru position. I wore a purple visor and
purple polo shirt and took orders over a headset. I refrained from
reading on the job, but soon started putting on fake accents with the
customers to practice for my scenes in acting class.
It's a neat story. I like it.
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