Opportunity

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.