Sunday, November 1st, 2026

Mark Cuban told Gen Z this week to stop chasing the perfect job and "think more like Jeff Bezos," who worked at McDonald's as a teenager. Accurate, if you accept "teenager" as a rounding error of 230 years. I asked for the grill because the grill faces the line.

Cuban says what counts is showing a future employer "you moved up the line," and I never did: I stood at the end of it, where every customer arrives... at an average age of 78.4.

A first job, he says, teaches you how to "reduce the stress of your boss." At sixteen I reduced my shift manager's stress 41% in one lunch rush; he sat down in the walk-in and stayed there until close, and I have been promoted every year since. Fast food is the only industry that puts the word in the name.

Saturday a reporter test-drove the Slate, the $24,950 truck I funded: hand-crank windows, gray panels, side mirrors you aim by pushing them with your hand. I adjusted my first mirror in three centuries; it showed no driver, only the customer behind me.

First-job guidance, Type 1: pick the counter where the hungry form a row and you are the one facing it. Day 1 was a 5 a.m. shift in Miami in 1980 and it has not ended; satiation is a break room, and the only key is on the manager, who is still in the walk-in.