1/ When I was in high school, I worked at McDonald’s. It was a really good experience for me, and I met a lot of interesting people there (including, improbably, the best chess player I ever played against).

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2/ The lunch rush at McDonald’s was something else. For 2 solid hours, it was all hands on deck, super busy. There was one guy whose job was to run the grill & make sure everything ran smoothly. He would tell us what to make—cheeseburgers or Big Macs, the occasional Filet O’Fish.

3/ Our guy was named Joe Brown. He was a legend. He’d come in at 10 AM and take an entire pot of coffee to the break room, where he would smoke cigarettes and drink the entire pot to prepare himself for the lunch shift.

4/ If you ever worked in fast food, you know: this was a stressful job. And Joe Brown was AMAZINGLY good at it. Supposedly he was in school to be an air traffic controller. I can’t imagine a job that better prepared you for that than overseeing the lunch shift.

5/ (Once, while working the night shift, he had to explain to Lawrence Taylor—yes, THAT Lawrence Taylor—that there were no more apple pies, and none could be made on short notice. Sadly I was not there to see that!)

6/ If Donald John Trump was in charge of the grill during the lunch shift at McDonald’s, it would be a disaster. He’d stop and eat Big Macs. He’d yell at customers. He’d take a dump on the floor. It would be a miracle if any food got made at all.

7/ That's basically how Trump has handled the rollout of the vaccine. He hasn’t done a fucking thing. He’s been on the golf course. The vaccine was produced and distributed IN SPITE OF HIM. It’s a miracle we ever got this far.

8/ January 20 will be like if Joe Brown came out of the breakroom, fully caffeinated, and took over control of the lunch rush—but on a much grander scale. The upgrade from Trump to Biden is impossible to overstate. It’s going to make a huge difference. It’s going to SAVE LIVES.

This is going to be a scary couple of months, no matter who is in charge. But after four years with an absentee president, it’s going to feel so good to have a competent leader again.

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