A Job, Not A Parable

Anne Hull: The Hardee's biscuit slides toward the heat lamp, and the uniforms are waiting.

"That one's mine," says Brandi Garner, snagging the cinnamon biscuit. A digital clock overhead is tracking each customer's wait time in the drive-through and transmitting the results back to corporate. Brandi folds the bag so the heat won't escape, then leans out into the 8-degree wind chill with snow spitting sideways on her face and farmland all around. At home later she'll have a few nice sips of Equate Stomach Relief, but now she's counting four sets of headlights and two employees who called in sick.

"Let's go," Brandi says, drumming her fingers. "Where's the egg and cheese?"

Two weeks earlier in Was…