Influenced by a Leader of Leaders
Imagine these details, being 18 years old, having arrived in Miami from Cuba six years, and a couple of months prior, being hired by the Burger King corporate office (then 200+ restaurants strong) as a Boy Friday and starting in a department that was called Office Services.
When hired, part of the orientation process included a couple of key factors:
Burger King was founded by two individuals, Jim McLamore and Dave Edgerton. Photos of both were shown.
The company had recently being purchased by Pillsbury, the one with the “dough boy” icon for a large sum.
As a Boy Friday my job required me to be all over the corporate building. At the time it consisted of a two story structure which was not really big. I did anything that would come up, including adding gas to vehicles, picking up people at the airport, making coffee, washing dishes, etc.
Some Saturdays, Jim would come by the building and spend some time in his office. One day, while moving these huge file cabinets near his office he asked my name, what I did, what aspirations I had and asked me a few questions about my coming from Cuba. “Take a break and sit down for a couple of minutes,” he said.
Being curious myself, I asked him how he had started, which allowed him to give me the long version of his history, with a restaurant located in downtown Miami and the roadside stand where he and Dave came up with the name Whopper. I told him how my Dad took me to eat a Whopper on the day I arrived in Miami and how, up till then, I had not eaten meat for over a month.
What was fascinating to me was the fact the President of Burger King Corporation took time to talk to me—a puny little Cuban boy who was totally green, easily impressed and his spending time with me made me feel special… actually important.
Young and naïve, I would ask him questions like “Mr. McLamore, I just saw a rubber stamp request come through from your secretary and it had the initials NFW. Can I ask what that means? His answer with a slight grin, combination smirk (which were his trademark) was “That’s for me to stamp requests that are senseless…it means NO F%$#@ WAY!”
After that, we became hallway buddies. After a few months working for the company I moved to a different area (printing) within the same department. After two years I had taken a department consisting of one person and had built it up to 12 employees. He would joke with me about the growth of my department and how it compared to his story.
Jim became a mentor for me. He was the only individual I had met during my time in the U.S.A. who had “MADE IT”. He transmitted this calmness, confidence and sincerity in his answers that became part of my education in the corporate school world. He would often provide me with confidence building comments and share with me facts that were extremely interesting, like how he’d keep receipts forever and how he had engineered the Whopper to be a product where you would taste the ingredients as you bite into the burger.
I became an admirer of who he was, what he represented and even became friends with the family. And it all started with a simple bit of curiosity on both ends.
Roland B. Garcia - CEO & Founder, Original Impressions.
