I've heard many news stories recently about teenagers having a tough time finding jobs because adults who have been laid off are desperate to take any employment they can find, and thus are beating out the kids for those jobs flipping burgers and mopping floors. Call it a sign of the times.

The country was in the midst of a mild recession when I graduated college — more years ago than I'm willing to admit. And I was one of those adults with a college degree who had to take one of those burger-joint jobs for a few months.

Yes, it was a humbling experience. But humility is a good thing. It helps keep a person grounded.

Many times I was asked by co-workers what I was doing working at a burger joint when I had a college degree. I had to fight off the sarcastic instinct to respond by saying something such as, "I know I have a college degree, but I have since discovered that my true calling is flipping burgers. I know I don't figure to make a lot of money in this career, but the reward I get when I see the smiles on people's faces when they chomp down on those fries is something you just can't put a price on."

OK, it wasn't a dream job, but I had two choices — take that job or move back in with my parents, and I valued my independence too much to do the latter. Besides, it's amazing the ways you can find to pinch pennies when you're trying to support yourself working for minimum wage.

The burger chain I worked for had a policy regarding food that I'm sure most fast-food places follow — once food had been sitting under the heat lamps for so long, it had to be tossed out, and employees were not allowed to eat it. Company policy. I guess they didn't want workers cooking a bunch of food they knew would never be ordered, then eating it when the timer ran out. That could easily be abused.

We always kept a few extra of all the different kinds of burgers and sandwiches on hand so we'd be ready when people came in. If you cooked it after it was ordered, customers would have to wait, which defeats the whole purpose of "fast food."

My boss had what I felt was a pretty reasonable policy. Don't cook anything beyond what you're supposed to cook. When it's time to throw it out, do so. If something happens to it on the way to the dumpster — for example, it gets eaten by a worker — he doesn't want to see it or know about it. If he didn't see it, it didn't happen.

As you might guess, I was always eager to empty the trash. I got very efficient at unwrapping the expired sandwiches and stuffing them down my pie hole on the way out the back door. In fact, I became so efficient at it, I rarely had to eat anything the rest of the day after I left work in the afternoon (I worked the breakfast and lunch shift).

I will admit, working a job like that was fun for the first few weeks. But it didn't take long for me to tire of it. I survived and ended up starting my newspaper career soon enough.