Just over a year ago, Angela Price, 18, was a quiet, reserved high school junior attending Monona Grove High School. In March of 2009, after noticing a “help wanted” sign in the window at Michael’s Frozen Custard on Atwood Avenue, she decided to interview for her very first job.
That was not an easy step. In fact, Price insisted her mother accompany her to the interview. “She kept me calm,” the teen remembered.
Michael’s owners, Michael Dix and Perry McCourtney, were in the throes of their annual summer hiring blitz, when their staff size balloons from 40 to 120, and recalled meeting Angela for the first time.
“She was shaking,” said McCourtney, understanding that nerves are a normal part of job interviews, particularly first job interviews. For that reason, the partners strive to create a positive first-job experience.
“It’s so important that everyone remembers their first job,” they agreed. “It shapes how you mold your career and look at work for the rest of your life!”
For Price, the job has already shaped who she is. In fact, it has almost completely retooled her personality. A young woman who “would hardly say ‘boo,’” according to McCourtney, the smiling teen is now pleasant and talkative. While many might be nervous about the responsibility of working with cash and dispensing correct change, Price said her concern was the people. “It took probably one-and-a-half to two months before I opened up and started talking,” she said. “I just took it one day at a time.”
Price, who lives in Cottage Grove, has worked evenings and weekends at Michael’s for over a year. “At first, it was difficult memorizing all the different sundaes,” she said. “I’m still learning, and I’m definitely more talkative. As soon as I started working the register, [my personality] just sort of came out.”
Now, regular customers know her by name.
Price earns $8 an hour working about 20 hours a week. The first of several paychecks she received helped finance her first car. “I paid for half, my dad paid for half, and then I made payments back to him.”
Now she tries to save as much as possible. This fall, she plans to pursue an online degree in finance through the University of Phoenix, and also wants to help care for her sister’s daughter. “I’m good at multi-tasking,” Price said, confidently.
Dix and McCourtney say most of the Michael’s staff is under the age of 20. While the partners have no children themselves, they certainly have years of experience working with young employees, who, they claim, are different these days. “I learned my work ethic from my parents and my school,” McCourtney said. When kids don’t receive that direction, it often puts Dix and McCourtney in the roles of mentor-teachers.
“Sometimes we have to do basic training,” said McCourtney. “We have to explain to kids the importance of being clean and showing up to work on time. Many kids are ill-equipped to handle responsibility. Those with helicopter parents [parents who ‘hover’ over their kids], are the most ill-equipped. I’m fearful for them. We know those parents love their kids, but they’re killing them with kindness, in our opinion.”
The two owners stress to their younger employees that everything they do is a choice and has a consequence, “because if you talk about good and bad, they turn off,” McCourtney said. The philosophy seems to be working. Former employees often return to visit friends or their former bosses.
One actually offered restitution. A former employee, who now lives in California, recently sent Dix a note. She was one of the original 13 employees at the Monroe Street flagship location. The woman, who was 16 years old when she worked at Michael’s, confessed she had taken about $200 from the business in product and cash while she was employed, and never got over the guilt. “She wanted to make the wrongs, right,” Dix said. The note also included a cashier’s check to pay for her past indiscretions.
As if on cue, Tony Herman, a former Michael’s shift manager, suddenly walks through the door and reintroduces himself to Dix. Herman, who has owned his own business, WebStix, for 10 years, worked at Michael’s as a college student. “He remembered me,” Herman said of Dix, smiling. In charge of 22 employees at the time, Herman said he now appreciates the management and customer service skills he learned on the job.
Michael’s Frozen Custard was founded in 1986 by Dix and then-partner John Kuehl, who died in 1993. McCourtney came on board in 1996 after serving as the director of human resources for UW Hospitals and Clinics. The change, not surprisingly, was significant. “At UW, I was surrounded by a lot of illness and death. Here, at the end of the day, it’s still all about custard!”
Dix appreciated the expertise McCourtney brought. “For a small business to have an HR guy was great,” he said, especially when many of their employees are easily distracted teenagers with raging hormones.
Price’s transformation — from bashful to buoyant — has come under the watchful eye of her manager, Maria Ruiz, one of four Michael’s managers that have been employed at the company at least eight years, something the owners claim is “unheard of in the fast-food industry.” The secret, they believe, is in compensating managers well, being keenly aware of what motivates each, and even offering to co-sign on their mortgages.
Exactly what Price will take out of this experience has yet to be determined. She hopes her online degree will open the doors for a role in personal banking — but then she’s also mulling over a career in child care. “I just love kids, so I’m undecided,” she said.
For now, she’s enjoying her fellow workers and all but a few facets of her job. When she’s not manning the register, she might count pints, stock shelves, or help with fries, cheese curds, or onion rings. Her favorite task is dishing out sundaes, but she admits she could do without the take-out-the-trash part. Because she recently recruited her best friend to join the business, Price received a $50 employee referral bonus to boot.
“I’m a much different person now,” Price said. “I had a hard time getting to know new people. But [here], I was forced to talk to strangers.” At Michael’s, which makes nearly all of its annual revenue during the months of June, July, and August, much of the company’s success is determined by the weather. And literally, when it rains, it pours — not customers, however.
For instance, business triples on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day due largely to special promotions the company runs, but weather plays a large role as well. “Last year, Father’s Day wasn’t that bad because it was raining,” Price said. “This year, it was sunny and nice. There was a lot of butting of heads [in the kitchen].”
Those, she said, are the tougher days, and just how she deals with the challenges reveals the depth of her maturation process. “Sometimes, you just have to walk away, keep working, and just push through it,” she said of the occasional snafu.
“The customer is always right.”
To that, McCourtney — the teacher — smiles. This, from the girl who just a year ago wouldn’t say “boo.”
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