Heath, OH - McDonald’s lunchtime drive-through guy, Tom Willis, always wanted to break into showbiz.“I never had the time to give it a shot, though. Lucky for me, terrorists knocked down the World Trade Center.” Willis noted with an uncomfortable chuckle. “Whoa … is this thing on?”
Willis, a former securities trader who worked in the North Tower, managed to escape that fateful day. "I made a promise to bring my dreams to life, to make it happen ... for the victims."
Six months later, Willis settled for 11 to 7 drive-through duty at the McDonald’s on Holmes Avenue.
“I’m definitely NOT loving it,” Willis chortled. “But it could be worse … I could be flipping burgers.” Willis slapped his knee in pantomime, avoiding the eye-daggers hurled from the burger-flippers behind him. “This gig allows me to try out all my new material.”
Willis’s “material” includes—among other comedic gems—the ultra-confusing, “Welcome to Burger King, may I take your order?” The breathy “What are you wearing?” The overdone, “No Coke, Pepsi” routine. And the always shocking, “That’ll be $452 at the window, please pull around.”
In a moment of weakness, Willis broke down in tears, forgetting his microphone was still turned on. “Oh, who am I kidding?” Willis cried. “My life is shit.”
T. Leach, a local man waiting in line to order the number 6, responded with an impeccably timed, “Would you like fries with that?”
“Everybody’s a comedian,” Willis concluded with a reluctant smile.
