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Saturday, Apr. 18, 2009

Riverside Wendy’s closing will mean changes for longtime employee

A couple of weeks from now when the Wendy’s on Riverside Drive closes for good to make way for a road project, one man will leave behind the place where he has become an institution.

For nearly 15 years, Paul Cooper has been cleaning up after the lunch crowd there.

Cooper’s two-and-a-half-hour-a-day job as dining-room attendant and all-around picker-upper is part of a work program for people with developmental disabilities.

“I like cleaning up and being nice to the customers,” Cooper, 52, says. “Making a lot of money, too. About 100-or-something dollars every other week.”

Cooper isn’t sure where he will work when the restaurant shuts down at the end of the month.

“It means I have to find another place,” he says. “It might be somewhere else, like Taco Bell.”

The other day before noon, the dining room was empty save for a family with four small children. Cooper made his rounds, wiping tables, straightening chairs. One of the children sprang up from the table and darted across the room, bumping into Cooper.

“Careful,” Cooper told the little boy. “Say, ‘Excuse me.’ ”

Andy Harrell, who heads up the Advocacy Resource Center of Macon, whose jobs and housing program helps Cooper, thinks Cooper will fit in fine at another eatery.

“He’s just one of those guys who really likes the routine,” Harrell says. “He’s totally happy and content.”

Harrell’s agency, formerly known as the Association for Retarded Citizens, assists dozens of locals like Cooper in making inroads in the workplace.

In the past, Harrell says, employers have told him they would hire people “as long as they work as good as Paul does. He set a standard.”

Wendy’s customer Brenda Bowen, a regular, says, “He’s always polite and he’s helpful and he’s always just a pleasant person to be around. He’s a character.”

Co-worker Tasha Johnson says Cooper is “good at talking to the customers and keeping the restrooms and dining room real clean. He loves his job.”

Not too long ago, someone left Cooper a $5 tip, a relative rarity in the land of interstate-side fast food, where 99-cent menus are more common than dining-room ambience and local flavor.

A Wendy’s promotional employment poster above the napkin holders and ketchup dispensers — ones Cooper routinely refills — reads, “Face it ... you want a job that makes you smile.”

Cooper has found one.

And even if it means taking out the trash, the work can really pay off.

“I found a $20 bill out there one time,” Cooper says.

“I had to do something with it. I had to spend it.”