Unseen to the public, behind the shining stainless steel of the chutes filled with neatly boxed or bagged Chick-Fil-A vittles, is the food preparation area of the Chick-Fil-A restaurant. Called simply "the back" to those of us who worked there, it was packed with wonders, including the chargrill, the breakfast grill, the bun racks and of course the hennies.

I don't know why they were called hennies, I just know that they were; the term originated before my time at the Chick-Fil-A. An ordinary person might call them friers, as they were filled with 325° peanut oil, and were used to fry the filets and nuggets.

With a day's worth of breaded chicken flying in and out of them, you can imagine they would get pretty messy, and you'd be right. For closers, who were the last to leave the store at night, the task of cleaning them fell to us. Standard operating procedure for cleaning a henny involved pumping the hot oil out through a short hose and then back into the henny to melt / burn / clean away the day's mess. This worked fabulously well at cleaning away the breading debris, but was also quite a harrowing experience the first hundred or so times you did it.

Imagine holding in your hand a nozzle spewing forth a steady stream of scorchingly hot peanut oil. One lapse of concentration, one flick of the wrist, and you or those around you will be covered with it, blistering hot oil, searing any exposed flesh. This is too much power and responsibility to give to a 16 year old.