Dallas City Councilman Scott Griggs flips burgers, though in the '90s he only worked the register at McDonalds' (Photo by Danny Fulgencio)

Dallas City Councilman Scott Griggs flips burgers, though in the ’90s he only worked the register at McDonalds’ (Photo by Danny Fulgencio)

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Now he’s a chess master, patent-and-trademark lawyer and Dallas City Councilman.

But if you’d gone through the McDonald’s drive through at Preston and Campbell sometime in the early ‘90s, Scott Griggs might’ve taken your order.

“I always wanted to work the grill, but I never got to,” he says.

Griggs worked there with a bunch of his high school pals, who also wound up attending Texas A&M University together.

Between undergrad and law school at the University of Texas at Austin, Griggs worked at Boston Market on Preston. He knew a guy who owned a franchise and offered to let Griggs try his hand at every station with the idea that he’d consider a management position there.

“So I got to be the cook, which is incredibly hard work,” he says. “You’ve got to get there early in the morning to peel the potatoes and get all the vegetables ready for lunch.”

During his tenure on City Council, Griggs has advocated for paying the living wage, which in Dallas is calculated at $10.37 per hour. The City of Dallas now requires contractors to pay all of their employers at least $10.37. That includes sanitation workers, contractors who previously had earned the state’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to hang off the back of a truck and haul our trash away.

Contracted employees also include all workers at Love Field airport.

That’s important, Griggs says, because the person behind the register at Dickey’s in Love Field is an ambassador for Dallas.

“Think about it. Someone gets off a plane; they’re hungry. That’s the first person they’re going to meet in Dallas,” Griggs says. And it’s often the last person they see before departure.

Turns out Griggs has a successful law practice and public policy career, but he could’ve been a fast-food franchise owner. It’s always good to have options.

“It taught me how to get along with people, particularly at McDonalds,” he says. “There was such a cross section of people who worked there. People with families. People who had been to prison and were re-entering society working there. In that respect, it was a really interesting experience.”