...I grew up eating Chinese restaurant leftovers, hospital cafeteria leftovers, and Panda Express leftovers, depending on where my parents worked, managed, or owned. It was one of the factors that pushed me to learn how to cook for myself. Back when I was in 6th grade I was out fishing after school almost daily and cooking cornmeal pan fried trout/panfish & cornmeal bread. Cornmeal was really cheap back then and it can be used for both fish bait and cooking. Wish I had known tortillas made good catfish bait back then.
I've meet the owners of Panda and the impression is that the wife is the driving force behind their expansion. They paid taco bell level wages but had superior health benefit package. At the time I was paying over $700/mo for my father' health insurance, and if mom didn't get a job at Panda Express with their great insurance package, I probably wouldn't have been able to afford my first condo in Irvine. The management at Panda heavily promoted "7 habits of high effective people".
Taco Bell's food quality is suspect, but I read that they were one of few chain stores that promoted store managers to multi-store manager quickly. So if you do a good job, they'd give you 2 stores to manage. But if anyone is actually looking for a job, I'd suggest Trader Joes instead. Better pay and very good benefits.
