The number one rule when surfing the internet is, “don’t let anonymous web comments rile you up.” If at any time you don’t follow this rule, you’ll quickly find yourself sucked into an online argument laced with exclamation points, COMPLETE SENTENCES IN ALL CAPS, and comparisons to Hitler. Of course, tens of thousands of people break this rule every day, to the point where the comment section of online articles is almost exclusively dominated by mean-spirited folks who just want to get a rise out of someone.

Personally, I’ve always followed this rule. I can count the number of times that I’ve commented on an article on my left thumb. While I often read the comment section, I do so knowing that they are going to be ridiculous. The same, then, should go for comments written about something I’ve published, right? If you asked me yesterday, I would have said, "Of course.” But this was before someone accused me of pulling a James Frey and fictionalizing the facts to make my story better. I don’t mind being called dishonest, but I do mind when such a serious accusation is out there for others to see. I’m not a dishonest person. A jackass certainly, but dishonest? No.

The column in question is about working fast food for a day. The accusations come (presumably) from someone who works at Smashburger. He or she claims that I made up a worker named Jorge and lied about the way the folks at Smashburger cook the French fries. Do I need to justify myself? For your sake, probably not, but, it’s been a slow week, so I’m gonna do it anyway:

Jorge the burger cook definitely exists, but his name isn’t Jorge. He’s a Latino (or Hispanic, maybe) guy who barely tolerated my presence and mumbled his name inaudibly both times I asked him. For whatever reason, it was obvious the dude wasn’t excited about being written about. I never actually knew his name and figured it was best to not publicly call someone out for being surly, so I called him Jorge.

As for the fryers, I’m pretty sure I screwed this one up. I mentioned in my story that working the fryers at Smashburger consisted of merely pushing a button and watching the fryer baskets lower themselves in and out of the cooking oil. Apparently, they don’t have these types of fryers at Smashburger, and yet, this is the way I remember them.  In high school and college, I cooked at Applebee’s and spent countless hours in front of the type of fryer I described. When I worked at Smashburger, I cooked one basket of French fries before getting bored and switching to the grill. At Smashburger, I remember pressing the button and the basket lowering the basket into the grease. I can still picture it in my head, but apparently, this never happened. Did I replace this thirty seconds in my memory with one of those thousands of hours of memories from my days of glory as an Applebee’s fry cook? I’m not sure, but the fact that I wrote the column a full month after I actually worked at Smashburger makes it pretty darn likely. What I am sure of is that if I was going to intentionally lie to make a story better, I would have gone with something a lot cooler than inaccurately describing the appliances.

That being said,  I apologize to anonymous internet commenter if my story about their job didn’t represent it as well as they had hoped.  Although, after my day of proving that I'm not even cut out to work a fast food gig, frankly, I’m a little surprised that they had such high expectations to begin with.