I started out in fast food as well, working at Hardee's cooking up fried chicken (back before they were bought by Carl's Jr. when they served fried chicken). I agree with Billfred 100%, you really understand what people go through on the opposite side of the counter.
In college I was fortunate enough to work at the Georgia Tech Research Institute with a brilliant researcher on
millimeter wave Rotman Lens antennas, neural networks, and radar simulation software.
Once I got my CmpE degree from Georgia Tech, I came to work in Austin, Texas at National Instruments. Here I develop platform abstraction libraries for drivers and the real-time ethernet drivers.
-Danny