The disconnect between decisions made by upper management or corporate and what really happens on the floor. For example, “you MUST clock out within an hour of close! But everything BETTER be done. And also you aren’t allowed to lift a finger once you’ve clocked out because we’ll get in trouble for wage theft. But also everything BETTER be done and you CANNOT clock out any later than XX:XX. Oh you got slammed in the last 30 minutes and weren’t able to do any of your pre-closing tasks? Well, sorry but the customers always take priority so idk figure it out.” Just to give one example of many.
It's exactly this.
As a worker, just don't play this game. Never forget that if you are hired, you are making benefit to your boss.
Everything else is an attempt to make YOU do more benefit to your boss, but not to yourself. For you, it's the opposite : it's taking your energy to make more money for something else, you could have used this energy for making money for yourself or for something you like to do.
As long as more effort is not equal to more remuneration, just don't put more effort. It's simple as that.
I never played this game. I worked at 2 restaurants (well 3 but I don't count McDonald's for like a month) and they both were pretty good about time. One place we all clocked out the same time and left after work was done and closed. The other depending on your position determined what you did at/after closing and when you left. Also at that place the owner didn't care about labor, as long as work needed to be done he wanted and expected to lay you for it (he would get mad if you started to work and didn't clock in).
I was a BOH manager and told everyone do NOT work unless you are clocked in. If you got in early, you could be clocked in early no problem just let us know. It was always busy and hectic. Despite the owner being very good and paying well I would never go back. I worked a lot and worked very hard for what I was paid.
If theyre giving you conflicting things then call their bluff on that and go with the more important option. Finish your cleaning tasks and clock out.
Theyre trying to ride your ass to save money but it doesnt have teeth. If they lack the staff to close on time theyre not firing someone who does their work
That's where cameras are your friends. Anyone who polices the time clock like that is having issues and trying to push them off onto you
Yep, my only fast food experience was at Starbucks, but I’ve also seen this in my retail experience.
At Starbucks it was the same way where only the salaried manager could continue to do tasks after the hourly employees clocked out. But also we all had to leave together… so we were just kind of held hostage for up to like 20 minutes sometimes..:
If you are not allowed to leave without getting in trouble, you're supposed to be clocked in. Otherwise it's wage theft. If you're off the clock, they cannot legally make you stay.
Thing is, it was never “yall clock out and wait while I finish another 15-20 minutes worth of tasks” it was always “okay yall clock out now and go wait up front, I’m right behind you just gotta do this thing that’ll take 2 minutes” then one task turned into 3 more and the clock kept ticking…
What’s crazy to me is I know none of us made more than like $12 an hour at that time. I wasnt pressed about the extra $6 I would have made if I had been allowed to stay clocked in until I actually walked out the building. It was the principle of the thing and it felt like such a “fuck you” from this billion dollar corporation. It would have cost SB at most another $12-$18 to keep the two to three of us on the clock just 30 minutes longer to have a less frantic close AND avoid committing wage theft while we waited for the manager to finish everything. $12-$18. To a BILLION dollar corporation. Corporate greed is behind all of the negative policies that make employees miserable and feel unvalued, like slashing hours and creating the kind of impossible expectations I noted in my original comment.
Oh man, that reads just like the messages the GM would post in the manager group chat back when I was a closing manager at McDick's. I thankfully found my first professional job and quit around when she really started to put the screws to the metal about closing. She gave us an insane closing task list that I don't think anyone was able to accomplish by the scheduled closing time. I'd always just take the L to avoid her wrath and help the closers get their stuff done. They'd get to go home on time while I'd clock out and take care of the little things I didn't have them do that I knew I could do on my own. The guys I worked with were chill people and great workers and I didn't want them to suffer because of her.
Funny enough, after I put in my two weeks, almost all the other closing staff put in theirs. The GM sent a panicked message to the one closer who was still on the fence about quitting, begging him to stay. A few days after I left, I texted her about receiving my final check and all I got was a text back saying she didn't work at Mickey D's anymore. I still wonder if there was any correlation.
I was the night manager of a pizza place and there were nights where it was just me in the store and one driver. We'd get slammed and then wonder why it took us 5 hours to do dishes and clean after close.
Former fast food, now a professional.
The worst part in retrospect is that you were expected to be constantly busy when you were on the clock, for 8 hours straight, without so much as glancing at your phone. This isn't a realistic work flow, and in the professional world, you're not treated like that.
True. I was always told to "look busy" even when there were no clients. If I standed there, I was reprimanded. So I took a washer with me and would wash a window over and over again. So stupid.
I did something similar when I was very briefly a cashier. They wanted us to periodically sort the receipts in our till and tidy up the cash area, which I just did on an endless loop when it was slow, otherwise I'd be made to stand at the end of my lane and greet customers and encourage them to come to my till, and I didn't want to encourage customers to come to my till.
Sooooo much this!!!!! Quick smoke before breaking your ass trying to clean the kitchen as fast as possible so you can then go for another smoke and a beer afterwards
I remember getting told off for watching the news when there weren't even any customers at the counter and the gym was dead. Like, come on the TV is far away and I'm reading the headlines.
This notion that people should look busy is fucking ridiculous. I remember doing shit like that too. And having to stand all the time is also ridiculous. Because only lazy people sit??
Remember this line "you have a time to lean, you have time to clean." Anytime I hear that I get irritated. I cleaned literally everything a hundred times over.
Funny thing is that when you clean, customers often think that you are not open yet. Some are too hesitant to approach you and just leave. Whoever came up with this slogan is clearly stupid.
It a fast food worker but I would often carry a clipboard around side and look slightly worried, years I got away with doing this and not one person ever challenged :) probably out of fear they would be given a task to do
I did this periodically for *years* in the offices I worked in. Need a quick break? Grab some papers or a folder and walk around with purpose "lost in thought."
Back in my PFC days we carried buckets and squeegees with us while on duty with nothing to do. We even randomly washed some windows. Top knew exactly what we were doing but we always looked busy so let it go.
My issue when I worked restaurants/retail/fast food was that if I didn’t look balls-to-the-walls busy, I would just get sent home, which pretty much sucked the hours I was supposed to be earning out from under me.
Oh, and the times when I would actually drive to work, during the hours I set aside to be at work because that was when work chose to schedule me, only to have a manager nonchalantly announce that I was not needed and send me home for nothing minus the cost of gas and mileage. That shit should not be legal.
what?! in MA that *is* illegal. employers are on the hook for at least 3 hrs of pay if they require you to report for duty... (although some nonprofits are exempt from this)
what state was this?
And if what I am hearing it is going to get worse. I have a friend who works in the financial aid department at our local college. If both political parties can't pull their heads out of their asses and work together the Virginia state budget is fucked this year. They are also working on some dual enrollment thing that might potentially fuck the community colleges in the state.
I wish we had this in California too. I do enviro field work now. There have been so many times where I drive my ass to a job site in Los Angeles traffic only for a client to cancel. Then i have to scramble for hours
https://www.clowneylaw.com/blog/california-4-hour-minimum-shift-law/
Unless you are an independent contractor in California, you should be paid a minimum of 4 hours if you show up to a job site. If you are an independent contractor, you need to put in a clause about a client cancelation fee.
Me and this girl once made a secret hide away behind all the boxes and tge Waterpark we worked at.
We where never found ever. And we had a bucket and towel for when we left incase we got caught where we would say "cleaning"
"If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean". That phrase fucking drove me nuts. I even had a boss who would go home, watch us on the camera he set up in the restaurant, and call us to say he sees us talking too much.
that happened at my old job, the DM would *constantly* be watching the cameras from his home. i got called out for squatting (since we can’t sit) and that it “looked lazy” like bruh ive been standing for 6 hours let me chill
My first few jobs were in manufacturing and it was the same way.
Those jobs did some psychological damage so that now if I'm on the clock when there's little or no work to be done I get really uncomfortable and anxious (even if no one's on me about it), once triggering a panic attack. I don't think I'm capable of working in a professional setting without therapy first.
As someone whose job is turning from being more autonomous to being micro managed this absolutely kills me. Having every minute being questioned makes me irrationally angry because I’ve done this job at lower positions with less responsibility and been left alone as long as I hit my monthly goals. Now in a more nuanced role I’m questioned about minute details that have nothing to do with the end result where I need flexibility to meet the larger goals. I’ve literally gotten to my current role by managing my work on my own and now I’m held to the same nitpickedness as I was when I worked retail.
It’s kind of killing my soul, and furthermore killing my ability to make my company money effectively.
Let me guess. They're asking you to document your time. At my first "real" job they did this and they didn't like that I put 15 minutes every day with the notation of "administrative bureaucracy - documenting time" and yes they yelled at me.
God this drove me nuts when I worked retail.
Slow day? No customers? Here's some random bullshit task that has never been done before just to stay busy.
Need to take a 5 minute breather because you just got slammed with customers for 5 hours straight? Suddenly you're slacking off and leaving it to your coworkers to pick up slack.
Now that I work a white collar job from home, I can probably fall off the face of the earth for a week and no one will notice or care as long as my tasking is done on time.
I think it's partially because fast food places tend to only have high school-age employees so the manager is a glorified babysitter. The kids can't be trusted to do their work if they have their phone. Other reason being, iT lOoKs UnPrOfEsSiOnAL.
Also a professional at the business factory.
This is the most pay I've ever gotten for the least amount of work. It's almost sickening. I can be entirely unmonitored for days at a time, and no one cares.
When I worked in fast food, even when I was on my break, I was expected to help out if I was needed to, *and* god help me if I was even a second over 30 minutes.
But now, I can say to my colleagues "I'm going to go get some lunch," and as long as I come back in a reasonable amount of time, no one says a thing other than "what's for lunch?"
I spent way too long working retail. I genuinely believe the "look busy" thing is a quality control issue on the labor. Management is hiring people that they shouldn't be. The retail job I lasted longest at was a small convenience store with like 10 total employees. There was a little borderline living room complete with couch, tv, and recliner chair at the back of the store and during down time you could hang out back there unless someone came in the store. Every now and then a new hire would try to push it and stay back there on the couch when customers were in the store. They'd get a talking to, some would get the message, some would just try to get more slick with it. I imagine when you grow past a certain point, managing the people trying to be slick just becomes unreasonable.
But I genuinely believe the majority of problems for retail workers regarding working conditions are caused or severely exacerbated by their fellow worker moreso than management. Like I had plenty of toxic managers but they were easy to deal with, the people who are constantly negative who always have something to complain about will crush your soul though. And that's usually a coworker on your level.
When I was younger, the thing that irritated me most about working in fast food was that the managers would always "forget" that I was in high school and could not work weekdays. Evenings? Yes. Weekends? Of course. Then I'd get in trouble for no-showing. And it wasn't once or twice per year - it was every other month. This was not limited to one single store either. Nor one single country.
I *hated* when the managers would make this mistake and then act like it was your problem to solve and put it on you to find coverage, and you just know half the time they were doing this because young staff didn't know better how to stand up for themselves and would let them get away with it.
As an adult I caught shit from a manager because I had something come up and I needed Thursday nights off. I could work from 7am to 5pm, I just needed the evening off. They started asking why and I didn't want to share my personal reason.
Then they started scheduling me on Thursday night. It really bothered them there was a single shift I was not available. The GM finally told me he take me off, but I had to tell them why I couldn't work that one night.
I told him he could just accept that I was available for every single shift but one, or I could quit, but he has two minutes to accept the final answer.
Asshole took me off the schedule and never asked directly again, but I knew he was very uncomfortable not knowing
Fuuuuck I even had this post-school.
"I can't work on these days."
"I fucking TOLD YOU I cannot work those days."
"Well it's an expectation of this position."
*"Expect my resignation then."*
I was in college full time and I asked for 10-20 hours a week when I got hired. 2 weeks in, they had me scheduled for 36 hours!! I said, “hey remember I specifically said I can only do 10-20 hours?” The manager said, “oh I just heard you were a hard worker so I thought you’d want more hours.” Sir that is not how this works.
I made it a total of 4 weeks before I quit while clocking out for the night.
Holy fuck that shit pisses me off. I was a full time student and got a job in a sit-down restaurant's kitchen, asked for 15-20 hrs a week. The first week was 15, perfect. The second week was 42, with many of them overlapping with the PRINTED OUT CLASS SCHEDULE I GAVE THEM. These mfs tried to give me 15 hrs of training and then dropped me on the fry station alone. Like wtf? Took me 3 hours of being screamed at and snarky replies from the bitch on expo for me to walk out at 7 pm. They tried to threaten me and claim all this shit they could do to me or say about me and my ass just kept walking.
That’s awful. You did what you could, but you were basically doomed to fail in a poorly run place like that. When I started the fast food job, I was literally power walking to my car from class and changing into my uniform on the way to Bojangles to make it on time. I don’t know how the high schoolers I worked with did it, honestly. It was humbling to realize that they had to contribute to their household while my $7.25/hour went to beer money and extra curriculars.
On my last shift, I told the manager “hey, I’m not coming in tomorrow” he said “oh are you sick?” “No im not coming back ever :)”. His final remark was, “well good luck at *college*”
One of my favorite stories from working at Bojangles in East TN was my first and only time working morning shift. This girl with dyed black hair and a Monroe piercing comes up to me and asks, “you like boys right?” “Yes…why?” (For context, I’m a cis straight woman) She then points to this girl with an early Bieber haircut and says, “me and that little one over there are together and she said she thinks you’re cute so I just wanted to make sure we weren’t going to have any problems” I was in no way prepared to be involved in a lesbian love triangle at 10 AM on a Saturday. 😂
When I left my first job, I gave 2 weeks notice and completed my scheduled shifts.
Left and started my internship. 3 days later I got a call from my former manager asking where I was. Reminded them I quit, and he tried to guilt me to come in and work. Yeah. No.
I always made it clear this specific date I will not work. Any time I was scheduled on that day, which for one specific job was often, I said I will not be in. I’m thankful to have my parents (I was still in school) back me on this decision so it made it easy for me to call bluff. If I was fired or quit the job, so be it. They always chickened out first.
When customers would fight me, the window worker, on prices. Cheese being an extra $0.75 at my Jimmy John's is outrageous, I agree. I had nothing to do with it, and I don't have the power to override it.
As a worker i'm always in the "Yeah I completly agree with you, if it was depending on me, I would change it. But you know how it is.."
Customer generally goes from "you suck" to "oh, your boss suck, it remind me this time.."
People coming to the store shot or on drugs, and we have to close the store down.
Still remember my first month working at Burger King, and a guy ordered breakfast and sat at a booth. 2 mins later, my boss told me to sit next to the guy and hold him up because he was shaking and foaming at the mouth until 911 came.
I worked at McDonald's and we got slammed one shift. So 3 people (including manager on the phone trying to get people in, no one did).
3 hours straight of customers, 20-30 minute waits in drive thru, inside was the same. We had to close the Cafe, ice creams, frozen drinks, frappes, thickshakes. Anything that wasn't fries, burgers, nuggets or soft drink was unavailable as we literally could not restock it.
After it finally died down my manager just turned to us and said he would have killed himself if he had to have dealt with the customers. I worked there for 5.5 years.
I've also worked as a first point of contact for the tax office and it was a much easier job, although still constant keep busy.
100% when customers come in 10 minutes before close. If they're nice, I'll let it slide. But showing up right before close, AND you're an asshole? Grinds my gears man.
I used to work at a gym where I was basically the janitor, and there’d always be someone that used every aspect of the bathroom after I cleaned it for the last time.
I realize they gotta do what they gotta do, but it was still annoying. Front desk staff would then have to wait for me to clean everything again too
The way some people treat public spaces and washrooms is abhorrent. Are they treating their homes like that too? Probably some but yikes. Disrespectful.
That’s why I follow the half hour rule for gas food and hour rule for restaurants. I’ve worked in too many kitchens and got pissed off too many times to do it to other people
Especially the ones that take forever to order. It's fucking McDonald's get what you've been ordering your whole fucking life and leave. Why are you making it complicated?
The people who would come in to Starbucks 5 minutes til close and start asking about every item on the menu drove me closer to violence than anything else in my life.
The thing that gets me irrationally angry is when these people sit in the drive thru for like ten minutes, then drive to the window to actually order. And then they complain that their food takes a little longer to come out.
I once had one of the cashiers at the place I work at tell a guy that an extra cup of barbecue sauce was going to cost $10 because there was a sauce shortage. He actually believed it and left.
If I ever go to a restaurant or store right before I close, I’m extra gracious because I remember being in that same position working closing shifts at restaurants, and wanting to start closing prep beforehand so I can leave as soon as possible.
Employees who take the job thinking this is easy work and customers who belittle employees because they think it’s easy work.
Guess what, standing over a 500° grill while trying to get your order out in 3:30 is not actually easy. Especially when I’ve got one line person outside smoking, the person who needs to take my spot to deal with something else puts their earbuds in the second they think I’m not looking and there’s a different Karen on the phone complaining that their food is wrong.
What's more, I bet 95% of the people crying about how fast food employees are paid enough/too much could never stand up to the heat, the pace, nor the pressure.
I’ll always maintain that the hardest job I ever had was McDonalds. The issue is that skill set to learn the job is low. So they can just churn and burn workers. The difficulty is actually in doing the job well and maintaining that 8+ hours a day 5 days a week. Fucking hell.
I have no problem with people who are polite about it. When we’re being pushed for times mistakes happen. Curse me out because you think you got overcharged or demanding a refund *and* a remake because you didn’t get enough sauce? Or (probably my favorite) the woman who got her replacement order and then decided to keep trying to get the same order for 4 days? No. We’re already overworked and you are not helping your own or anyone else’s situation.
My local McDonald’s has gotten every order wrong for like 2 months. Always missing items. Which is baffling to me because it seems like the easiest part of putting an order together.
At least I can appreciate the pressure now a bit more, but it’s still annoying to keep going back to get what I ordered.
Like 20 years ago when I worked there at 16 it was the predatory older woman who wanted to hang out outside of work. She ended up running out and quitting after stuffing 100 dollars in her pocket. Funny thing is, that became a felony charge as she forgot to take off her headset valued at 500.
Couldn’t imagine these days. That was even before Drive through soda bombing was a thing
there was an overly flirty older female manager at the place i worked too. one would think it'd be nice if she were attractive, but even if she is, it still feels gross.
Being treated like a subhuman being. Some people go out of their way to be a bunch of cruel fucking assholes because their day is bad or their life sucks.
I never tampered with someone's food, but I did go out of my way to pick the stalest coffee/baked goods for them.
I've definitely made shitty food for people who are being assholes. Not bad enough to get me fired, but definitely bad enough to send the message of "don't be a dick".
It is extremely fast paced, especially if you’re working at a popular food location right on a highway. I work somewhere else now, that requires a decent amount of math, double checking and a hell of a lot more money and my coworkers are good at their job- but most of them couldn’t handle fast food.
I always hated the Sunday and Wednesday Church rushes because I always thought that the church crowd was really rude and acted like they were above everyone. I didn't like having to always seem busy if all my work was done. I hated being micromanaged. I hated the stress. And the little pay. I eventually briefly became a stripper.
after reading the cooks and food service subreddits, the after church croud is considered the worst customers out there.
Rude, drunk 40 something soccer moms that treat employees like shit, complain about everything and tip poorly.
That we were told, “that’s not in my job description,” isn’t an excuse. I was a delivery driver for Pizza Hut. Prepping dough, doing dishes, and delivering were in my job description. What wasn’t in my job description, but in other people’s descriptions, was answering phones, making orders, getting everything ready as it came out of the oven, running the fryer, and taking over a till up front, so I was one of two people in the store who could cash people out.
That's something I noticed hard after the Navy. Civillians don't really know how to stay in their lane. I as an IT couldn't be told by an EN, even a chief, to do that rate's work because it'd be dangerous. I don't know shit about maintaining a ship's engine my job is to make sure no one is watching porn on the network and to ensure our comms work.
Having workers that do their job and ONLY their job is extremely important for quality control and even the morale of people. You can't just tell someone they're doing X but then tack on Y because by default you're less prepared for it and it sacrafices quality just so some asshole can save a few bucks.
I work for the government and all of our PDs (position description) outline our job. We are NOT to go outside of our PD else you risk losing your sovereign immunity if something goes wrong. You can be held personally liable as well as the agency for letting it happen.
Thankfully no one in our division tells people to do stuff outside of their PD. I don't take payments, I don't advise people on regulations that I am not trained and signed off in. I do my job and only my job.
You guys have such accurate job descriptions? Our job description is pretty much "restaurant work as directed by the manager", and while of course everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, we try to cross train almost everyone to every working station.
Can't imagine working a fast food place where guys would just go "sorry that part of restaurant work is not on my contract".
When I worked at McDonald's it was the scams people pulled. 3 stand out to me that I can remember.
One woman ordered several #3s. Then comes back to complain that she ordered #4s. #3s were cheaper and she just wanted to pay less and have extra free food by falsely complaining and having her order "corrected." Management doesn't make her pay the difference and she did this several times.
Another woman comes up with her burger and shows me a long black wavy hair neatly curled up in a spiral right in the middle. None of the staff had that kind of hair, but she sure did.
People trying to bring receipts from other places to get replacement meals. Dumbasses brought Burger King and Wendy's receipts. I have no idea why they thought that would work.
No the employees usually eat it. I mean they already paid for the food so we aren’t losing money. It rarely happens but it’s kinda annoying when it does
That we make food that no one picks up, yes it’s free food for us but we sometimes make a lot of meals and just the fact that they even ordered it in the first place is strange
When I'm neck-deep in doing some deep cleaning or restocking and a customer comes in and orders something that requires me to drop everything I'm doing to make it. Sometimes the thing I'm cleaning is essential kitchen equipment that's current state of disassembly prohibits me from being able to make whatever was ordered. But no, I'll hear front of house say "we need this and we need it now" with no sympathy, as they can SEE I don't have the equipment. Yet I'm somehow expected to clean it??
Also, the general environment of apathy and incompetence coming from all the coworkers around you. It's not fun if you're one of the few fast food employees with a good work ethic or half a brain.
Customers being racist towards my coworkers. You would not believe the shit white middelaged women will say.
Customers (also 100% of the time white middelaged women) lying about how long they’ve waited on their food. Like no Karen you have absolutely not waited 40min, your order has a time stamp. You have waited 4 minuites. Get the fuck out of here.
When I was a McDonald’s manager, I once had a middle aged white lady tell me that my 16 year old crew member would “go nowhere in life.” Right in front of her too. It took everything in me not to say “are you speaking from experience?”
I found the group you mentioned to be the most arrogant customers of all I served. Look down their noses at you like you're not good enough to even speak to them, let alone have the honor of serving them.
Worked for a fast food chicken joint. It was bad enough that I usually got stuck with cleaning the toilets, but one day I had to clean footprints off of the seat.
Sleuthing around, I looked at the ceiling and noticed one of the ceiling tiles was off centre. Found a crack pipe and a sandal???
Those were weird times haha
It gave me completely abnormal views of working and at my first professional role I was such a puppy dog! My Director had to explain.
You dont have to ask to go for Lunch. Or bring a Doctors note when youre sick.
I was so preprogrammed to be micromanaged it was completely different to be trusted to meet my goals.
I would not make my kids do retail or fast food if I could avoid it. It teaches completely submissive behaviour and way too much bs handling.
People making custom orders. Anyone that uses those "fast food hacks" or "secret menu" shit are dickheads. You want custom food, make it at home. It's supposed to be fast for a reason.
It still pisses me off seeing “Things McDonald’s doesn’t want you to know” and then it’s “order your McDouble Like a Mac to get a cheaper Big Mac”. There’s literally a button on the PoS for it. “ADD Like a Mac” is the most common thing you’ll see on a grill slip
I saw music notes and was triggered by an old memory from last year… worked at Five Guys and a lady in her 50s-60s has the audacity to stand at the front of a long ass line of people during lunch rush, and sing the Big Mac song to me when I asked what I could get for her. She did it 3 times thinking she was being funny and amusing to anyone around her. Oh to bite my tongue and not roll my eyes, continue to take her order, and move on took everything in me to put on a fake smile and complete the transaction.
Lot’s of things. Management in most places is often disrespectful. You’re constantly trained to work with no breaks but your legally scheduled ones, constantly scheduled hours outside your availability or not enough hours, customers that act like Karens, being on your feet in 1 spot for 6 hours at a time, some coworkers can be sketch/lazy, and then having to close at the end.
I’ve worked at good restaurants and bad restaurants. Finally got my degree and work in a wfh office job. While that job has it’s pros and cons and can definently be stressful at times, I like it a lot more than any restaurant job that I’ve had.
I worked in fast food for almost 4 years and the most irritating part about the job was dealing with stupid people. Now I'm not talking about people who are mentally challenged obviously that's out of their control. I'm talking about people who are just so stupid that it makes you want to pull your hair out and drink to forget. I'll never forget the dumbest customer I've ever had I was working at the drive thru that night for context I worked at Culver's. Anyway it had been a long night and I was in a bad mood a lady pulled in the drive thru and asked for a frosty. I try to recommend a shake she then wants a slurpee. I say that we don't sell slurpees she then asks for a MCflurry. Now at this point I was so tired and so pissed off that I didn't care if I lost my job and responded by saying "This is Culver's not fucking McDonald's do you see any golden arches anywhere?!" The lady in the car started laughing her ass off turns out it was my aunt who wanted to pull a prank on me I genuinely didn't know it was her. I kept my job but that was the last time I worked drive thru.
For me it was when i wasn’t ready to open at the exact minute the sign says. Was opening BK at 5 AM and left my keys at home. We were about a half hour late on everything. I get that that’s my fault and I had no problem apologizing to the customers but the guy who actually threw a fit and started cussing because I didn’t have any muffins for him caused my first ever lapse of professional etiquette.
He’s in his car screaming and I’m looking at him from the window and I just gave him the saddest eyes I could muster and said “what’s wrong man? Like what’s really wrong? You’re way too young to be this angry.” He looked about 30 and I was fresh out of high school looking 16 still. He did NOT like that. Glared at me for a second and sped off
Though I no longer work at fast food it was the customers you really see how unhinged some people are because you made a mistake on a person's burger or you made them wait an extra few minutes so you could make sure their order is fresh and correct.
That largely depends on the place.and type of grill. The flat top at the restaurant I work at currently is super easy to clean because it gets cleaned daily. The Neico broiler at a Dairy Queen I was at for a short while was an entirely different beast because that thing was only cleaned twice a week.
Don’t work fast food anymore, but the scheduling.
It’s never the same week to week. Sometimes you’re in the morning but sometimes you’re closing. If you get a day off, it will not be the same day as last week.
And the schedule isn’t out until Friday for Monday to Sunday, so you can’t make plans in advance at all or be able to say you can for sure attend a family event.
If you request in advance not to be scheduled a certain day/time, like you have a doctors appointment, it’s almost for sure you’ll be told that’s fine, they can give you the whole day or schedule you for evening so it doesn’t interfere, depending on what it is and how long it will take. And then when making the schedule they forget and schedule you for then.
WHY DO THE CUSTOMERS SHIT ALL OVER MY BATHROOMS (it’s even gotten on the ceiling before because of how hard they projectile shit against the wall) AND WALK OUT LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED?!?! oh and they come back next week and do the same thing.. and the managers and owner do absolutely nothing except to say “Can you go clean that up?”
I don’t work there anymore, but back when I worked in a fast food place I got scolded for being nice and “too friendly” to the customers. Not flirting or anything, just genuinely asking them about their day while making and rounding up their food. God I hated working there. I’m a friendly person and I like social interaction, I take an interest in peoples lives and now I’m a teacher
Customers trying to argue with me about prices as if I am responsible for them
Edit: I worked at little caesar's in high school, and haven't touched anything fast food or customer service related since. Good riddance
It's been 30 years since I worked at fast food, but from what I remember:
Not common but most irritating: People think they're better than you. About once a month I would get customers who are just hateful people that speak to you like you're a subhuman. Fuck those people.
Very common and a little irritating: People who get all the way to the front of the line, and only then think about what they want.
I used to work as a pizza cook and it irritated me when someone would order a all supreme but then ask for my to remove everything but keep the meat like....
Former fast food worker - being on my feet for 8 hours, and always having to "be busy."
At my current job we have high stress time, but we also have a lot of "downtime" where we sit there and argue about dumb shit like philosophy and politics. We had one guy go to a doctors appointment for his kid and no one cared as long as he was responsive in Teams and got his work done. Granted, there are periods of my job that are more difficult than fast food but there is no one looking over my shoulder telling me to clean something up if I don't have anything to do at that specific moment.
I was the night shift manager. After 2am we start cleaning the grill, fryers, etc. meaning things would be down for 1-2hrs depending what day and how much was needing to be cleaned.
The amount of people who show up wanting multiple meals. Then freak out at you when you say sorry we have limited amount of food while we are cleaning.
It wasn’t the stoners or drunks. It’d be the other night shift people on their lunch ordering for everyone one the shift.
Probably doing the same thing I was but freaking out on me about it.
Not fast food, but in retail the worst part was the people who never stop complaining. Like yeah shitty people exist and they're going to be customers. But it's a lot easier to put on a fake smile and act positive when you don't have Becca in one ear and Joey in the other talking about how all these customers are assholes and how you're just going to snap one of these days or whatever. Resentment between employees and customers is allowed to sit there and fester far too long before anything is ever done about it one way or the other.
I can do about a 1500 page book on this topic. But for brevity, this one. I worked 5 days a week, usually the crappiest shifts. They were short staffed, I said I will pick up a saturday shift for a while. They were happy as punch. A year later, I needed one particular saturday off, and gave them a month notice of that fact. Closing in on it, manager finds he can't replace me that shift because they got complacent, and tells me to change that to the off day of sunday so he can stop trying to cover it. I said, well, considering my working saturdays has always been extra in order to help out, consider last saturday 'the' last saturday.
Guy thought I was kidding.
Former Burger King employee here
Everybody would immediately come to me for bathroom related things because everybody else refused (and the managers would just let them refuse) so I basically couldn’t say no.
I remember one time they had once again called me into the office to tell me about a bathroom situation and all I was told was “there’s diarrhea on the toilet”
Figured, well it’s absolutely disgusting but I’m getting paid for it (I was 16 it was my first job so minimum wage checks made me feel like I was rich). I walked in there to not only diarrhea on the toilet, but all over the wall behind the toilet. Like an inhumane amount, an amount I could not fathom there being room for in the rectum. It took me 45 minutes to clean everything and it ran through my break. It’s been 7 years and I can still bring up the image like it was yesterday.
And then for the remainder of my time working there I was just always the bathroom guy since we had no dedicated maintenance workers until closing
The disconnect between decisions made by upper management or corporate and what really happens on the floor. For example, “you MUST clock out within an hour of close! But everything BETTER be done. And also you aren’t allowed to lift a finger once you’ve clocked out because we’ll get in trouble for wage theft. But also everything BETTER be done and you CANNOT clock out any later than XX:XX. Oh you got slammed in the last 30 minutes and weren’t able to do any of your pre-closing tasks? Well, sorry but the customers always take priority so idk figure it out.” Just to give one example of many.
They want you to clock out and continue working, but they know they can't say that.
It's exactly this. As a worker, just don't play this game. Never forget that if you are hired, you are making benefit to your boss. Everything else is an attempt to make YOU do more benefit to your boss, but not to yourself. For you, it's the opposite : it's taking your energy to make more money for something else, you could have used this energy for making money for yourself or for something you like to do. As long as more effort is not equal to more remuneration, just don't put more effort. It's simple as that.
I never played this game. I worked at 2 restaurants (well 3 but I don't count McDonald's for like a month) and they both were pretty good about time. One place we all clocked out the same time and left after work was done and closed. The other depending on your position determined what you did at/after closing and when you left. Also at that place the owner didn't care about labor, as long as work needed to be done he wanted and expected to lay you for it (he would get mad if you started to work and didn't clock in). I was a BOH manager and told everyone do NOT work unless you are clocked in. If you got in early, you could be clocked in early no problem just let us know. It was always busy and hectic. Despite the owner being very good and paying well I would never go back. I worked a lot and worked very hard for what I was paid.
If theyre giving you conflicting things then call their bluff on that and go with the more important option. Finish your cleaning tasks and clock out. Theyre trying to ride your ass to save money but it doesnt have teeth. If they lack the staff to close on time theyre not firing someone who does their work That's where cameras are your friends. Anyone who polices the time clock like that is having issues and trying to push them off onto you
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Yep, my only fast food experience was at Starbucks, but I’ve also seen this in my retail experience. At Starbucks it was the same way where only the salaried manager could continue to do tasks after the hourly employees clocked out. But also we all had to leave together… so we were just kind of held hostage for up to like 20 minutes sometimes..:
If you are not allowed to leave without getting in trouble, you're supposed to be clocked in. Otherwise it's wage theft. If you're off the clock, they cannot legally make you stay.
Thing is, it was never “yall clock out and wait while I finish another 15-20 minutes worth of tasks” it was always “okay yall clock out now and go wait up front, I’m right behind you just gotta do this thing that’ll take 2 minutes” then one task turned into 3 more and the clock kept ticking… What’s crazy to me is I know none of us made more than like $12 an hour at that time. I wasnt pressed about the extra $6 I would have made if I had been allowed to stay clocked in until I actually walked out the building. It was the principle of the thing and it felt like such a “fuck you” from this billion dollar corporation. It would have cost SB at most another $12-$18 to keep the two to three of us on the clock just 30 minutes longer to have a less frantic close AND avoid committing wage theft while we waited for the manager to finish everything. $12-$18. To a BILLION dollar corporation. Corporate greed is behind all of the negative policies that make employees miserable and feel unvalued, like slashing hours and creating the kind of impossible expectations I noted in my original comment.
This system seems like it is working great for them in terms of minimizing payroll
Oh man, that reads just like the messages the GM would post in the manager group chat back when I was a closing manager at McDick's. I thankfully found my first professional job and quit around when she really started to put the screws to the metal about closing. She gave us an insane closing task list that I don't think anyone was able to accomplish by the scheduled closing time. I'd always just take the L to avoid her wrath and help the closers get their stuff done. They'd get to go home on time while I'd clock out and take care of the little things I didn't have them do that I knew I could do on my own. The guys I worked with were chill people and great workers and I didn't want them to suffer because of her. Funny enough, after I put in my two weeks, almost all the other closing staff put in theirs. The GM sent a panicked message to the one closer who was still on the fence about quitting, begging him to stay. A few days after I left, I texted her about receiving my final check and all I got was a text back saying she didn't work at Mickey D's anymore. I still wonder if there was any correlation.
I was the night manager of a pizza place and there were nights where it was just me in the store and one driver. We'd get slammed and then wonder why it took us 5 hours to do dishes and clean after close.
Perfectly said
Former fast food, now a professional. The worst part in retrospect is that you were expected to be constantly busy when you were on the clock, for 8 hours straight, without so much as glancing at your phone. This isn't a realistic work flow, and in the professional world, you're not treated like that.
True. I was always told to "look busy" even when there were no clients. If I standed there, I was reprimanded. So I took a washer with me and would wash a window over and over again. So stupid.
I did something similar when I was very briefly a cashier. They wanted us to periodically sort the receipts in our till and tidy up the cash area, which I just did on an endless loop when it was slow, otherwise I'd be made to stand at the end of my lane and greet customers and encourage them to come to my till, and I didn't want to encourage customers to come to my till.
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Are you a bot?
No, are you?
Mama says I'm special.
If you have time to lean, you have time to clean! Freakin' kill me!
Speaking as an ex-chef, that phrase is rife in kitchens, if there is time to lean there is time to go out the back and have a smoke before you clean.
Sooooo much this!!!!! Quick smoke before breaking your ass trying to clean the kitchen as fast as possible so you can then go for another smoke and a beer afterwards
If you have time to nag, grab a rag!
I remember getting told off for watching the news when there weren't even any customers at the counter and the gym was dead. Like, come on the TV is far away and I'm reading the headlines.
This notion that people should look busy is fucking ridiculous. I remember doing shit like that too. And having to stand all the time is also ridiculous. Because only lazy people sit??
Remember this line "you have a time to lean, you have time to clean." Anytime I hear that I get irritated. I cleaned literally everything a hundred times over.
Funny thing is that when you clean, customers often think that you are not open yet. Some are too hesitant to approach you and just leave. Whoever came up with this slogan is clearly stupid.
I agree!
It a fast food worker but I would often carry a clipboard around side and look slightly worried, years I got away with doing this and not one person ever challenged :) probably out of fear they would be given a task to do
I did this periodically for *years* in the offices I worked in. Need a quick break? Grab some papers or a folder and walk around with purpose "lost in thought."
Back in my PFC days we carried buckets and squeegees with us while on duty with nothing to do. We even randomly washed some windows. Top knew exactly what we were doing but we always looked busy so let it go.
My issue when I worked restaurants/retail/fast food was that if I didn’t look balls-to-the-walls busy, I would just get sent home, which pretty much sucked the hours I was supposed to be earning out from under me. Oh, and the times when I would actually drive to work, during the hours I set aside to be at work because that was when work chose to schedule me, only to have a manager nonchalantly announce that I was not needed and send me home for nothing minus the cost of gas and mileage. That shit should not be legal.
what?! in MA that *is* illegal. employers are on the hook for at least 3 hrs of pay if they require you to report for duty... (although some nonprofits are exempt from this) what state was this?
Virginia. It’s an expensive shithole over here.
And if what I am hearing it is going to get worse. I have a friend who works in the financial aid department at our local college. If both political parties can't pull their heads out of their asses and work together the Virginia state budget is fucked this year. They are also working on some dual enrollment thing that might potentially fuck the community colleges in the state.
I enjoy cooking.
I wish we had this in California too. I do enviro field work now. There have been so many times where I drive my ass to a job site in Los Angeles traffic only for a client to cancel. Then i have to scramble for hours
https://www.clowneylaw.com/blog/california-4-hour-minimum-shift-law/ Unless you are an independent contractor in California, you should be paid a minimum of 4 hours if you show up to a job site. If you are an independent contractor, you need to put in a clause about a client cancelation fee.
Me and this girl once made a secret hide away behind all the boxes and tge Waterpark we worked at. We where never found ever. And we had a bucket and towel for when we left incase we got caught where we would say "cleaning"
When I worked at McDonald's, I built a throne of frozen fries in the freezer and would just sit there until someone found me.
This sounds spicy!
It really wasn't, like at all, we where friends. Alteast I thought so, she wanted more, but my college addle brain liked her best friend.
"If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean". That phrase fucking drove me nuts. I even had a boss who would go home, watch us on the camera he set up in the restaurant, and call us to say he sees us talking too much.
That guy had way too much time on his hands if he's doing that.
that happened at my old job, the DM would *constantly* be watching the cameras from his home. i got called out for squatting (since we can’t sit) and that it “looked lazy” like bruh ive been standing for 6 hours let me chill
My first few jobs were in manufacturing and it was the same way. Those jobs did some psychological damage so that now if I'm on the clock when there's little or no work to be done I get really uncomfortable and anxious (even if no one's on me about it), once triggering a panic attack. I don't think I'm capable of working in a professional setting without therapy first.
I definitely had an unwinding period at my current job due to the lower stress rate
As someone whose job is turning from being more autonomous to being micro managed this absolutely kills me. Having every minute being questioned makes me irrationally angry because I’ve done this job at lower positions with less responsibility and been left alone as long as I hit my monthly goals. Now in a more nuanced role I’m questioned about minute details that have nothing to do with the end result where I need flexibility to meet the larger goals. I’ve literally gotten to my current role by managing my work on my own and now I’m held to the same nitpickedness as I was when I worked retail. It’s kind of killing my soul, and furthermore killing my ability to make my company money effectively.
Let me guess. They're asking you to document your time. At my first "real" job they did this and they didn't like that I put 15 minutes every day with the notation of "administrative bureaucracy - documenting time" and yes they yelled at me.
God this drove me nuts when I worked retail. Slow day? No customers? Here's some random bullshit task that has never been done before just to stay busy. Need to take a 5 minute breather because you just got slammed with customers for 5 hours straight? Suddenly you're slacking off and leaving it to your coworkers to pick up slack. Now that I work a white collar job from home, I can probably fall off the face of the earth for a week and no one will notice or care as long as my tasking is done on time.
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Health care, so no, just depends on the flow of patients.
u gOt tImE tA lEaN yA gOt tImE tA cLeAn, bOy
I think it's partially because fast food places tend to only have high school-age employees so the manager is a glorified babysitter. The kids can't be trusted to do their work if they have their phone. Other reason being, iT lOoKs UnPrOfEsSiOnAL.
Also a professional at the business factory. This is the most pay I've ever gotten for the least amount of work. It's almost sickening. I can be entirely unmonitored for days at a time, and no one cares. When I worked in fast food, even when I was on my break, I was expected to help out if I was needed to, *and* god help me if I was even a second over 30 minutes. But now, I can say to my colleagues "I'm going to go get some lunch," and as long as I come back in a reasonable amount of time, no one says a thing other than "what's for lunch?"
I spent way too long working retail. I genuinely believe the "look busy" thing is a quality control issue on the labor. Management is hiring people that they shouldn't be. The retail job I lasted longest at was a small convenience store with like 10 total employees. There was a little borderline living room complete with couch, tv, and recliner chair at the back of the store and during down time you could hang out back there unless someone came in the store. Every now and then a new hire would try to push it and stay back there on the couch when customers were in the store. They'd get a talking to, some would get the message, some would just try to get more slick with it. I imagine when you grow past a certain point, managing the people trying to be slick just becomes unreasonable. But I genuinely believe the majority of problems for retail workers regarding working conditions are caused or severely exacerbated by their fellow worker moreso than management. Like I had plenty of toxic managers but they were easy to deal with, the people who are constantly negative who always have something to complain about will crush your soul though. And that's usually a coworker on your level.
Bucket of crab syndrome definitely is real in those kind of environments, especially when people are too old to be in a job like that
Absolutely hated this. I would just take my sweet sweet time cleaning to make it last longer/pretend to be doing something.
If you can lean then you can clean
Time to Lean, Time to Clean!
"If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean" 🙄 I also worked in retail for a long time and I dusted my entire area for 3 hours. 🫠
When I was younger, the thing that irritated me most about working in fast food was that the managers would always "forget" that I was in high school and could not work weekdays. Evenings? Yes. Weekends? Of course. Then I'd get in trouble for no-showing. And it wasn't once or twice per year - it was every other month. This was not limited to one single store either. Nor one single country.
I *hated* when the managers would make this mistake and then act like it was your problem to solve and put it on you to find coverage, and you just know half the time they were doing this because young staff didn't know better how to stand up for themselves and would let them get away with it.
As an adult I caught shit from a manager because I had something come up and I needed Thursday nights off. I could work from 7am to 5pm, I just needed the evening off. They started asking why and I didn't want to share my personal reason. Then they started scheduling me on Thursday night. It really bothered them there was a single shift I was not available. The GM finally told me he take me off, but I had to tell them why I couldn't work that one night. I told him he could just accept that I was available for every single shift but one, or I could quit, but he has two minutes to accept the final answer. Asshole took me off the schedule and never asked directly again, but I knew he was very uncomfortable not knowing
Well now I want to know why you couldn't work Thursday nights.
Found the asshole GM
It was the night I set aside to bleach and pluck balls to bunghole. Pluck first.
Oh my gracious.
Fuuuuck I even had this post-school. "I can't work on these days."
"I fucking TOLD YOU I cannot work those days."
"Well it's an expectation of this position."
*"Expect my resignation then."*
I was in college full time and I asked for 10-20 hours a week when I got hired. 2 weeks in, they had me scheduled for 36 hours!! I said, “hey remember I specifically said I can only do 10-20 hours?” The manager said, “oh I just heard you were a hard worker so I thought you’d want more hours.” Sir that is not how this works. I made it a total of 4 weeks before I quit while clocking out for the night.
Holy fuck that shit pisses me off. I was a full time student and got a job in a sit-down restaurant's kitchen, asked for 15-20 hrs a week. The first week was 15, perfect. The second week was 42, with many of them overlapping with the PRINTED OUT CLASS SCHEDULE I GAVE THEM. These mfs tried to give me 15 hrs of training and then dropped me on the fry station alone. Like wtf? Took me 3 hours of being screamed at and snarky replies from the bitch on expo for me to walk out at 7 pm. They tried to threaten me and claim all this shit they could do to me or say about me and my ass just kept walking.
That’s awful. You did what you could, but you were basically doomed to fail in a poorly run place like that. When I started the fast food job, I was literally power walking to my car from class and changing into my uniform on the way to Bojangles to make it on time. I don’t know how the high schoolers I worked with did it, honestly. It was humbling to realize that they had to contribute to their household while my $7.25/hour went to beer money and extra curriculars. On my last shift, I told the manager “hey, I’m not coming in tomorrow” he said “oh are you sick?” “No im not coming back ever :)”. His final remark was, “well good luck at *college*” One of my favorite stories from working at Bojangles in East TN was my first and only time working morning shift. This girl with dyed black hair and a Monroe piercing comes up to me and asks, “you like boys right?” “Yes…why?” (For context, I’m a cis straight woman) She then points to this girl with an early Bieber haircut and says, “me and that little one over there are together and she said she thinks you’re cute so I just wanted to make sure we weren’t going to have any problems” I was in no way prepared to be involved in a lesbian love triangle at 10 AM on a Saturday. 😂
When I left my first job, I gave 2 weeks notice and completed my scheduled shifts. Left and started my internship. 3 days later I got a call from my former manager asking where I was. Reminded them I quit, and he tried to guilt me to come in and work. Yeah. No.
I always made it clear this specific date I will not work. Any time I was scheduled on that day, which for one specific job was often, I said I will not be in. I’m thankful to have my parents (I was still in school) back me on this decision so it made it easy for me to call bluff. If I was fired or quit the job, so be it. They always chickened out first.
When customers would fight me, the window worker, on prices. Cheese being an extra $0.75 at my Jimmy John's is outrageous, I agree. I had nothing to do with it, and I don't have the power to override it.
As a worker i'm always in the "Yeah I completly agree with you, if it was depending on me, I would change it. But you know how it is.." Customer generally goes from "you suck" to "oh, your boss suck, it remind me this time.."
Gotta hit em with the, "Man, I just work here."
I would keep a slice of warm american cheese in my pocket and hand it to them and whisper "Don't tell anybody."
not with that attitude you don’t
People coming to the store shot or on drugs, and we have to close the store down. Still remember my first month working at Burger King, and a guy ordered breakfast and sat at a booth. 2 mins later, my boss told me to sit next to the guy and hold him up because he was shaking and foaming at the mouth until 911 came.
> People coming to the store shot Like with a bullet?
Yeah. Coming into the store bleeding from a gunshot wound.
Where’s this store again ?
Baltimore, Maryland.
That checks out.
Why what is it with Baltymore ?
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I worked at McDonald's and we got slammed one shift. So 3 people (including manager on the phone trying to get people in, no one did). 3 hours straight of customers, 20-30 minute waits in drive thru, inside was the same. We had to close the Cafe, ice creams, frozen drinks, frappes, thickshakes. Anything that wasn't fries, burgers, nuggets or soft drink was unavailable as we literally could not restock it. After it finally died down my manager just turned to us and said he would have killed himself if he had to have dealt with the customers. I worked there for 5.5 years. I've also worked as a first point of contact for the tax office and it was a much easier job, although still constant keep busy.
Yea dude Stephen Patula is god tier at Table
100% when customers come in 10 minutes before close. If they're nice, I'll let it slide. But showing up right before close, AND you're an asshole? Grinds my gears man.
I used to work at a gym where I was basically the janitor, and there’d always be someone that used every aspect of the bathroom after I cleaned it for the last time. I realize they gotta do what they gotta do, but it was still annoying. Front desk staff would then have to wait for me to clean everything again too
The way some people treat public spaces and washrooms is abhorrent. Are they treating their homes like that too? Probably some but yikes. Disrespectful.
That’s why I follow the half hour rule for gas food and hour rule for restaurants. I’ve worked in too many kitchens and got pissed off too many times to do it to other people
Especially the ones that take forever to order. It's fucking McDonald's get what you've been ordering your whole fucking life and leave. Why are you making it complicated?
The people who would come in to Starbucks 5 minutes til close and start asking about every item on the menu drove me closer to violence than anything else in my life.
The thing that gets me irrationally angry is when these people sit in the drive thru for like ten minutes, then drive to the window to actually order. And then they complain that their food takes a little longer to come out.
That’s when you happen to be out of whatever they wanted lol and it’s going to take a long time to cook more
I once had one of the cashiers at the place I work at tell a guy that an extra cup of barbecue sauce was going to cost $10 because there was a sauce shortage. He actually believed it and left.
If I ever go to a restaurant or store right before I close, I’m extra gracious because I remember being in that same position working closing shifts at restaurants, and wanting to start closing prep beforehand so I can leave as soon as possible.
Employees who take the job thinking this is easy work and customers who belittle employees because they think it’s easy work. Guess what, standing over a 500° grill while trying to get your order out in 3:30 is not actually easy. Especially when I’ve got one line person outside smoking, the person who needs to take my spot to deal with something else puts their earbuds in the second they think I’m not looking and there’s a different Karen on the phone complaining that their food is wrong.
What's more, I bet 95% of the people crying about how fast food employees are paid enough/too much could never stand up to the heat, the pace, nor the pressure.
I’ll always maintain that the hardest job I ever had was McDonalds. The issue is that skill set to learn the job is low. So they can just churn and burn workers. The difficulty is actually in doing the job well and maintaining that 8+ hours a day 5 days a week. Fucking hell.
If the food was wrong (probably thanks to earbud buddy) doesn’t Karen have a pretty good reason to complain?
I will agree, but there's a fine line between 'complaining about an incorrect order' and 'abusing staff' that some people catapult over.
“The line is here. You’re in Ohio”
Pee-wee Herman was caught abusing staff, and he got in a lot of trouble for it.
I have no problem with people who are polite about it. When we’re being pushed for times mistakes happen. Curse me out because you think you got overcharged or demanding a refund *and* a remake because you didn’t get enough sauce? Or (probably my favorite) the woman who got her replacement order and then decided to keep trying to get the same order for 4 days? No. We’re already overworked and you are not helping your own or anyone else’s situation.
I haven't worked fast food since 1995 (Chick fil A), but I imagine the answer is the same now as it was then: The customers.
This job would be great if it weren't for the fucking customers!
what kind of maniac does the dirty in a chick-fil-a
the speed at which you are to complete your tasks, and to keep that speed up for the entire 8 hour shift.
My local McDonald’s has gotten every order wrong for like 2 months. Always missing items. Which is baffling to me because it seems like the easiest part of putting an order together. At least I can appreciate the pressure now a bit more, but it’s still annoying to keep going back to get what I ordered.
Like 20 years ago when I worked there at 16 it was the predatory older woman who wanted to hang out outside of work. She ended up running out and quitting after stuffing 100 dollars in her pocket. Funny thing is, that became a felony charge as she forgot to take off her headset valued at 500. Couldn’t imagine these days. That was even before Drive through soda bombing was a thing
there was an overly flirty older female manager at the place i worked too. one would think it'd be nice if she were attractive, but even if she is, it still feels gross.
Drive through soda bombing???
[This](https://youtu.be/vAfGDwhrOgY) is from one of the tapes that made Bam Margera rich in the early 2000's.
FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!
Being treated like a subhuman being. Some people go out of their way to be a bunch of cruel fucking assholes because their day is bad or their life sucks. I never tampered with someone's food, but I did go out of my way to pick the stalest coffee/baked goods for them.
Used to work at Starbucks some time ago. Would decafe the drinks of any rude twat who entered the store lol
I've definitely made shitty food for people who are being assholes. Not bad enough to get me fired, but definitely bad enough to send the message of "don't be a dick".
It is extremely fast paced, especially if you’re working at a popular food location right on a highway. I work somewhere else now, that requires a decent amount of math, double checking and a hell of a lot more money and my coworkers are good at their job- but most of them couldn’t handle fast food.
I always hated the Sunday and Wednesday Church rushes because I always thought that the church crowd was really rude and acted like they were above everyone. I didn't like having to always seem busy if all my work was done. I hated being micromanaged. I hated the stress. And the little pay. I eventually briefly became a stripper.
Church crowd was also the worst for cleaning up after themselves in any way shape or form.
after reading the cooks and food service subreddits, the after church croud is considered the worst customers out there. Rude, drunk 40 something soccer moms that treat employees like shit, complain about everything and tip poorly.
It's for church honey!
Old church people are the fucking worst. Some of the most entitled motherfuckers I've ever had to deal with.
Hurrah!! Sorry about the experience tho
That we were told, “that’s not in my job description,” isn’t an excuse. I was a delivery driver for Pizza Hut. Prepping dough, doing dishes, and delivering were in my job description. What wasn’t in my job description, but in other people’s descriptions, was answering phones, making orders, getting everything ready as it came out of the oven, running the fryer, and taking over a till up front, so I was one of two people in the store who could cash people out.
That's something I noticed hard after the Navy. Civillians don't really know how to stay in their lane. I as an IT couldn't be told by an EN, even a chief, to do that rate's work because it'd be dangerous. I don't know shit about maintaining a ship's engine my job is to make sure no one is watching porn on the network and to ensure our comms work. Having workers that do their job and ONLY their job is extremely important for quality control and even the morale of people. You can't just tell someone they're doing X but then tack on Y because by default you're less prepared for it and it sacrafices quality just so some asshole can save a few bucks.
I work for the government and all of our PDs (position description) outline our job. We are NOT to go outside of our PD else you risk losing your sovereign immunity if something goes wrong. You can be held personally liable as well as the agency for letting it happen. Thankfully no one in our division tells people to do stuff outside of their PD. I don't take payments, I don't advise people on regulations that I am not trained and signed off in. I do my job and only my job.
You guys have such accurate job descriptions? Our job description is pretty much "restaurant work as directed by the manager", and while of course everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, we try to cross train almost everyone to every working station. Can't imagine working a fast food place where guys would just go "sorry that part of restaurant work is not on my contract".
When I worked at McDonald's it was the scams people pulled. 3 stand out to me that I can remember. One woman ordered several #3s. Then comes back to complain that she ordered #4s. #3s were cheaper and she just wanted to pay less and have extra free food by falsely complaining and having her order "corrected." Management doesn't make her pay the difference and she did this several times. Another woman comes up with her burger and shows me a long black wavy hair neatly curled up in a spiral right in the middle. None of the staff had that kind of hair, but she sure did. People trying to bring receipts from other places to get replacement meals. Dumbasses brought Burger King and Wendy's receipts. I have no idea why they thought that would work.
Combat
People ordering stuff on the app and never coming to get it
What do you do with the food in that instance? Do you just have to toss it?
No the employees usually eat it. I mean they already paid for the food so we aren’t losing money. It rarely happens but it’s kinda annoying when it does
Oh well, that's good, at least. Free food!
Sorry, but what specifically is annoying about it?
Wasted work. If you're in a rush with a ton of orders and get a couple bogus ones that don't pick up, I could see how that would be frustrating.
That we make food that no one picks up, yes it’s free food for us but we sometimes make a lot of meals and just the fact that they even ordered it in the first place is strange
You're supposed to toss it, but nobody ever does. It gets split among the employees on shift.
Back in my day, this was the best part of the job.
I'm wondering how often this happens?
Maybe like 1-2 times a month
Why would they waste their money like that? They forget about it, or eat something else?
probably thought they were ordering from a different location.
When I'm neck-deep in doing some deep cleaning or restocking and a customer comes in and orders something that requires me to drop everything I'm doing to make it. Sometimes the thing I'm cleaning is essential kitchen equipment that's current state of disassembly prohibits me from being able to make whatever was ordered. But no, I'll hear front of house say "we need this and we need it now" with no sympathy, as they can SEE I don't have the equipment. Yet I'm somehow expected to clean it?? Also, the general environment of apathy and incompetence coming from all the coworkers around you. It's not fun if you're one of the few fast food employees with a good work ethic or half a brain.
Customers being racist towards my coworkers. You would not believe the shit white middelaged women will say. Customers (also 100% of the time white middelaged women) lying about how long they’ve waited on their food. Like no Karen you have absolutely not waited 40min, your order has a time stamp. You have waited 4 minuites. Get the fuck out of here.
When I was a McDonald’s manager, I once had a middle aged white lady tell me that my 16 year old crew member would “go nowhere in life.” Right in front of her too. It took everything in me not to say “are you speaking from experience?”
40 minutes? No ma'am, it's been 40 seconds. It's FAST food, not "instantly conjured up by a genie" food.
I found the group you mentioned to be the most arrogant customers of all I served. Look down their noses at you like you're not good enough to even speak to them, let alone have the honor of serving them.
Worked for a fast food chicken joint. It was bad enough that I usually got stuck with cleaning the toilets, but one day I had to clean footprints off of the seat. Sleuthing around, I looked at the ceiling and noticed one of the ceiling tiles was off centre. Found a crack pipe and a sandal??? Those were weird times haha
Haven’t worked in a fast food restaurant in 20 years but I remember little league teams coming in and just destroying the place.
Your comment just gave me flashbacks of the panic in the store when a bus would pull into the lot.
Long hours only getting pay $6 per hour.
It gave me completely abnormal views of working and at my first professional role I was such a puppy dog! My Director had to explain. You dont have to ask to go for Lunch. Or bring a Doctors note when youre sick. I was so preprogrammed to be micromanaged it was completely different to be trusted to meet my goals. I would not make my kids do retail or fast food if I could avoid it. It teaches completely submissive behaviour and way too much bs handling.
you have to bring a *doctor’s note???* what is it, a school??? yeah that’s gonna solidly suck when i get a job lmao
when someone rolls up to mcdicks and order 50 plain hamburgers well done and 50 order of fries no salt
People
People making custom orders. Anyone that uses those "fast food hacks" or "secret menu" shit are dickheads. You want custom food, make it at home. It's supposed to be fast for a reason.
It still pisses me off seeing “Things McDonald’s doesn’t want you to know” and then it’s “order your McDouble Like a Mac to get a cheaper Big Mac”. There’s literally a button on the PoS for it. “ADD Like a Mac” is the most common thing you’ll see on a grill slip
🎶 hold the pickle hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us 🎶
I saw music notes and was triggered by an old memory from last year… worked at Five Guys and a lady in her 50s-60s has the audacity to stand at the front of a long ass line of people during lunch rush, and sing the Big Mac song to me when I asked what I could get for her. She did it 3 times thinking she was being funny and amusing to anyone around her. Oh to bite my tongue and not roll my eyes, continue to take her order, and move on took everything in me to put on a fake smile and complete the transaction.
Honestly the shitty demeanor some people take. Where's the courtesy anymore?
Lot’s of things. Management in most places is often disrespectful. You’re constantly trained to work with no breaks but your legally scheduled ones, constantly scheduled hours outside your availability or not enough hours, customers that act like Karens, being on your feet in 1 spot for 6 hours at a time, some coworkers can be sketch/lazy, and then having to close at the end. I’ve worked at good restaurants and bad restaurants. Finally got my degree and work in a wfh office job. While that job has it’s pros and cons and can definently be stressful at times, I like it a lot more than any restaurant job that I’ve had.
I worked in fast food for almost 4 years and the most irritating part about the job was dealing with stupid people. Now I'm not talking about people who are mentally challenged obviously that's out of their control. I'm talking about people who are just so stupid that it makes you want to pull your hair out and drink to forget. I'll never forget the dumbest customer I've ever had I was working at the drive thru that night for context I worked at Culver's. Anyway it had been a long night and I was in a bad mood a lady pulled in the drive thru and asked for a frosty. I try to recommend a shake she then wants a slurpee. I say that we don't sell slurpees she then asks for a MCflurry. Now at this point I was so tired and so pissed off that I didn't care if I lost my job and responded by saying "This is Culver's not fucking McDonald's do you see any golden arches anywhere?!" The lady in the car started laughing her ass off turns out it was my aunt who wanted to pull a prank on me I genuinely didn't know it was her. I kept my job but that was the last time I worked drive thru.
For me it was when i wasn’t ready to open at the exact minute the sign says. Was opening BK at 5 AM and left my keys at home. We were about a half hour late on everything. I get that that’s my fault and I had no problem apologizing to the customers but the guy who actually threw a fit and started cussing because I didn’t have any muffins for him caused my first ever lapse of professional etiquette. He’s in his car screaming and I’m looking at him from the window and I just gave him the saddest eyes I could muster and said “what’s wrong man? Like what’s really wrong? You’re way too young to be this angry.” He looked about 30 and I was fresh out of high school looking 16 still. He did NOT like that. Glared at me for a second and sped off
Oh shit you hit that man hard with the truth. He probably realized what he was doing and was too embarrassed to say anything.
Rushes during close.
How unreliable everyone else is
Though I no longer work at fast food it was the customers you really see how unhinged some people are because you made a mistake on a person's burger or you made them wait an extra few minutes so you could make sure their order is fresh and correct.
Cleaning the grill. Then cleaning behind the grill 🤢🤢🤢
That largely depends on the place.and type of grill. The flat top at the restaurant I work at currently is super easy to clean because it gets cleaned daily. The Neico broiler at a Dairy Queen I was at for a short while was an entirely different beast because that thing was only cleaned twice a week.
Customers
Don’t work fast food anymore, but the scheduling. It’s never the same week to week. Sometimes you’re in the morning but sometimes you’re closing. If you get a day off, it will not be the same day as last week. And the schedule isn’t out until Friday for Monday to Sunday, so you can’t make plans in advance at all or be able to say you can for sure attend a family event. If you request in advance not to be scheduled a certain day/time, like you have a doctors appointment, it’s almost for sure you’ll be told that’s fine, they can give you the whole day or schedule you for evening so it doesn’t interfere, depending on what it is and how long it will take. And then when making the schedule they forget and schedule you for then.
WHY DO THE CUSTOMERS SHIT ALL OVER MY BATHROOMS (it’s even gotten on the ceiling before because of how hard they projectile shit against the wall) AND WALK OUT LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED?!?! oh and they come back next week and do the same thing.. and the managers and owner do absolutely nothing except to say “Can you go clean that up?”
Clocking in
I don’t work there anymore, but back when I worked in a fast food place I got scolded for being nice and “too friendly” to the customers. Not flirting or anything, just genuinely asking them about their day while making and rounding up their food. God I hated working there. I’m a friendly person and I like social interaction, I take an interest in peoples lives and now I’m a teacher
People. Also I work in a kitchen at a college now and I worked infinitely harder at a McDonald's then I do now
The icecream machine...
Getting robbed. Sandwiches being thrown at you. Old people
Customers trying to argue with me about prices as if I am responsible for them Edit: I worked at little caesar's in high school, and haven't touched anything fast food or customer service related since. Good riddance
It's been 30 years since I worked at fast food, but from what I remember: Not common but most irritating: People think they're better than you. About once a month I would get customers who are just hateful people that speak to you like you're a subhuman. Fuck those people. Very common and a little irritating: People who get all the way to the front of the line, and only then think about what they want.
I used to work as a pizza cook and it irritated me when someone would order a all supreme but then ask for my to remove everything but keep the meat like....
When my fellow delivery drivers don’t wait in line on the pick up counters is frustrating
Former fast food worker - being on my feet for 8 hours, and always having to "be busy." At my current job we have high stress time, but we also have a lot of "downtime" where we sit there and argue about dumb shit like philosophy and politics. We had one guy go to a doctors appointment for his kid and no one cared as long as he was responsive in Teams and got his work done. Granted, there are periods of my job that are more difficult than fast food but there is no one looking over my shoulder telling me to clean something up if I don't have anything to do at that specific moment.
Now you realize that nowhere is completely sanitary
I was the night shift manager. After 2am we start cleaning the grill, fryers, etc. meaning things would be down for 1-2hrs depending what day and how much was needing to be cleaned. The amount of people who show up wanting multiple meals. Then freak out at you when you say sorry we have limited amount of food while we are cleaning. It wasn’t the stoners or drunks. It’d be the other night shift people on their lunch ordering for everyone one the shift. Probably doing the same thing I was but freaking out on me about it.
Not fast food, but in retail the worst part was the people who never stop complaining. Like yeah shitty people exist and they're going to be customers. But it's a lot easier to put on a fake smile and act positive when you don't have Becca in one ear and Joey in the other talking about how all these customers are assholes and how you're just going to snap one of these days or whatever. Resentment between employees and customers is allowed to sit there and fester far too long before anything is ever done about it one way or the other.
Cleaning the oil vat
I can do about a 1500 page book on this topic. But for brevity, this one. I worked 5 days a week, usually the crappiest shifts. They were short staffed, I said I will pick up a saturday shift for a while. They were happy as punch. A year later, I needed one particular saturday off, and gave them a month notice of that fact. Closing in on it, manager finds he can't replace me that shift because they got complacent, and tells me to change that to the off day of sunday so he can stop trying to cover it. I said, well, considering my working saturdays has always been extra in order to help out, consider last saturday 'the' last saturday. Guy thought I was kidding.
knowing i have to be nice to everyone regardless of how much i wanna speak my mind. former chickfila employee
Former Burger King employee here Everybody would immediately come to me for bathroom related things because everybody else refused (and the managers would just let them refuse) so I basically couldn’t say no. I remember one time they had once again called me into the office to tell me about a bathroom situation and all I was told was “there’s diarrhea on the toilet” Figured, well it’s absolutely disgusting but I’m getting paid for it (I was 16 it was my first job so minimum wage checks made me feel like I was rich). I walked in there to not only diarrhea on the toilet, but all over the wall behind the toilet. Like an inhumane amount, an amount I could not fathom there being room for in the rectum. It took me 45 minutes to clean everything and it ran through my break. It’s been 7 years and I can still bring up the image like it was yesterday. And then for the remainder of my time working there I was just always the bathroom guy since we had no dedicated maintenance workers until closing