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Tales of Working Fast Food
Fast food is as American as apple pie — only less healthy.
For those with no choice but to work in the greasier underbellies of this industry, it creates an unforgettable love-hate relationship with burgers, chicken sandwiches, fries, nuggets, and even soda.
Like many broke undergraduates, fast food provided me with quick employment. It has the highest turnover rate of any industry for good reason. But for those needing a quick paycheck, McDonald’s is always hiring.
These drive-thru grease buckets rarely provide much of a resume boost, but they’re rarely dull. And while some of these places I wouldn’t recommend an enemy work at, they provided me with great multi-tasking practice and some unforgettable experiences.
Here are a few of them.
Managers who act like they run hedge funds.
As Jason Flamm noted on this subject: “It’s funny how the least important jobs always have the most demanding micro-managers at their helm.”
A Wendy’s manager of mine made ritual humiliation of employees part of his SOP. He demanded absolute perfection from managers and cashiers alike. Anything less merited belittling diatribes in front of coworkers and customers.
Employee meetings were a near-weekly occurrence when he would wax eloquent on how he was known as “the best of the best” in the business, which is why he demanded so much. To boost morale, he promoted several of us to “Team Leader” — with no pay raise.
When a girl in the local college band reminded him of a request-off she’d made two months prior, he angrily snapped that he had a business to run. He couldn’t be working around everyone else’s schedules. But $7.25/hour wasn’t worth her missing her band commitments. So, she quit.
One-by-one, others fell off as well.
The nature of fast food means that many of its workers still live with their parents and don’t depend on that minimum wage paycheck for survival. Those who do generally don’t tolerate such rampant disrespect.
As even managers started to abandon this manager’s sinking ship, customers fell off since the understaffed workforce couldn’t keep up.
