Why work when you don't have too?

Semi-promoted was the word I used when I told my parents. I don’t know if I thought that they wouldn’t understand my “fast food lingo” or if I just felt stupid telling them that I was now going to be a 5-Star Cashier. It took me two years to get this “promotion” and all it consisted of was a plaque on the wall, a pin on my chest, and a twenty five dollar bonus each month. I know that this doesn’t sound that big, but it was going to make my crappy job a little more tolerable, especially because it was an honor that few seldom achieved. The only other employees that received this had been four people that jumped aboard Foodies long before I did, but needless to say I busted my butt for those twenty-five dollars and was going to be damn proud to wear that pin, until it became nothing.
     A few months ago we went on a hiring spree and hired a bunch of minors. At Foodies we go through steps, you’re trained on sandwiches, you take a few grill shifts, and then they transfer you to till. This transition takes about six months. I have seen plenty of people go through Foodies in my years, around 50, and the transition has always been the same in that tentative time period. But now everything has changed. This group of minors, some of which have close connections with our boss, have taken about two months to go through this transition and the rest of us are furious. 
It’s not about jealousy, although it may seem that way. It’s about training a good employee and not just a well-rounded one. Who cares if I can do everything in the store if I am not efficient? These newly hired employees are not learning things to become efficient, fast, and accurate, they are learning things so they can move on to the next thing and it is beginning to show in our customer service. We look at three things when we train and watch a sandwich maker: Speed, accuracy, and confidence. It takes time and effort to gain these things, weeks, months, blood, sweat, tears, and frustrations. But if we just let our employees skip right over these things, don’t care about their speed on sandwiches, don’t bother if they know how long it takes to cook a burger (who bothers with checking to see if the meat is raw anyways?) just because they’re somehow “better” than the rest of us and that isn’t what they will be doing anyways, why do we train anyone?

The real kicker came this week, when a young man was on his fourth till shift. Our boss, papers in hand, confronted him about being a 5-Star Cashier. What took the rest of us an average of 2-5 years to obtain, this man achieved in four days. Is this a reflection of the man or our double standard of a work environment? I am not meaning to belittle the guy’s skill level, because he is nowhere near awful at his job, but is he 2-years of experience ready? No. There is so much this young man has to learn, juggling multiple customers at once, dealing with a screaming man wanting different food, getting insulted by people with Alzheimer’s who know no better, having no sandwich maker and juggling a line full of people while being able to produce his own food, bag his own meals, and keep people calm. These are all things he will learn over time, but has not even had the chance to experience them yet. This “promotion” now means nothing to me. I no longer feel special, or significant. I no longer feel as if I have earned something. In fact I now feel humiliated. Why did it take me two years when it took him four days? And mainly, why am I working this hard if I don’t have to?

"You People"

        If I had a dime for every time I heard someone refer to me as, "you people" while on the clock at Foodies, I could have paid for my years at Delta in-full by now. It doesn't really matter the context of this saying, because it happens with every subject. "You people obviously aren't very educated if you're working here right?" This is probably the most common use of the phrase, but I take this one the lightest. If you believe that we, the fast food workers of the world, only work here because we are uneducated, you are uneducated. If you take a look around our restaurant you would see two things: Parents, and school-goers. The fast food industry is one that hires people who need a job; we do not seek out the uneducated. "Oh! You didn't graduate high school? Perfect, you're hired!" No. When you get hired in at Foodies you actually have to show proof of a high school diploma, GED, or provide a plan to obtain one of these things. If we were uneducated how would we count back change? We work here because we need a flexible job schedule while putting ourselves through college, we need a part time job before we obtain our degrees, we flat out just need job experience, and some of us are parents who need a job to support their children. We are people, educated just like you, just trying to get by. But if that wasn't enough, we are now being targeted for the raise of minimum wage. 

          Minimum wage being raised affected us all in different ways. I will not deny that the change looked really good on my first pay check, but I am well aware of the effects it will have. “You people are the reason that minimum wage is going up. You people don’t even deserve it.” As I understand the anger of someone who is not receiving a wage increase, I do not understand this sort of displaced aggression. Fast food places are not the only companies paying their workers minimum wage. That convenient store you just went to only pays minimum wage, the gas station you stopped by today pays minimum wage, that clothing store that you ran to pays minimum wage, and the company that you called to clean up your basement after it flooded, they pay minimum wage. So why are we the only people you see? Why are we the people you target when something goes wrong? I am fully educated on the effects of inflation. I understand that this will make a huge impact on prices, including ours at Foodies, but I did not ask for this. I did not write a letter personally begging the government to raise minimum wage, I did not hold picket signs and scream outside of an office building, I didn’t even sign my name on any petitions. So why yell and scream at me? We work fast food therefore we are the poster children for uneducated, undeserving, and just plain wrong Americans.

          Fast food is one of the biggest demands in America. You can easily pass by a McDonald's and see “We have served xx billion customers!” We are a service that people can’t live without. Foodies opens at 10 and I, personally, have gotten annoyed customers asking me why we don’t open any earlier. If all of the fast food companies decided to shut down for a month I’m pretty sure all hell would break loose. People wouldn't know what to do if they didn't feel like cooking dinner, or if their child was screaming for nuggets. So the people who are condemning us for working here are our customers, the ones that choose to eat there. If we all went out at followed our dreams, “got educated”, and left fast food you wouldn't be able to enjoy that burger that you get twice a week. “You cannot demand a service while simultaneously degrading the people who provide it for you.” – unknown 

We're till workers, not mind readers.

Working the till, or front register, is anything but fun. We deal with multiple crappy customers a day. On average about 6-10 per person per shift. In the real world, at school or a social event, if we encounter one rude civilian we normally get irritated, right? We either get snappy with them back, or just try to keep our emotions in check, but it takes a toll on our day. Now think in terms of ten rude people a day. It gets harder to control your emotions with each customer.

“I can’t read your mind!” I’m sure we have all said it a time or two. I normally use this while yelling at my boyfriend who expects me to remember things he hasn’t even told me (which explains the exclamation point). But maybe you used it while talking to your parent or sibling, or maybe you too have a significant other. Where I want to use this phrase, on a daily basis, is at work. Unfortunately, freedom of speech is a thing where freedom of rudeness is not. If I were to say that to a customer my behind would get kicked off the pay-roll faster than that customer could even complain.   

I cannot count how many customers I have had at Foodies that have come up to order and said “I would like a number one, but with none of the gross stuff.” I have no idea what that means. How am I supposed to know what you think is gross or not? And when I ask you what that means do not get snappy with me because I don’t know your food preferences. I am not your mom, your best friend, or your dog. I did not give you a personal “food preference quiz” before you entered our restaurant and it is not my job to play some ridiculous guessing game with what you like and dislike on your burgers. It is only my job to supply you with quality food at a decent speed and make your experience something that you will remember. Not to play 20 questions.  

“Can I get a Number 1 with none of those extras?”  It was in my first couple of months working on till when an older man came up and ordered this. Maybe you have a parent or grandparent who says something like this, and you know exactly what that means. I, on the other hand, had never heard this, and after that day have never heard it again.

“I’m sorry sir, what would you like on your burger?” Thinking maybe he would just say something simple this time I decided to ask him, politely, what the heck that meant.

“Everything but the extras,” was his reply.

Now, slightly irritated, I tried again. “So, what is your definition of extras? I just would like to clarify”

“Listen, I don’t know who taught you how to do your job but give me my burger. No extras.” With that he slammed a twenty dollar bill on the table and walked away. My manager came over, because she could tell by the look on my face that I had no idea where to go next, and asked me what was up. I asked her if she knew what “no extras” meant and she looked at me like I was speaking a different language. I explained that I asked him several times, what he wanted on his burger but he just refused to tell me. Her advice was to ring him up for a standard Number 1 and if he had a problem with it he could go talk to her.

So, as you can imagine there were, indeed, extras on his burger. In a fit-throwing rage the man charged back up to the counter screaming “are you dumb? What part of no extras do you not understand? I had a simple request! What is wrong with you? I want a new burger, my money back and something done about this worker,” at this point he is screaming to my manager and gesturing to me. My manager, who couldn’t get a word in until the man had talked himself into a coughing fit, replied with “Sir, none of us here know what “no extras” is supposed to mean. We’re people. We’re till workers. We are not mind readers.”

Would You Like Fries With That?

            I'm sure, when asked about making a blog, many people chose to write about things that make them happy. I will probably spend most of this semester reading about books, music, and hunting from my classmates. I, on the other hand, did not choose something happy and upbeat, nor did I choose something that interests me, but rather, I chose to write about something that makes me unhappy: My crappy fast food job. I started working in the food industry the day after my sixteenth birthday. My parents kicked me to the curb pretty quick. Through a family-friend type of situation I got a job bussing tables at a local owned restaurant. Because of my minor status I started out only making 85% of minimum wage plus about 10% of all of the wait staff's tips. Not to mention that I was one of three bussers, who were only scheduled on weekends, and was lucky to get a shift once a week. Basically what I'm saying is I made close to nothing. I had applied for many jobs when I turned sixteen, hoping that bussing would not turn into a long lasting affair, but had gotten no calls. About six months later, on a Saturday, I was getting ready for an early shift when my mother came crashing through my door with our home phone in her hand. "Interview" is all she said. I picked up the phone and had about a 45 second conversation with the woman about a time that we could meet. That was the beginning.

 I cleared both of the interviews and landed the job. This job being at a place we shall call: Foodies. Beginning with the art of sandwich making I decided that this job was way better than washing dishes. Surprisingly I stuck it out with my bussing job for another six months until figuring five extracurricular activities and two jobs was more than enough. I went to my family-friend-boss-guy and told him that having two jobs was beginning to be hard to manage and my other job was more convenient. This is when all the fun began. Now, getting more shifts at Foodies, I start to realize why no one likes to work in the fast food industry: People suck.

 I’m sure my posts on this blog will become different as the semester goes on, but for the time being I see a lot of complaining in my future. I suppose you can say that I chose this topic because I need to vent, and there’s no place like the internet and no time like the present. Coming home with multiple burn scars each day, getting yelled at by countless customers who have no idea what they’re talking about, and having bosses who need to realize that we don’t work for a five star restaurant, is all beginning to take its toll on me. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that we create our own happiness and that if I am really this unhappy with my job than I can get out of it. The problem is that I need to put myself through college, and quitting multiple jobs just to be happy isn’t going to do that. I need to focus more on school and less on my crappy job now so that I can get a, hopefully, great job later.
Besides venting, I chose this topic because I live it. I have hundreds of stories about people trying to pull pranks on us, or guys from the local football team cross-dressing and coming in to see people’s reaction. Of course there are bad days, but there are good ones as well. Plus, my mother always used to say that one man’s horror is another man’s entertainment. Who knows, maybe my blog will supply entertainment to those reading. It will be the equivalent to FML’s. If you think you’re having a bad day you can just come read some of my crappy ones to make yourself feel better. But, finally, I chose this blog to kind of be a how to. I should have titled it “How to not be an asshole while ordering fast food”. As I write this blog I hope to become lighter, and as you read this blog I hope you become nicer.