I recently obtained a Blizzard (Oreo, plus mint) at a local Dairy Queen, representing the first time I’ve actually eaten anything from a Dairy Queen since I worked there for three years in high school, and I could feel the dried soft serve matting the hair on my forearms once more into a white thicket, madeleine-fashion.
It was a perfectly good fast food job. I don’t have any horrible stories about workplace safety or food standards, which is why I feel comfortable yanking a picture from Dairy Queen’s own Twitter account. But I think there’s something particularly grim about all minimum wage jobs which involve serving people which do not also involve tips, such that your enemy is solely the clock, and he will always outwit you.
Here’s what I learned from my time at Dairy Queen:
1. People like to inject needle drugs in fast food bathrooms that do not have the special lightbulbs that prevent you from seeing your veins clearly.
2. You can make a lot of Blizzards with a bad bag of soft serve before anyone notices, and exactly one cone.
3. If your manager is gone, and you need to decorate a cake for someone, it’s going to look terrible.
4. If you’re very tired and briefly rest your head against the wall, the owner of your individual store will choose this moment to walk in and say “if there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.”
5. 20% of the time, if you dip a cone in the melty chocolate, you’ll find yourself holding an empty cone and everyone else who gets a dipped cone that day will remark that the texture is slightly off.
6. You can make yourself a Blizzard on your break that, if you actually paid for it like you’re supposed to, would cost $16.75 with all extras factored in.
7. People will threaten you with physical violence for explaining that there is no chocolate in their Reese’s Pieces Blizzard because there is no chocolate in a Reese’s Piece, and they are thinking of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
8. People have a very low bar for threatening people wearing purple aprons and matted forearm hair with physical violence.
Did you have a fast food job? Do you still have a fast food job? Did you eat the food when you worked there? Can you eat that food now? Do you think one day you will be able to?
Tags: dairy queen, fast food, work
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That lighting article sort of blue my mind.
I suppose Pizza Hut is not technically fast food, but I worked there briefly washing dishes in college, and one day I was promoted to putting grease in the deep dish pans. But it wasn’t called grease. The label on the industrial-sized bottle called it “garlic-flavored quick release.”
Artificially garlic-flavored vegetable oil, actually. Depending whether we’re talking hand-tossed/stuffed-crust or pan, it was either pumped out of a gallon jug or sprayed on via aerosol.
(I was a Pizza Hut driver, then manager, in college. I used to use the “time to lean/time to clean” line because I was a pretty awful manager.)
This was back in the nineties. I would not have thought twice about garlic-flavored vegetable oil, sir.
Yes, I went to college in the nineties too. I’m just telling you what that “grease” actually was. Because the idea of artificial garlic flavoring is abhorrent.
Really? You didn’t like it? I stole a bottle and used it as lube for years. Thanks for the explanation!
Oh god “if there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean” gives me hives to this day. I worked a couple of fast food jobs, most memorably Captain D’s Seafood. I have no horror stories to dissuade you for eating Captain D’s; the food is warning enough. My coworkers were universally dosed with purloined prescription drugs, and who would blame them? One kitchen guy took a shine to me and offered to ‘make my day’ behind the dumpster. I smelled of fried fish, always. People left bible tracts on the tables in lieu of tips. We were required to yell “welcome to captain D’s!” to every customer who entered. I perfected a fake sickly sweet tone to mask my terrible despair.
In high school my girlfriend worked at Taco Bell — apparently one “prank” you could do was using the guacamole or sour cream gun to squirt guacamole/sour cream down the back of someone’s pants.
I don’t really eat at Taco Bell much any more, but I definitely want a guacamole gun in my house!
This made me think of the lineage of fast food workers in my family!
My dad worked at a truck stop in rural Wisconsin in high school. His egg cracking abilities are unmatched.
My mom managed a fast food burger place in Tuscon, Arizona after high school. I don’t know much about it except one time a guy came in and threw a bottle at her, and another time a guy drove up in her stolen motorcycle – but the police said it has been too long so they couldn’t do anything. She lived in a tiny horrible apartment and had to bike everywhere after her motocycle was stolen.
My two older brothers worked at Taco Bell when they were in high school, leaving me with memories to erase of how many cheesy gordita crunches I ate during that time.
I then graduated to fast casual, spending two years at a not great tex mex place. The only really gross thing was that I doubt anyone ever cleaned out the iced tea container.
I never worked in any kind of food service, for which everyone else should be grateful. I did work in a clothing store which sold nylon outfits to elderly ladies – that was my first job.
My first job when I arrived in the US was also retail, working at a diamond jewelry store in the mall. We had a free jewelry cleaning machine (basically a sort of chemical dip in a vibrating tub), and young dudes would come up to ask if we would clean their grills. The other staff would recoil in horror and say “ew, no!” but I said politely that I didn’t think it would be a good idea because they wouldn’t want those chemicals in their mouths. Then I would ask to see their grills and to a man they all got shy and wouldn’t smile to show me! Which is so funny to me because I think grills are about the most show-offy thing you could wear.
Wha? How many people in your area have grills?? I truly thought only celebrities did that.
I’m so uncool/out-of-it that by grills I thought you meant something you cooked food on, and I was really confused as to why someone would want to clean their food-grill at a jewelry store. Took me a few reads to “get it”.
I worked at Burger King for three months one summer. It was the first real job I ever had–I’d volunteered at a library for a school project once, but that’s about it. And Burger King was the fucking worst. My first day on the job, five minutes into my shift, they tell me a little girl peed on the floor out in the dining area, and I had to go mop it up. I remember thinking that this was pretty bad, but that I could be responsible about it, y’know? Like, if I could handle this, then I could pretty much handle whatever came next, and maybe getting the pee-mopping out of the way on the first shift was a good thing. Like, now I know where the bottom is, and I know I can handle it, and I’m not going to be a wimp or freak out or start crying, because I’m going to be an adult about it.
What I didn’t realize is that pee-mopping was sort of a highlight. Pee-mopping was kind of funny, and I’m sure the little girl felt awful about it, so I could at least tell myself I was fixing something, making it better. What was actually the worst was all the mediocre shit you had to go through. Like, I spent most of my time working on the burger grill, which was a conveyor belt that carried frozen patties (they looked like Eggos made of meat) through the oven, and it was always hot back there; my skin was already terrible, and I was sweating constantly, so I felt like a character in Cronenberg movie, like my body was in the process of undergoing some hideous mutation of acne and grease. Sometimes the burgers came out mangled, and we were supposed to throw those into a bucket, but I would eat every other one, cramming it into my mouth and hoping the manager wouldn’t see me, wanting to puke kind of but needing to feel something other hand hot and awful. They never gave me enough hours, so even when I was on the job, I was convinced I was doing something wrong. My last day on the job, I got bumped up to making sandwiches, and I was too slow and easily confused.
I was also in charge of taking the kitchen garbage out back to the dumpster. The bags would fill up with food waste–globs of meat, shredded buns, rotten lettuce, aging mayonnaise, wasted fish fillet–and they’d be really heavy, and you had to carry them by hand. No cart or anything. One day, while I was trying to lift a really have one up, it split about three feet from the dumpster, and gunk spilled everywhere; on my shirt, my pants, my hands, the concrete. The mess was bad, but the worst part was realizing I’d have to clean it up, and having literally no idea how I could do it. It was one of the worst moments of my life up till that point, I think, which is pretty ridiculous; but it was just this feeling that I was soiled, and filthy, and I would never be able to get away from it.
Anyway, folks who do this full time (and are undoubtedly better at it than I was) deserve to get paid more.
Sometimes I fantasize about doing my teenage job of washing dishes in a cafeteria, but I’m snapped back to reality by any memory of taking out the trash and soaking in that sickly warm organic smell of food garbage.
I worked at a Rita’s Ices for about 3 years, and I can attest to #6 as well. My god, was it delicious though. Surprisingly didn’t gain too much weight despite nonstop sampling (ices aren’t bad, but frozen custard is) probably because 1. I was young, 2. I worked it all off from running around that place and 3. I sweated it off too.
I was always grateful that it was a window place – so nobody could come in, nobody could use the bathroom, no exceptions. That helped a lot. But oooh boy #8. I had a man yell at me and threaten me from his car, across the 4-lane street we were located on, because we didn’t have the flavor he wanted. That was usually the biggest complaint – “why don’t you ever have xx anymore!” – because Rita’s rotates flavors.
I also had somebody call to tell me that her order was wrong. She hadn’t actually come to the store, someone else had gotten it for her. It probably wasn’t wrong, and what would you like me to do now that you are several blocks away?
I also had an old man yell at me once about the quality of his cone, or the size probably, and he was sooo mean. Then he forgot his cane and had to come back for it, and was all sheepish. Serves him right.
Oh, also, our store was pretty clean, but I heard about some horrors at other branches. It’s a franchise so they’re mostly individually owned, and it really depends on the owner. But I remember hearing about 2 employees getting caught having sex in a walk-in freezer. (I heard it from the owner of my store; it was true.)
And one of my coworkers was once grabbed by the collar of his shirt THROUGH the window. It was on camera and everything.
Though why don’t you ever have mint chocolate chip anymore?? (Just kidding. How dumb do you have to be to think the employees choose the flavors?)
The last Rita’s I went to had a seating area, and while I and a few other customers were there, the teenage counter girl was loudly complaining to her friend about how the lazy new girl “took two hours to wash dishes.” At least they’re clean, hopefully?
Three hours at Tim Horton’s in high school. Did not even return to pick up the ~$15 owed me. Have almost never consumed Tim Horton’s again, which is almost as unpatriotic as shooting eagles down south.
(Hunting beavers = THE MOST CANADIAN THING).
I worked in Starbucks for a few summers in college, which was a plum job as far as fast-food style positions go. I think not having to deal with food made a big difference in the workload and level of cleanliness, if not the risk- as one supervisor learned, hot coffee will blister your skin if it pours into your sensible shoes and you can’t get them off fast enough. I actually didn’t drink coffee at the time (I had yet to discover that there were varieties less strong than the liquid tar that is french roast), but I learned how to rip out cappuccinos and soy lattes on the huge four-shot espresso machine. One guy (okay, one asshole) spent five minutes lecturing me on how I wasn’t making his cappuccino dry enough one morning. I should have sneezed in it. On the plus side, I fondly remember a nice woman who would come in with the same incredibly complex drink order that she- however!- laughed about, repeated slowly as we wrote it down, waited patiently for, and tipped well for. And working weekends was the worst. Morning rush lasted through the entire day, everyone wanted super-elaborate drinks, and you worked around the noise of shrieking kids for nine hours straight. Oof.
Oh man, the cappuccino assholes. I worked at a Starbucks with heavy tourist traffic, and there was always an inevitable cappuccino snob who’d stroll in during summer rush, order a cappuccino and lean over the bar to watch you make it, pursing his lips a little. (It was always a he.) Then he would sample it, sigh heavily, and tell you that he’d actually asked for a *dry* cappuccino, so…
And despite the line out the door and down the block, you’d remake it because Starbucks is about service!
On the bright side, my co-workers were pretty great, the managers were solid, and as yet I have no lasting damage to my lungs from working in a haze of frappucino mix!
YES WHAT IS IT WITH ASSHOLE DUDES AND THEIR “DRY” CAPPUCCINOS. I always had the feeling that they were about to tell whoever they were with about this incredible little cafe they visited in Italy the last time they were there, where the cappuccinos were bone-dry, so much better than anything you can get in the States, really. I wanted to slam one of those tiny espresso cups on their heads and make them wear it like a little hat.
Of course they were about to say that, complete with the coda “I know I shouldn’t expect much from a *chain* store, but… (elaborate shrug that eloquently expresses the horrifying burden of being a man of taste and distinction forced against his will to purchase and drink inadequate WARM MILK FOAM.)
Tiny espresso hats are too good for them.
What does that even mean? It’s a beverage-it’s going to be wet by definition.
Yeah I guess I am not enough of a coffee snob but I don’t understand at all.
So cappuccinos have three parts- espresso, hot milk, and milk foam. A “dry” cappuccino has more milk foam in it and less hot milk. Which is fine, people are allowed to have their fancy coffee drinks however they choose, but like timehoodie says, requesting a dry cappuccino at Starbucks does seem to be a good proxy measure of “I am an entitled asshole who will lecture you for five minutes about how you’re Doing It All Wrong”.
Ah thank you for explaining it! (I love milk foam so this is relevant to my interests.)
I worked at Mighty Taco – a Buffalo chain – and we used to count down our 7-hour shifts as two showings of the movie Titanic. So we’d start the shift with the opening credits, 45 minutes in they’d be in the car, hour and a half the boat hits the iceberg, at three hours the old lady drops the necklace. There’d be a short break, and then we’d do the whole thing over again. I still measure time in Titanics.
I love this. I’m not a fan of that movie, but I love your story.
The only fast food job I’ve had is Tim Hortons, which probably makes me The Most Canadian.
My brother works at Tim Hortons TO THIS DAY.
But does his manager lock herself in the office all day and get high? (Or is he this manager?) (Also it should be noted that this manager was probably in her late 30s-early 40s).
Oh, and once I almost set myself on fire.
On purpose?
Probably subconciously yes.
OH, and I also have a really disgusting story about the Iced Capp machine.
My Tim Hortons was located IN A HOCKEY ARENA.
*drops mic*
My only fast food job was at Tim Hortons also as well too – actually two separate Tim’ses – and: it was okay. I baked, mostly, early in the mornings.
Favourite memories: I was really intensely trained at the first place by a guy who had been there for about 20 years and he would go outside and smoke while the trays of donuts or whatever were in the oven. I was 16 and it was my First Real Job, and it was also a really high output location, so getting everything done in time was terrifically hard for everyone who wasn’t That Guy. I came in half an hour early (2:30 AM for my 3 AM shift) to get everything going. I also whistled the theme from the Andy Griffith show *incessantly* under my breath and I’m pretty sure everyone wanted to kill me.
I worked at a movie theater, which isn’t really fast food, so I don’t know if it counts. But I did work the concession stand and it mostly always awful. The worst day was when the new, completely inept manager schedule two brand new employees on the same shift and they managed not to notice that the oil dispenser on popcorn popper broke and the kettle literally FILLED with oil, which ultimately ended up on the floor. They left it for me to clean it up on my shift and I nearly broke my neck mincing on the oil-slick floor for the next six hours (despite two separate moppings).
The best parts of the job were having candy fights with my coworkers using malted milk balls and leaning on the warm metal cover of the popcorn warmer when I had cramps.
I worked at a movie theater too! But I loved it. I worked with cool people (who are still my friends, 13 years later) and had an awesome manger! The only downside (?) was that I always smelled like popcorn.
And pigs and sheep?
Ha, my bad. I was so excited to encounter another movie-theater worker that I didn’t spell check!
I had a lot of fun times with my other coworkers (really, I only bear ill-will toward the oil-slick colleagues), largely because we invented crazy games to play while the movies were showing. We totally had Theatre Olympics a la The Office, three years before The Office came out.
We had Theatre Olympics, too! Now I’m curious if we know each other/worked together… hmmm…
I was working in the early aughts in Massachusetts. The entire staff was under age 26 except for one lady in her 70s who only worked 11-3 on Saturdays in the box office or as a ticket taker (her limited mobility did not allow her to perform concession stand transactions with the required amount of celerity).
I worked at a movie theatre where the old popcorn at the bottom was never fully cleaned out, just new on top and be sure to stir it up. Sometimes you’d get such a supremely stale piece and you would wonder about how potentially old it was. I remember eating so much free popcorn that my tongue burned from the salt, drinking so much soda (you had to bring your own cup) that I’d have the shakes. And after a few weeks someone taught me that you could “damage out” candy by just marking it on a sheet, and then eat it. So if anyone ask you would say the box was dented or someone brought it back because the plastic seal was broken. I only worked there one summer but it was a small town theatre and I remember Varsity Blues played there for the entire time I worked there. Ugh, 90s.
Yes, “spoiling” (our term for “damaging out”) was necessary for the malted milk ball fights. And yes to Too Much Soda and Too Much Popcorn. I also cracked my teeth chewing ice (in my attempt to not drink so much soda).
I worked at a movie theater many moons ago. It was small – only three screens – and pretty fun. I ate ALL THE POPCORN and drank ALL THE COKE but the candy was jealously guarded and counted and weighed each closing so we couldn’t have any. If we didn’t sell any hot dogs, we were allowed to have those at the end of the night. Given that we’d been watching them doing their little greasy hot dog log-rolling dance all evening, we’d usually pass.
I worked at movie theaters just out of high school in the late ’90s. One location required us to tuck in our shirts and to never lean on things (If we could lean, we could clean) because the manager was very neat. The other location didn’t require shirt-tucking (this was a huge deal for me) and allowed us to not only lean but to read when things were slow. Ushers sometimes found money when cleaning theaters. I usually worked concession, where I learned how many people are barely able to understand how ordering food works. I also tore tickets and plenty of middle-aged white dad types loved moving to hand me the ticket and then pulling it away. FUN TIMES.
I loved working at Subway in Wyoming. It was before they changed the cut on the bread and brought in the toaster ovens.
The only bad thing that happened to me there was when three teen boys from the other town in the county (there were, seriously, two real towns in that huge county) trashed the store when I was doing something in the back. One of those boys went on to be a rapist/murderer.
I also took the virginity of one my male co-workers while we were closing the store one night. He did not, as far as I know, become a rapist/murderer.
I, too, worked at DQ.
I spent the first couple of months after finishing undergrad before I broke into my current field working at the local Dairy Queen. The pay was decent and it wasn’t a hard job, but the customers could be horrible, and the boss’s son who was “the night manager” would sit around, eat Chinese food and watch TV on a 10-inch while the other employees ran around trying to put a dent in the line that was out the door. Also, he kind of looked like the horrible landlord from While You Were Sleeping and incessantly talked about his nights at “da club drinkin’ Henny.”
But his parents were lovely! And I once got a 20 dollar tip.
I once got a $20 tip too! Isn’t it nuts how something like that really sticks with you?
Yes! And I thought it was a mistake and I had accidentally put change from a transaction into my tip cup, so I made the manager recount my drawer twice before I kept it haha.
My friend who worked at DQ in the 90s as a teen told me that the Mister Mistee machine at his store would sometime just totally fill up with mold. That really grossed me out.
I worked at a Marble Slab Creamery, where the owner addressed me only as “girl” and “Hannah Montana.”
I have now moved into the very glamorous world of office supplies retail! Last week, a customer told me to wax my eyebrows. Dear Toasties, I ate her.
I couldn’t decide if that said hate or if my eyes were playing tricks on me but Dear Interrobanged, She deserved it.
I was a shift manager at a Cold Stone! Wanna rumble?
I envied you Marble Slab-ers, with your not having to sing for tips. Though the singing wasn’t actually too bad when you were working with other outgoing people. You just sorta shrugged and commited to the ridiculousness. It’s when you were on the line with a couple of quiet, easily embarrassed high schoolers who were just mumbling along that it was the worst.
aww, i was a quiet, easily embarrasses high schooler! I ate so many Reese’s cups though. so. many.
Never worked fast food, but I once had a summer job taking payments at the front desk for an electric company. People came in mad all the time for various reasons and would accuse the company of ripping everyone off and me of getting stock options. I spent a lot of time explaining how co-ops work to angry rural farmers…
I worked at Chuck E. Cheese’s for four summers in college.
One day, I exploded a 5-gallon plastic jug of ranch dressing on myself while attempting to fill a crock on the salad bar. [Note: Whenever other foodstuffs would get into the salad dressing crocks, we would just stir it down to the bottom so we wouldn’t have to replace the entire container just because someone was a little too overzealous with their fake bacon-bit habit. I no longer eat at restaurant salad bars.]
My favorite customer story was when I was working at the cash register. A lady placed an order that came to something like $16.89. She reached her hand into the left side of her bra and pulled out the bills, then used the other hand to reach into the right side of her bra and pulled out exact change.
I like ranch dressing, but that story still made my stomach turn. I hope you were able to change your clothes and didn’t have to spend the day wearing slowly congealing industrial dressing.
It. Was. Awful. I had to shop-vac up 4.5 gallons of ranch dressing, since the other 1/2 gallon had permeated my uniform.
I do not eat ranch dressing.
I worked at Chuck E. Cheese in high school! I once got screamed at for like 15 straight minutes because the lady insisted I was berating her child when I asked him, “Is this your mommy?” (which was protocol for door-checkers who came across children with smudged hand stamps).
The worst day ever was when some kid came in with a flu and puked first into the drain of the soda machine (like, walked right up to it, put his chin on the thing, and spewed) and then when someone tried to grab him he ran up into the plastic play tubes and puked in there twice. We spent half a day cleaning puke.
Why did you ask that if a kid had a smudged hand stamp? does a smudged hand stamp somehow imply a kidnapped kid?
RANCH. UGH. I worked as a banquet server for a mid-range hotel when I was in college and Ranch Dressing Duty was everyone’s least favorite task. Bathtub-sized bowl, gallon of mayo, gallon of sour cream, large envelope of ranch flavor and – unless you mixed very slowly and very carefully, ranch powder and mayo splatters err’where. It was a very long time before I could eat ranch again.
OMG. This. At the restaurant I worked/grew up in, the ranch is super popular. This means we had to make it so often. When you try and stir the massive bowl of ranch, you lose feeling in your arm about half-way through. This means who have to either switch arms or risk slopping ranch all over the table/floor/yourself.
Panda Express. Asking ‘Rice or chow mein’ for hours on end. I would occasionally run into students from my high school, but I despised having to greet the teachers–that was more mortifying to me, particularly when I didn’t like the teacher.
Wait, there’s no chocolate in a Reese’s Piece at all? What’s the shell made of?
Um, candy. (Idk what that means at all.) (Pure sugar??)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reese%27s_pieces
Beetle secretions.
Mind = blown (and Reese’s Pieces was always my favorite Blizzard back in the day!)
I worked at a Pita Pit for exactly two (2) nights. Then I PITA QUIT. The stoner dude managers made me close by myself at 4am. No sir. I called before my third shift and said: “Hi…sorry…I just…can’t.”
I also worked at my large university’s dining hall for a while. It’s an interesting thing to put on a lunch lady smock and serve food to your college peers, because they stop being your peers and start treating you like the lowest scummy drone of the earth. LOOK SERVICE INDUSTRY PEOPLE THE FACE AND SAY PLEASE AND THANK YOU, EVERYONE. That is all.
Close by yourself at 4am? Why was such a place even open that late? nope nope nope octopus.gif that is not okay. I would have freaked out and maybe called my dad.
College town late night hours. All of the customers were drunk and gross after a certain point. I wasn’t COMPLETELY by myself, they were hanging out in the office doing nothing/telling me what to do. Nope octopus.gif indeed.
I haven’t worked fast food, but I did spend a summer working at a buffet restaurant called Fire Mountain Grill. Aside from the lousy tips (since as they didn’t have a proper menu no one realized that they were supposed to tip the servers), the worst thing was the mashed potatoes. People would get entire plates of mashed potatoes, eat two bites, and then pile all their dishes on top of the sticky, gravy-laden mess, so when you picked it up white goo would ooze out all over the table, your shoes, and the carpeted floor.
I worked at Wendy’s in high school and it was terrible but not soul crushing from what I can remember. They put me on fries the first day, but I quickly proved my value and was trained on the cash registers toward the end of my shift. I usually worked openings, which meant getting there at 6:30am to prep stuff. The assistant manager who covered opening never got there on time though so I was usually stuck waiting outside after my mom dropped me off. One particularly cold morning, one coworker took pity on me and let me wait in his car.
The building was old, like the first Wendy’s in our town and never updated old, like old as balls. So it was always kind of dirty no matter how recently it had been cleaned. The POS was old too and we only had one drive thru window. I had to do lots of math in my head for change and in the winter it was freezing.
The worst was when the franchise owner would drop by and “help” during the lunch rush.
I liked the food. At the time, they still had pitas. Nothing about their food struck me as exceptionally gross, but I may have been brainwashed by my love of frosties.
The thing about people in upper management/ownership positions “helping” is that you do your job half as well because you’re so nervous about them looking over your shoulder, plus they probably aren’t as used to the day-to-day routine and where everything is and how much it costs off the top of their head, etc., so they’re asking you questions and not being helpful at all.
No, and he made me so nervous! One time he was giving change and handing out food at the window, while I took orders on the drive thru register. It was really cramped in that area anyway and with two people it was. The. Worst.
I always thought the food at Wendy’s was pretty decent too – I was always gnawing on the chicken nuggests and eating the baked potatoes for my lunches
My very first job was at the diner/ place to get a burger in the Honolulu Zoo. Not really sure what call it since it had more than hot dogs and burgers but was also open air. I would eat there most of the days, but my fondest food memory from there is how my friend and I who also worked there would bring home all the extra soft-serve from when it needed to get emptied. It was a pretty good gig as far as food work goes, especially since I was just up front taking orders and making shave-ice and soft serve cones. Also got to hang out across from the tigers, which was pretty awesome.
My first job was working at an italian fast food place in Michigan called Fazoli’s. Fazoli’s does unlimited breadsticks that the employees have to bring around in a little basket and offer to each table. That was the worst job in the place because when you asked if they wanted a breadstick, people always mumbled back their responses and would get REALLY upset if you didn’t hear them. Someone had to go around and offer breadsticks every ten minutes and god help you if the managers found out a customer had to come up to the counter and ask for another breadstick because you waited too long.
This summer, I worked at a smoothie/coffee/yogurt stand, which was in a shipping container in New York. It was okay, most of the time, but about three weeks before I quit, the owner decided that we should start selling paninis. We had no equipment to make paninis, so every single time someone ordered one, we would have to run across the street to the restaurant (owned by the same person) to get a panini.
One time, I was drinking tea while I was working, and we ran out of lids, so the manager took the lid off of my tea and put it on a customer’s cup of coffee.
Other than that, it was decent, I guess.
That second story..oh god oh goddd that is grossing me out. Like the disposable lids with the little hole that you put your mouth on?! tiny screams forever
Yep, the kind you’d have on hot coffee or tea. I got sick two days later too, so that particular health code violation probably did result in someone else getting sick. Gross, I know, and totally preventable if the kitchen was stocked more efficiently.
Things I learned working full-time at Wendy’s:
Working around open deep-fat friers does nothing good for your skin.
People really do look at you like a subhuman lump the moment you put on a food service uniform.
If you start crying hysterically while working the lunch rush, you eventually get to take a break.
The Wendy’s chili is made from overcooked/set-out-too-long burger patties (economical yet gross!)
EVERYONE BE KIND TO FOOD SERVICE PEOPLE AND CASHIERS OF ALL KINDS. THOSE JOBS ARE SO DEHUMANIZING.
Oh god, nooooooooooooo. I LOVE Wendy’s chili. NOOOOOOoooooooo
It’s still totally edible! I enjoyed it myself on taco salads and the like!
I worked at a deli/fish counter in Shop Rite (grocery store). I remember being picked up after work by my brother, and sneeringly being told “Ewww – you smell like fish”.
I remember crying because a lady was mean to me while I was weighing out lobsters for her.
I remember my co-worker’s John Wayne Bobbit imitation with a hot dog.
I worked there for several summers, and it was pretty much…okay. It did teach me how to really sweep a floor, that’s for sure.
Can you explain what a bad bag of soft serve is? I don’t even eat dairy queen but it’s making me anxious.
yes, this. I almost went to a DQ yesterday, but this really worries me 🙁
It comes as a liquid in a bag that you pour into the machine, which then freezes it to soft-serve consistency. It’s nothing scary, but a pain to wrangle when you’re standing on a rickety stool. I managed to get through 4 years of working at McDonald’s without spilling it down the side of the machine, but every time there was a new batch of employees, someone would spill a full bag, and someone would mix up shake and soft serve mix.
In case anyone else heard the same rumours I did as a kid, there is no pork (or other animal) fat in McDonald’s soft serve. Flurries are the only thing I’ll even occasionally eat from McDonald’s now.
I really, really, want to experience the glory of a $17 blizzard now.
20% of the time, if you dip a cone in the melty chocolate, you’ll find yourself holding an empty cone
Thank you! I have always, always* wondered what kept the soft-serve on an inverted cone, and now I know: luck.
*I mean always-since-childhood, not always-every-second-of-every-day. I don’t have a stack of diaries scribbled full of “How, how does it stay? What keeps the soft-serve on the cone? I STILL DO NOT KNOW.”
that’d be a great diary to keep, tho
if you died in a random accident, your family and friends would be hella confused
After my sad demise from falling upend into a vat of chocolate goo and failing to extricate myself, you mean?
My family and friends would be confused; my husband would think “Of course she was curious about ice cream viscosity and gravity. That’s so like her.”
I mean, it could also be cherry
DEATH BY CHOCOLATE.
butterscotch would definitely be the least dignified vat of goo to die in
ohhh I fell into a vat full of chocolate
At least with that you just kinda mix it in and pretend it didn’t happen… we had to dip the cones in trays of sprinkles and roll em around, and if you lost it in there, ugh the mess. Plus customers could essentially see everything we were doing at every moment, so they would know when this happened and give you stink eye as you hastily try to both clean it and make them a new one.
I never worked a fast-food job, but I did work in an adorable little sandwich-gourmet-foods-and-souvenir shoppe (we earned that -pe suffix, y’all), where on two separate occasions, tourists threw
A. a full bottle of sunscreen
B. a full paper cup of scalding hot coffee
at my head.
The sunscreen bonked off the side of my head with surprising pain; the coffee, of course, spattered me all over and left a light burn on my cheek. I seem to recall that my boss gave me fifty bucks and a paid day off on coffee-face day, but maybe I’m romanticizing.
Also, while I was working in a posh boutique, an unaccountably angry customer threw a fancy blouse at my face. The crisp cardstock tag caught me in the eye, blinding me for blessedly few, but panicky seconds while she screamed “Don’t be such a baby, it didn’t hurt you!” and my co-worker escorted her out of the store.
To sum up: people everywhere are The Worst. Be kind to service workers, because other people are being impossibly, mind-bogglingly cruel to them.
OH MY GOD what is WRONG with people! Why are you a magnet for the angry throwers?!
Y’know, I don’t even think it’s me, specifically; I think it’s the nature of service industry (especially when you’re serving a transient but privileged population like tourists, who are also often frustrated and feeling cheated because vacations are unexpectedly expensive) multiplied by the many, many years I spent in various service jobs.
Though each of those incidents occurred when I stepped in to speak calmly to a customer who was already SCREAMING at a co-worker, so I was entering an already-charged situation in hopes of calming it down. Usually that worked out well, but when you’re dealing with a cross-section of the public, you never know when you’re going to hit a wild card who will, y’know, throw a cup of coffee at you.
But that said: the huge majority of customers were quite pleasant; some were lovely. I still think fondly of the customer who called the sandwich shop daily and asked me to make him whatever sandwich I thought he might like today.
Oh dear I didn’t mean what did you do to attract the throwing!
I think you make a good point about service work in general. That is a lovely story about the man calling for his sandwich though.
All of those things are actual Assault.
I know! Rather, now I know that.
They all happened years ago, and even if the legal threshold for assault hasn’t changed, the social understanding of it has — for the better, I believe — so it never occurred to me (or any of my co-workers, several of whom had similar stories) to report the incidents.
I worked at a Tim Hortons in university (why yes, I *am* Canadian!) and here is what I learned:
1) The smell of hundred of doughnuts at 5 am in the morning is nauseating enough to put you off doughnuts forever
2) Ice Caps are actually just syrup (it comes in a plastic bags exactly like milk) plus ice, all mixed together. Similarly, anything that is not coffee or tea (such as hot chocolate, cappuccinos, etc) is powder plus cream. I suppose I was naïve to assume this was not the case
3) A Tim’s Frankenbeverage comprised of half-coffee and half-hot chocolate with a peppermint tea bag in it is actually superior to a Starbucks peppermint mocha
4) There are young women working at Tim Hortons who affectionately refer to their fellow female colleages as “Timmy Hos.” If you are among their number, there is little you can do to prevent this, no matter how many uncomfortable faces you make
#3 sounds awesome. I may finally visit Canada and/or upstate NY just for that.
I never worked fast food (thank good), but I worked at a Harry and David retail store one summer and I ate a looot of Moose Munch and chocolate covered dried fruit. We were allowed to open anything in the store if a customer wanted to sample it, and then obviously you couldn’t put it back on the shelf. We were encouraged to try things ourselves so we could give informed opinions to customers. And for some reason there was never a manager there. Pretty good job.
Then I worked in the kitchen at sleep away camp and we went a girl to the hospital the very first night because news of her sulphur allergy hadn’t made it back to the kitchen. Sorry, that girl.
I never worked fast food, but I did work at Panera Bread. I was pretty into the food through the duration of my two years there–I made my own off-menu sandwiches (focaccia bread, that one mayo-ish dressing, mozzarella, sweet peppers, spring mix, tomatoes, olives) that were really good. I had crushes on all of the college boys that worked there (I was in high school). My brother, who was extremely frugal at the time, lived off of the pastries I brought home and pizza he dumpster dived from Hungry Howies.
I worked at McDonald’s for three years in high school. All in all it could be pretty fun because all of the night shift workers were friends and at first the managers were cool too. Our store was open until 2 am and late at night we’d run around the place shooting condiments and throwing wet rags at each other. One time a bunch of us took the day off to go to Busch Gardens together. I still believe that any job can be okay if you like the people you work with.
There were a few hazards though – the floors were really slippery after mopping so I’d slip and fall and the customers would laugh at me. And one time I burnt my arm on a fry basket. And eventually they brought in a douchebag manager who wouldn’t let us horse around. And then I got put on day shift (during the summer) and those people were No Fun At All.
At first I ate the food but eventually got tired of it. Everybody got food from other places during their shifts – pizza, Chinese, sub sandwiches.
I worked at Noodles & Company, which is sort of a hippy noodle fast-ish food place. And it was AMAZING. Everyone was always smoking out of a bong in the back room, we got all the free noodles and salad that we wanted, and we made slightly above minimum wage. The drudgery eventually got to me, but looking back I realize that as far as first jobs go, I HAD IT MADE.
I haven’t worked fast food, but I did spend a summer working at a buffet restaurant called Fire Mountain Grill. Aside from the lousy tips (since as they didn’t have a proper menu no one realized that they were supposed to tip the servers), the worst thing was the mashed potatoes. People would get entire plates of mashed potatoes, eat two bites, and then pile all their dishes on top of the sticky, gravy-laden mess, so when you picked it up white goo would ooze out all over the table, your shoes, and the carpeted floor.
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