Fast Food Woes

I never wanted to be one of those “kids these days” old fogies.  You know, the ones who fail to realize that it’s not the kids who have changed, but our perception of them as we reach certain ages.  But here we are.

I have always stood up for fast food workers.  The world is full of people who’ve worked nothing but cushy office jobs, who often look down on fast food workers as if it’s the easiest job in the universe.  But let me tell you, there are a lot of dangerous or back breaking jobs I would take before I went into fast food again.  Fast food work is tiring, sweaty, and thankless.  Honestly I would rather work my current job at fast food pay, than work in fast food again at my current pay rate.

That said, what is going on with service lately?  It’s probably just coincidence, but this has just been a very bad week for me, service-wise.

On Tuesday, I picked up Taco Bell after work, and found that the lobby was closed.  No biggie, except that it was the second time this month that the lobby has closed early.  The first time, one of the employees told me it was because they were understaffed.  If that location keeps having staffing issues, that’s probably a management problem.  I’ll admit that when I worked fast food, I occasionally closed early.  But I’m talking five or ten minutes early, and only if it looked like the world was dead outside.  The owner even encouraged it.  But lately I’ve been encountering more and more restaurants that close the lobby hours earlier than their posted hours, only taking drive-thru orders.

On Wednesday, we ordered DoorDash.  The first order never arrived.  We saw a car start to pull up to our house, then drove off.  A few minutes later we saw what we think was the same car off in the distance, stopping at a different house.  This is when the driver marked it “delivered”.  We believe they gave the food to the wrong house, and whoever lives there just took it without saying anything.  We contacted DoorDash, who refunded our money right away, plus $10.  We immediately used the money to order from somewhere else.  This time the driver did fine, but whoever made my wife’s calzone misread “green olives” as “green peppers”, rendering it inedible to her.  She just couldn’t catch a break on dinner that night.  We’ve been using DoorDash, UberEats, and GrubHub for about six months now, and I have to tell you, something goes wrong at least 50% of the time.

On Thursday, I picked up Burger King on the way home.  The lobby was closed, much earlier than the posted hours.  So I went through the drive-thru.  The employees weren’t exactly rude, but they were very stoic.  No smile, no “thank you” or “have a nice evening”, they just used the minimum words required to get the order taken care of.  I saw they had at least five employees working, so I’m surprised they felt they had to close the lobby.  Maybe some fast food restaurants are starting to do that so they don’t get robbed.  If so, they need to update their signs.  Anyway, they also got our order wrong, by putting onions on my poor wife’s burger.  I know they heard me because the receipt had it listed correctly.  It’s enough to make me go on a Joe Pesci-style rant.

I filled out the surveys for both Taco Bell and Burger King.  If the managers don’t know their employees are closing the lobby early, they need to be told.  As much as I want to side with the employees, that’s a serious thing.  If you’re turning customers away, that’s not much different than stealing from the company.

As a customer, I avoid doing things that bugged me when I was an employee.  I never go into a fast food restaurant that closes in less than ten minutes.  It’s not about what time you walk through the door, it’s about what time you leave.  If you know it usually takes five minutes for them to make your order, and you walk in four minutes before they close, then as far as I’m concerned, that’s premeditated trespassing.  You know your actions are going to keep you in there after their posted closing hours, and that makes you a criminal in my eyes.  When I was working at a Subway that stayed open until midnight, I once had a guy walk in at 11:59 and say, “Whew, just made it.”  No, no you didn’t.  “Just made it” would be coming in at a time that had you walking back out the door at 11:59.  You, sir, are a dirty, low-life reprobate.  Of course, I didn't actually say that.

I know from experience that managers have unrealistic expectations on how long it takes to close a restaurant.  They’ll give you a list of closing duties that have to be done before you leave, a list that honestly should take about an hour, but they’ll tell you to be out of there fifteen minutes after closing.  The only way to keep your job is to start some of these duties in the last hour before closing.  A last-minute customer’s order may only take five minutes, but they can cause you to stay an extra twenty minutes.  Because now you have to re-mop the places they walked, you have to re-clean the drink machine they messily used, and redo all kinds of other little things that wouldn’t occur to people who’ve never worked in fast food.  The managers don’t care that the final customer brought in more money than the extra twenty minutes they now have to pay you.  They never make that kind of connection.  If you weren’t out in fifteen minutes, it must be because you’re lazy.

But that’s just one example of how I try to be understanding to fast food workers.  My point is, the employees I’ve encountered lately aren’t like I was.  Yes I was lazy, and apathetic, and I took shortcuts wherever I could.  But my customers never would have known.  I did everything with a smile, a please, and a thank you.  I had many a customer piss me off, but I doubt any of them ever knew it.  To their faces, I went the extra mile.  Behind their backs, I cursed them to fates worse than the lowest levels of Hell.  But the point is, I made sure they got the same fast food experience that I would want to receive myself.

And that’s all I’m asking.  If they want to make fun of me after I leave, that’s fine.  If they want to gripe about that customer who had the audacity to order a burger without onions, I have no problem being the bad guy.  But at least keep your lobby open the posted hours.  And keep the onions off my wife’s burger.  With all the food allergies people have these days, an extra ingredient is practically attempted murder.

I’m not asking fast food workers to be perfect.  All I’m asking is that they work at least as hard as I did back when I was a lousy employee.  That can’t be so hard, can it?