Get a "Real Job!"

(I want to quickly apologize for the angry voice of this post. This is a subject I feel strongly about, and you will soon see why--that is, of course, you already know and therefore will understand my feelings.)

"Get a real job!" "How hard is it to push buttons and make s**t?!" "It doesn't take a genius to do what you do, why can't you do it right?!"

My advice to those who go to a restaurant? Don't ever, ever say these words or anything like them within earshot of the people handling your food. The rumors that people spit in your food that you send back? Not necessarily true. Unless you're a dick.

I have worked in restaurants of different kinds and at all of them, someone has done something to someone else's food. One place was your typical sit-down restaurant. Very rarely would the servers do anything, but in one case a patron was particularly mean and demanding. He got a nice, big loogie in his soup de jour. An old couple one time was fussy and another server (with the startings of the flu) licked the rim of their after dinner coffee mugs. These waiters, being trained by the best, kept smiling through the pain (and their revenge), so the customers never knew what happened.

At another place I worked, well, I have two words. Floor. Spice. Or, a sister store of ours had another two words: Jalapeno Brine. Both places had service with a smile!

To those of you who have never worked at any food service stores (fast-food especially) I would like to tell you a little bit about why we can be so passive-agressive.

Firstly, window times.
At my fast food job, there was timer connected to both the menu board and the window (we only had one). It recorded how long we took to acknowlege the car, how long they waited in line, and then how long they waited to get their food at the window. This information was sent to corporate HQ and our store was judged according to their set standards. Wait times and complaints were the only things they cared about when it came to CS--they never took into account average order size or how few people we had at the time. Nor how stupid the people ordering were. But that's another category.
This corporation said that you had to:
Greet the car within 5 seconds.
Have the car pull away from the magnetic strip in front of the speaker in less than 45 seconds. And
Have the car pull away from the same strip at the window in less than a minute and have the combined time be less than 1 minute, 30 seconds.
Pulling cars around to wait was highly frowned upon, but there were some cases in which it was acceptable.
Remember, corporate did not care if, say, you had only two people in the store. Or if you had a car break down in drive thru (DT). Or if it was a particularly indecisive day for your customers. Or several pieces of equipment were broken. Or if you had to reboot your computer system six or more times that shift. Or if there were several large orders in a row, every other half hour. Or all of these combined. Keep in mind, these are normalacies.
Speed was how your worth was judged. If you were a manager and you were constantly dealt crap cards when it came to DT, you were either fired or just never promoted. You were always singled out at manager meetings (once a week) and then every time you happened to run into your main manager you were reminded that you are worth nothing until you can make crap food at their preferred rate. This puts a lot of pressure on you when you depend on your paycheck to pay the bills.

Then there are stupid co-workers.
Yes, fast-food is a default job for those who are too stupid to do anything else. This is unfortunate because this type of job requires more wits than one would think. You have to remember numbers like, oh, I don't know, 40 and 140. These sound innocent enough, but tell that to thousands every year who end up in the hospital because their food was cooked only to 120 degrees and then left out at 75 degrees for a few hours. It also requires common sense to do things like not clean food surfaces with toxic chemicals. And, yes, most (if not all) fast-food places have these chemicals within reach of the stupidest of employees. And, no, they are not trained properly as to how to handle them.
Other things that are needed to do the job include problem-solving techniques. When the pump you are using breaks, you need to have the intel in order to figure out how to use a ladle. I have been asked before, "We're out of __ wraps. What do I do?" The answer, you would think would be obvious: "Use a different wrap!" But sadly, stupid people don't realize that.
Stupid co-workers? They add a good minute or so to average window time.

Finally, stupid/mean customers. I got a call once and, being the manager, I had to take it.
Customer: "Hey, I asked for no lettuce and I got lettuce!"
In the background, one of my co-workers told a joke and others laughed. The customer heard it.
Me: "I'm sorry about that. If you'd like to come back--"
Customer: "They're laughing at me! You guys did this on purpose! Do you think this is funny? Do ya? I'm calling the hotline on you!"
Me: "No one is laughing at you, sir. No one can hear you."
Customer: "No, but they can hear you!"
The conversation just deteriorated from there.
Another call went like this:
Guy: "My s**t's messed up! I want it replaced."
Me: "I'm sorry about that. If you--"
Guy: "You know, I deal with 20 guys to put up steel girders."
Me: "..."
Guy: "How come something as simple as food is SO HARD for you stupid retards, huh? How hard is it to push buttons and make s**t?! I have to--" blah, blah, curse, curse...
Me (interrupting his tirade): "If you would like to come back--"
Guy: blah, blah, curse, curse...
Me: *click*
These calls happened every day. Most of these problems were imagined or they were created in order to get free food. I have had hot food thrown at me, money thrown at me...and, I have been "fire in the holed."
Ah, teenagers. For those of you who don't know what this means, a couple of teenagers order something inexpensive including a large soda. As per tradition, you hand them the soda and take their money to make change and when you turn back around to give them their food and/or change, they throw the opened soda at you and drive off. This happens more often than you'd think.

So, the next time you start to get pissed over something as stupid as lettuce that you can f*****g pick off yourself, rethink your actions. Because loogies, deadly chemicals, or even just a little bit of "floor spice" is not worth it. Or you could grow a pair and learn to appreciate what your local DT cashier has to go through every day.
(/gripe)

Next week, we go in-depth as to why people have these crappy CS jobs! *manic grin*