Perusing the news wires this morning, I found a story that would make any former fast food employee smile.
Two female college students were waiting in line at a Wendy’s in Franklin, N.J. when they heard an older lady berating the cashier. Seems a power outage in the restaurant had caused things to slow down in the kitchen and the older lady wasn’t very understanding about the delay.
The two students, Kailee Whiting, 19, and Katie Light, 18, intervened; standing up for the young cashier. How often have we all heard a similar grouch going off on some defenseless employee and how often do we wish we had displayed the same courage of these two young ladies?
As that conversation unfolded, the teens continued to try to talk to the grumpy woman, pointing out that working in the fast food industry is a hard job.
They’re not kidding.
I tried to explain this to Holly almost two years ago when a crank went online to write a mean-spirited review of the former Archer’s BBQ location in Farragut. The perturbed patron cited a number of reasons – all fictitious in my book – as to the reasons for her negative write-up. Her diatribe included a swipe at Holly for not being ‘friendly.’
I told Holly to write off the comments. The food at Archer’s is always great; the staff is always friendly. I wondered, at the time, if the author was really a fan of some other establishment. Maybe even a plant? The incident prompted me to write about how much I like Archer’s (and still do).
We were reminiscing about that incident recently and that reminded her of something similar she had heard. One of the various vendors who comes in the store and told her about another of his clients. That shoppe had gotten a lousy review because, the writer said, the establishment was just too clean. They didn’t like the clean smell.
Really, you can’t do much about cranks. Some folks, it seems, are just looking for something to complain about.
That was the case when I was doing my first fast food job – Rax Roast Beef. One night, a similar crabby older lady shouted at us all to “Wake up and smell the coffee!” when she found her French Fries a bit too crispy for her taste!
I was glad she didn’t seek out my nametag in order to single me out as being, personally, responsible.
Working in fast food is a good experience, I said to Holly, because it teaches you a lot of things – how to develop good work habits, why you want to succeed in higher education and pursue a career and, finally, a LOT about human nature.
That third lesson played out one-time, big-time when I was working at my second fast food job at the old hot dog stand in the Outlets Ltd. Mall.
Our manager had approved a closing procedure – especially on slow nights – that would allow us to do most of our cleanup starting at 8 o’clock so we could shut down, count out and be out of the mall not long after it closed at 9 p.m. We usually clocked out by 9:15.
On one night, I noticed a couple giggly goth girls hanging around the hot dog stand around 8:40 or so. I think they may have ordered a fountain coke and then drifted away.
When I was getting ready to pull down the heavy canvas covers around the perimeter of the kiosk, I found out why the giggly goths were so giddy. At the hot dog stand, we had three counters (two on the sides and one at the back) where patrons could sit and eat their dawg. Each side had a condiment bar (featuring relish, onions, pickles and such) and each counter had a soft plastic mustard bottle (yellow) and ketchup bottle (red).
Clearly, the girls wanted to prank the prep. They emptied the bottles out on the counters on the left side and back of the hot dog stand and kind of smeared the red and yellow together, on the counter and up and down the stand. Pretty!
Needless to say, my plans to be out of the mall that night by 9:15 – and go meet up with my friends – took a hit. Seems like it took about 20 additional minutes to clean up the artwork. Lesson learned: moving forward, I took up the bottles first thing!
Like I say, ‘human nature.’
Whether or not those stories were of any comfort to Holly, I can’t say. She has long-since shook off that 2011 critique of her work and she is really enjoying her job, these days, as a purveyor of Q.
As for the two teens at the N.J. Wendy’s, they got a nice note and two free Frosties as gratitude for their courage. The grouchy woman, apparently, called the manager to complain and was more than happy to inform him that his cashier had given away those two frozen treats. He told her that he didn’t mind.
The rest of us don’t mind, either. And we applaud them for their willingness to stand up to the bully.
JG
Originally posted 7/30/2013
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