FOOD SERVICE.
_Working in the food service industry can be a daunting challenge. Half the time the people you work for think you're an indentured servant, and the rest of the time the clientele believe they own you. If you can make it out of the industry with a semblance of sanity and no criminal record... YOU'VE WON!!! _
Redditor _Brando224 _wanted to hear the true life horror stories of fast food employees.
YOU KNOW COFFEE CAN BE A WEAPON IF YOUR NOT CAREFUL.
I worked at Starbucks and a woman ordered her coffee at 140 degrees in the drive thru. She walks back in the cafe after pulling out and complains that her coffee was 139 degrees because she has a thermometer in her car and she demands it be remade. I laughed at her and asked if she was joking and she demanded to see my manager. My manager remade it but I didn't get in any trouble. She was ridiculous but Starbucks' policy is to remake anything if a customer asks for it.
YOU CAN'T SAVE EVERYBODY. :(
Literally had a 17 year old kid die in my arms.
I was 19 and working at KFC in a bit of a a rough area. It was a quiet day shift so there were only 3 staff and no customers in the store at the time. A young couple, who looked pretty messed up, walked in and went straight to the bathrooms.
After some time, the girl came out screaming for help. She said her boyfriend had gone into the bathroom to the use heroin and he was not responding and was inside the locked men's room.
My manager called an ambulance while I tried to get the door open. Couldn't kick it down like Chuck Norris, so I went and grabbed some tools and finally got it open.
Found the kid, blue and cold on the floor. His pulse was faint. There was a syringe next to him. He had blood in his mouth so I couldn't make mouth to mouth contact and started administering chest compressions. The whole time his girlfriend was screaming at me to save him.
I feel like I could sense the moment he had passed. The ambulance came within a few minutes but there was nothing they could do.
His mother came a few days later to apologize and thank us for trying to save him. There was some police questioning and plenty of nightmares. It was been about 17 years and I still think about it often.
MAYBE AN INVESTMENT IN ANGER MANAGEMENT WOULD BE A WISE CHOICE.
I was working at a pub shortly after college. During the evenings, things would always get pretty stressful and hectic. People would be snapping at each other, or saying mean things, or arguing, or whatever. Pretty standard stuff in a high stress situation like that.
One day, though, in the middle of dinner, the other cook (my immediate manager, but not the restaurant manager) apparently just had a bad night. He'd been getting progressively more agitated all night (not with me, luckily). Suddenly, a waitress came back and complained that one of her tables was complaining because the food was cold. First, the manager responded by telling her that if she'd come get her orders when they were done, they wouldn't be cold, but when she made some comment back, he snapped.
He picked up a hot pan from the stove, and I was terrified for a second that he was going to throw it at her. Instead, he swung it at hard as he could at the entire stack of clean plates and knocked almost all of them off the table, shattering them on the floor. Then he literally tore off his apron and stormed out, but not before knocking a tray of full out of another watiress's hands.
Weirdly enough, the store manager was going to let him keep his job if he'd admit being out of line. She brought him in during lunch the next day to talk to him, and instead of apologizing, he smashed a coffee cup against the wall and left.
All told, it was probably for the best.
PEOPLE IN GLASS HOUSES....
I had a rough looking guy in a beat-up truck try to use 1 year old coupons. I refused to take them. That was a mistake. He held up the drive thru and screamed and screamed at me. Including "smarten up son, or you're going nowhere in life". Made me feel like DIRT until I realized that someone like that who is screaming those things at a 15 year running the drive thru, did not go anywhere in life.
SOME PEOPL ARE SO LITERAL.
A coworker came up to me and told me he was gangsta. I said "Troy, you're no gangster". He then pulls out a glock from his waistband.
THERE ISN'T ENOUGH $$$ IN THE WORLD!
Worked at Wendy's for two weeks. Wasn't bad until someone spread FECES all over the men's restroom and they wanted me to clean it up. It was on the ceiling, toilet, all the walls. Like someone had a poopconfetti bomb. Just rubber gloves no mask. I said forget it and quit.
CHECK YOUR TEETH FIRST!
I was a waitress at a pizza place and an older man and woman flagged me over and they just start yelling at me going on and on that they found metal in their food. And she's showing me and yelling and I am trying to apologize and saying we can make you a new pizza, I am sorry, I have no idea where it came from. After several minutes of yelling the man gets quiet and he goes "oh, I lost a filling". Then they tried to be all nice and laugh it off. I just wanted to say screw you for treating me like crap.
FALL BACKWARDS ALWAYS!!
Worked at McD's as my first job at 15. Worst thing I probably saw was one of the guys working the fryer tripped and when he reached out to stop himself falling, he ended up with half of his hand in the fry oil. I think the entire store heard my "OH GOD".
WHO DIDN'T HUG YOU AS A CHILD SIR?
I worked at McDonald's part-time while I was in college. One day, I was working the drive-through, and this guy ordered a lot of drinks. One of them was low on soda syrup, but instead of just telling me about it like a rational person so I could give him a replacement drink, he threw the extra large drink at me. Of course the lid came off and I was soaking wet.
The manager, who was actually pretty good as far as fast food managers go, saw this happen. He took off running into the parking lot, flagged down the driver before he could leave, and told him to never come back. Then he came back in, found me a dry uniform shirt, and let me have a few minutes on the clock to sit in the break room and calm down.
WHO ARE YOU WEARING?
Naked people while delivering pizza. Sounds sexy in the porno's, tends to be horrifying in real life.
WE CAN'T HAVE ALL TOYS WE WANT!
Lines out the door, crazy women demanding we get them a certain toy, impatient and NASTY people. People would say degrading shit like mentioning I was working for min wage if they felt I wasn't working fast enough. People suck.
SHAME ON YOU SIR!
I was a carhop at Sonic drive-in through most of high school. I was the only guy that was able to use the roller skates. An extremely creepy old man in a vehicle that might as well have been in a scrap yard called me back to his car after I started to go back inside. Gave me a $15 tip because "that butt needed a second look".
BICEPS?!?! UM... OK.
I worked at a popular Canadian coffee franchise almost ten years ago.
One day, a drive-thru customer had some sort of altercation with a pair of pedestrians who had been walking through the drive-thru. The way I understand it, the customer had almost hit the pedestrians--a man and his mother, and then had started shouting. This is what I heard over the drive-thru headset: "YOU WANNA FACE FULLA BICEP?!?! I'LL GIVE YA A FACE FULL OF BICEP!!"
WOULD YOU LIKE A MEAL WITH YOUR SRIRACHA?
When I worked at Subway, this guy asked for sriracha sauce on his sandwich. I put the regular amount on, then he asks for more. I put more on. He asks for more.
Eventually, he's SCREAMING at me to put more sriracha on the sandwich, to which I end up emptying out the entire bottle on it. He's still not satisfied, so I have to get more.
One half bottle of sriracha later, he says it's enough. Still remember him to this day.
SOME PEOPLE SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO ROAM FREE.
Does Starbucks count?
A woman demanded room (space for sugar, cream) in her latte, then burst back in line demanding more room, then berated me for throwing out the ones she returned for damaging the environment (because I didn't resell them, apparently), then demanded less room.
Our manager ended up telling her she just had to leave because the line became enormous.
WELL IF GOTTA GO....
I worked at a movie theater one semester in high school. I was scheduled as a porter, which basically means I was responsible for sweeping up the theaters between shows and throwing out trash. When I got to the back row there was a cup in the cup holder without the top on. It turned out to be filled with pee.
SOME PARENTS NEED A SPANKING!
I used to work in a bakery in a grocery store. I was the cake decorator and the cakes were in containers and in a cooler that customers could just take and go to pay.
While, two kids, 6 and 8 years old-ish ran over and started throwing the cakes on the ground. Like 'happy birthday to the ground' style. They were on their 6th cake before I could reach them and took the cakes in their hands. Their mom came over, sight and just turn the kids around and started to the produce section like nothing happens. No apology, no acknowledgment, no words to the kids about the one $100s they just cost us and my time.
IF YOU'RE NOT HELPING... BE QUIET!
I worked at a Canes Chicken around graduation season. He had massive catering orders, like 600 chicken fingers, 500 pieces of toast, 250 coleslaws... Multiple orders like this on the same day while also being our busiest day of the week. We were going nuts, even the owner was there to help. Of course, this is the day corporate decides to make a surprise visit. The owner got reamed (even though we were consistently scoring as one of the top locations on a regular day), so he reamed the manager, who then reamed us. So we're already stressed out and tired and now we're being shouted at by irate customers, the owner, and our manager. I'm surprised we didn't all quit that day.
HOW ABOUT I BREAK THAT CAMERA?
Customers at a truck stop were secretly taking pics of me while cleaning one night. My bosses noticed and sent me to the back until they left. I was underage ( and looked a bit younger than 16 :/)
EAT YOUR NAILS AT HOME!
Not me but my mother worked at a restaurant with a chef that wouldn't remake an order after the customer found various finger nails in it.