Thinking. Today I was thinking about our poor skeleton crew as we were swamped with an endless horde of customers. A handful were understanding (thank you strangers) and the rest were not.
Despite working at a fast-food chain restaurant I actually enjoy it. This is one of the best times I can openly observe people's behaviors. Treatment of workers in this industry is notorious. You hear such wonderful things in general! And this is understandable - customers treat you like shit. As soon as you take a step behind that counter you're not even a person.
Now, back to us being swamped:
Unpredictable with the tenacity of a hungry octopus! With the crawl of a slowpoke came the first wave. It wasn't anything special aside from two large orders easy totaling forty dollars of more in food. That's not terribly bad - we had this. Except we didn't, because then people started cramming inside. They came at us like a bunch of desperate buzzards that spotted the first carcass for miles around.
The sighing started. The unhappy faces and looks of, "Why are you serving me right now?" Their looks clung to my back as I tried to explain, "Someone will be with you at the next available moment". I was busy serving up someone at the window. But my role didn't end. Everyone took turns dropping items into the fryer and sweating it out up front and at the window and freaking out. How are people acting by this point? We lost a whole order of five sandwiches and four different fried items. It somehow never reached this poor lady who was kind of enough to wait patiently for us to remake the entire order behind everyone else's who was hounding us, the manager on duty whose fingers were bleeding from writing out refunds and combo cards and sending out favors to mitigate things up front. Hell didn't end there.
While the manager was up front the rest of us were running around with our heads chopped off. Poor backliner. He was all by his lonesome. And gunning it making annoyingly time-consuming sandwiches. Now to observe people now. At this point we are having to put people on wait on at the drive-thru for orders simply because we don't have time. How is that possible? Endless orders of chicken and fish. Damn those chicken and fish. And the people who are huffing at us. I understand I work at a fast-food industry but you can only do so much.
Some things to note: people hate when you are out of product. They don't seem to understand that you are out and throw tantrums even though you courteously explain there's no way you can procure corned beef. People also seem blind to the sheer amount of people in front of them. How can you not see the five people in front of you? Cars even. Wouldn't you assume that they ordered something as well? I'm not sure why people are like that. Or even impatient. Then we had the ridiculousness of theft and then later some guy calling back telling us we got his order wrong even though he had three times to check it. Do people even read their receipts anymore?
Where is the world going? People are so impatient, cold and despicably ridiculous at managing themselves in public at times. I've liked to think that I have done a good job at remaining pleasant even under pressure and making sure I treat people with the utmost care when I deal with them. I just don't want to be as insensitive as some people I've come across.
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