10 Things Fast Food Workers Want You to Know

To start off, I'm a student, and my life is incredibly busy right now. I chose to work fast food because I love working in a fast-paced environment, and fast-food offers a lot of flexibility as far as scheduling goes. Some of my favorite things to do at work include making and refilling drinks, organizing orders, and running back and forth to restock supplies as we need them in the midst of a rush. However, for some, these are the most dreadful parts of fast-food. The experience of working fast-food is different for everyone, but there are still a few things that all fast-food workers can agree on and want you, the consumer, to know.

1. Please stop yelling at us.

I can't speak for all fast-food workers and say that they're always pleasant, but in my experience, we get yelled at, criticized, and judged more often than anyone should have to endure. As badly as we would like to argue back, as humans tend to do, we aren't allowed to say anything at all. Our options for confronting conflict include: smiling, apologizing, giving a refund, or grabbing a manager, if not all four. I feel as though it's common courtesy to avoid yelling at people that don't deserve it, and while I understand that what an individual believes is, or isn't, deserved is subjective, screaming at a teenager because they accidentally gave you diet instead of regular doesn't seem like a good enough reason. If you believe a mistake on our part is truly an issue, let our managers or supervisors discipline us. That is not your job.

2. If you have a major mess, please at least attempt to clean it up.

I am not denying that it is our job to clean things up if they get messy or disorderly. I'm well aware of my duties as far as that goes, and I don't have a problem with cleaning up after others at that point. The issue is not that customers leave crumbs on a table, forget to push their chairs in, or even accidentally drop a drink on the floor. The blatant disregard of common courtesy is what is most frustrating. For example, I once had a customer that dropped her drink on the floor in front of the counter. She looked back at me, said "Oops, I did that," in a valley-girl accent, sat down, and snickered at me while she watched me mop up her mess. I've had a family leave a literal trail of trash from their table to the door when they left. All fast-food workers want is for our customers to at least try to clean up after themselves. We don't mind helping, but there comes a point where it almost becomes babysitting.

3. A lot of your complaints are out of our control.

At my workplace. we have specialized jobs, and I'm positive that other fast-food restaurants are structured similarly. We have one person making sandwiches, one grilling food, one working on the deep fryer, and so-on. I've had customers get angry at me for an issue with how their burger was cooked, and all I want is for them to understand that all I do is take orders, but I can't say a word about it. Once again, just smile, apologize, and try to fix the issue. I don't blame a customer for wanting to correct a wrong order that they paid their own money for; however, before yelling at someone, which is pretty well uncalled for in the first place, consider whether or not they took part in the mistake you're complaining about.

4. We're sorry that you have to wait for a manager.

If a customer needs change or something happens and they need a refund, we need to get into the drawer. Unfortunately, most often, we can't do that without some type of key that only managers have. In addition to needing the manager's key, the managers usually have a thousand other things going on as well. Still, we have to wait for them. I understand, you want the issue solved quickly — so do we. Just bear with us, and try to be patient because this is out of our control.

5. We're not going to risk losing our jobs for you.

Some fast-food restaurants are more relaxed than others, but regardless of what the rules are, we've all dealt with customers that try to convince us to throw them a bone. For instance, where I work, we have discounts for people who buy discount cards from high school football teams in the area. I had a man place an order, and when I told him his total, he mentioned that he had a discount card, but left it at home. I apologetically told him I couldn't give him the discount, and he berated me until I gave it to him. I told him that I can't give a discount unless I see his card, but after ten minutes of listening to nothing but complaining about a rule that I didn't create, I reluctantly gave in and gave him the discount. I wish I would have held my ground, but I couldn't take it anymore. For the rest of the night, I was paranoid that my manager was going to write me up or think ill of me as an employee. I've refused to do it since because that nerve-wracking feeling of messing up at a brand new job still haunts me today.

6. Stop treating our trainees like garbage.

They're still in the learning process. They may be slow, and they make mistakes, but I can assure you that tapping your fingers on the counter, rolling your eyes, or making snide comments won't help them give you a better experience. In fact, from what I've witnessed, taunting them does the exact opposite. They become less independent and slower because they're so nervous that what they're doing isn't right. If you want fast-food workers to be efficient, try to be understanding of their shortcomings while they learn how to serve you better. After all, they're only human.

7. Stay on your side of the counter.

I cannot tell you how many times I've had customers lean over the register and tell me their order about two inches from my face. Before working fast-food, I would have never guessed that this would be an issue, but it is. First of all, it's kind of creepy. We encounter different kinds of characters all day long, and when a perfect stranger leans over the register to tell you their order as if they're exchanging some confidential, top-secret information, it's unsettling. Also, when a person speaks, tiny little germs fly through the air through their microscopic spit-mist. This typically isn't something to worry about if you're speaking to someone outside of their personal space, but I prefer to avoid strangers' germ-droplets if possible. I promise you, if your voice is that quiet, I will lean forward and tilt my head so that I can hear you better. I would rather have your breath hit my ear than my eyes, nose, and mouth.

8. Please, please, PLEASE keep your bodily fluids in: your body, a napkin, or a toilet.

This is another one of those things that I never thought I would have to worry about when I first got into fast-food. I'm not talking about a booger on a handrail, people. Vomit on the floor, fecal matter on the walls, semen on the mirror; I wish I could say that this has only happened at my workplace, but I've heard similar horror stories from fellow fast-food workers. This happens more often than you think. We understand, accidents happen (maybe not the semen on the mirror?), but I would like to refer you back to #2; please at least try to clean it up.

9. We have no say in our prices.

I can say with 99.9% confidence that anyone who has worked fast-food has had a customer complain to them about prices. I understand your frustration; I wouldn't want to spend $8.00 on a cheeseburger combo either. The fact is, however, that those prices are set by the business owner, the "head honcho," if you will, and not me. In fact, to compare, I am more like a pinky-toe-honcho, at the bottom of the totem pole, and I have no say in anything that goes on. I am sorry that our prices are inconvenient, but this is a perfect example of yet another thing that is out of my control but I take the heat for.

10. We're just human; please treat us as such.

I love interacting with people and helping others out, but working fast food has made me sort of cold to the world. You see the worst in people. You get paid so little to be berated and treated like some sort of peasant for eight hours, and you aren't allowed to say anything about it. I have customers that will throw drinks up on the counter and just shout a name of a drink at you. What they want is a refill because we do provide free refills, but it makes you feel kind of dumpy when you have a line of people shouting brand names and throwing cups at you.

There's a stigma around fast-food workers: we're lazy, we don't care, we're not capable enough to get "real" jobs. Majority of us aren't like that at all. We're at work for a reason. We want to provide quality service, gain experience in a different field of work, or be able to add another name to our resume. We try to do our jobs every day, just as you do. We understand that humans aren't perfect and that people have bad days. What we ask of you, as a consumer, is that you base your behavior in fast-food restaurants, or really anywhere, around one simple thing: Respect.