Adventures in Fast Food

I worked at mcdonald's for 4 years and it pretty much sucked the whole time. I got the job because my friend had already worked there for 3 years and therefore could pretty much move my application to the top of the pile, another friend applied at the same time (the 3 of us went to Disneyland together), it was close to home and the suckiness meant I didn't have to care.

Cast:

Regular customers
1. Supersize Diet Coke guy: He's diabetic you know, so that really has to be diet. Are you sure it's diet? It's really not regular? Are you positive? Can I come around behind the counter to watch you pour it, just to make sure? And how are you doing, sweetie? He was pretty creepy, actually.

2. Jesus: Long, matted hair. Crucifix. Jesus sandals.

3. Coeliac family: They'd order a bunch of burgers without buns and inevitably, the first person to take their order would be some baffled trainee who wouldn't get the concept of putting the burger fillings in a hotcake container.

4. Bottomless coffee guy: He would bring in this manky, disgusting cup that was obviously weeks old, and had probably come out of a bin then, and demand his free refill. The managers started writing the date on the bottom of his cup and he eventually went away.

5. Robert: He could be sweet. He'd bring us flowers from the hibiscus bush outside sometimes. The problem was he'd want to have long, slow conversations (he was developmentally delayed) while there was a heap of work to do. The managers got sick of him hanging around the whole day getting free tea refills so they initially limited him to 3 refills and he'd carefully keep count and explain to you that he was only allowed three and he was trying to be good and not talk too much. Eventually one of the more abrasive managers flat-out told him not to come back. After that he switched to haunting the pizza place down the street.

Archetypes
1. the person who, on being told they couldn't have a soft-serve cone because the ice cream machine was broken, would ask for a sundae
1a. the person who would ask "does the quarter pounder with cheese have cheese on it?"

2. the person who would ask for fries, no salt, plus a few salt packets, just to get fresh fries when they could just ask for fresh ones instead of making us clean all the salt off everything
2a. the person who would ask for coke, no ice, plus ice in a separate cup, just to get a few extra mLs of coke.

3. the person who would order a burger with extra cheese, no pickle, plus different sauce etc in drive thru and then complain that it wasn't ready by the time he got to the second window

4. the person who would arrive at 11am and complain that there was no breakfast left, when the changeover is at 10.30 and vice versa, or order enormous quantities of food seconds before closing.

5. the person who would order a large meal, then insist on diet coke because they were on a diet

6. the person who would bang on the doors/windows after closing because we were still inside and therefore should be serving food, not cleaning up

Staff
1. M. 40-ish when she started on the lowest rung with the 15 year-olds. She had a lot to complain about it (abusive ex-husband, 3 kids to look after on crappy macca's wages etc) but, man, she put the Wednesday whiners to shame. None of those apologies for focussing on herself, no attempts to look on the bright side, no acknowledgement of anyone else's perspective, nothing but unrelenting whining and almost all of it wasn't about the actual bad stuff. Just the fact that somebody forgot to put the spare ice block back in the freezer, and she was supposed to be on drive-thru not front counter today. Plus, even several anonymous gifts of deodorant didn't change the fact that she had personal hygiene issues. She eventually got married again and her new husband was always at the store. He had no job so had nothing better to do than hang around chatting to all the 15 year-olds on front counter. He was incredibly creepy and despite the fact that nobody liked M much, was unanimously considered not worthy of her.

2. T. Sleazy manager who wanted to be best friends (or perhaps more...) with the 15 year old girls. (see also, A and D, but at least they weren't yet 27)

3. J. Refused to do anything that involved lifting, especially of rubbish bags. Such things were "icky boy jobs"

4. B. When some of the guys out the back were throwing cheese at each other, he objected on the grounds that "cows died to give us that cheese!" (no, he didn't mean calves that were taken from their mothers etc, he actually thought the cheese was cut, pre-formed out of a cow's stomach or some other internal organ)

5. F. A manager who came to our quiet suburban store from a 24 hour inner-city one and spent his first day in a happy daze, delighted that there were no drunks, nobody shooting up in the bathrooms (luckily that wasn't the day someone overdosed in our bathroom) and he hadn't been threatened with bodily harm.

6. The Thief. This person was never identified but they got quite a lot of money, plus the only badge I was ever awarded (I was almost entirely invisible for my 4 years there).

Soundtrack:

Minimum Wage by They Might Be Giants