I'm lazy. It's Friday. Here, read this paper I wrote a couple of weeks ago for class. Remember, it's not all true, somethings have been change to protect people's identities, and to make me look better.
Burger King: The Drive Thru, and Why Working A Double Sucked.
“What do you mean I can’t order a sandwich?” asked the inebriated old man who bore a strong resemblance to Willie Nelson.
“Well sir, you aren’t in a car, and according to company policy, we can’t serve you through drive-thru if you are not in a vehicle,” I replied in what I thought was a pretty respectful tone.
“Well I don’t understand why you would deny me a five dollar sandwich. You’d rather me get a DUI? I’ll tell you, you fast food people are f**king stupid.”
“No sir, I would not like you to be behind the wheel at all right now, but I still can’t serve you.” Willie’s hand lunged through the window as my co-worker Julie quickly snapped the window lock shut, hitting the man’s hand away in the process. After some exchanged profanities and some useless punches throw (by the drunk, not by us), Willie was gone, wandering back towards the center of a small town in Central Pennsylvania.
Luckily, this was towards the end of a very long shift. I had worked a double that day, starting at 8:00 a.m. and ending until 1 a.m. All day I stood in the drive-thru window taking orders, receiving money, making change, and handing out food. It got a little monotonous after awhile, but luckily plenty of things kept me amused, like good old Willie. After all, everyone was different, the only thing that all of my customers had in common was the Burger King food them or an acquaintance would scarf down.
At 8 a.m., after a hefty dose of Alka-Seltzer and Advil to ward off my certain hangover, I started serving breakfast. Senior coffees are only sixty cents, and my regulars would come in to tease the staff and hang out in the old folks club that met by one of the doors. The breakfast rush consisted of high school kids and overworked mothers wanting coffee and hash browns. At about nine o’clock everything calmed down and the morning manager Esther left the bank to deposit yesterday’s profits. Knowing that we were soon going to get a free smoke break, Dana (the kitchen worker), Mindy (the shift supervisor) and I convinced Esther to go way out of her way to get us sweet tea and cinnamon rolls from MacDonald’s. When Esther came back, we proceeded to eat on the back prep table until the eleven o’clock people came in. Usually we got to eat in bits and pieces and our remnants from the other fast food chain would be sitting there for hours. This day was certainly unusual, so when our regional manager, who could fire us in 2.5 seconds, walked in, everyone suddenly stood up straight, put on gloves, and wiped smirks off their face. While Mindy distracted the regional manager, Mike, up front, Dana took a big arm and cleared the prep table in one fell swoop and closed the trash can lid. One disaster adverted.
Fortunately Mike left the store before the lunch rush. My hangover was in full swing and I was cursing myself out. Being one of the “fast” people meant that during the hours of 11:30-1:00 I stood in one place and did the same thing over and over. In this case it meant listening to beeping and politely talking to customers and taking about 1,000 orders. With my headache, I got more and more frustrated but no one would relieve me.
“Hi, Welcome to Burger King, can I take your order?” I said for the thousandth time.
“Uhhhhh, yeaaaaaaaaaa,” came over the speaker. From the voice I could tell it was a 25 something-year-old redneck in a beat up truck; we’ll call him Hank.
“Okay, go ahead whenever you’re ready” I replied, mad that the redneck was not ready to order.
Hank said “I’ll have a number two with a Diet Coke.”
Darn, I pressed the wrong drink option on my computer and it was too hard to switch so I said to Hank “I’m sorry, I pressed the wrong button, I know that it is supposed to be a Diet Coke and not a regular, I’ll fix it when you pull up to the window.” This happened quite often; so did people not listening to what I said over the loudspeaker.
“I SAID A DIET” the redneck said angrily.
“And I SAID that I would give you the right thing when you got to the window.” I added the word asshole after I released the “talk” button. “Would you like anything else?”
“Yea…hold on a second.” Hank proceeded to have a discussion on his cell phone which I had just heard ring. This, being one of my pet peeves, frustrated me to no end. Finally Hank says “I’m sorry it was my boss-“and I cut him off with a sarcastic “Well OBVIOUSLY your phone call is more important than me taking your order. It’s $4.76, pull to the second window. THANK YOU.”
Immediately I got slapped by a manager and ran to the back so Hank couldn’t identify me if he wanted to complain. I had just yelled at a customer, something I had always wanted to do, but I didn’t want corporate to find out and promptly fire me. Luckily the redneck liked my sassiness: another disaster adverted. Hank’s famous words: “good job girl, don’t take no sh*t from nobody.”
After lunch, the endless hours until the dinner rush dragged on and on. The drive-thru window was pretty quiet, but my supporting order-takers had left for the afternoon and more were not due until four. I enjoyed this time where no one bothered me and I could do things at my leisure. At four o’clock the gay, paint huffing reason I was working a double came in to start his shift. Kenny was about 35 years old. He had told me he had 36 masters’ degrees from Penn State and he was currently working on his taxonomy degree, which would make 37. He also told me he was a Russian prince who the United States was after. My boyfriend at the time was a manager who had scheduled Kenny to close that night. However, Delbert did not want to work with Kenny, hence I was there until 1 a.m. To be frank, Kenny was useless, because he wasn’t allowed to have a headset to take orders in drive-thru and he was slow. In fast food, it is a requirement to be somewhat fast, believe it or not.
The dinner rush had just finished and I got my second wind, which was an excellent thing because I heard Tony shout from the kitchen “BUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSS.” Buses are interesting things. On the billboards, restaurants advertise “buses welcome” but the staff insists that buses are not really welcome, they are a pain and they need to be dealt with correctly. I played manager and set Delbert and Kenny to take orders and told them that under no circumstances were they to touch anything else. The highlight of serving a boys’ high school soccer team was calling the number “69” and getting a bunch of snickers from the adolescent boys.
I strategically planned a smoke break in between the soccer bus and the church people coming in. The church people were not only significant because of their insistence on sitting in the restaurant when I wanted to mop whatever section they were sitting in, but also because my dad was their pastor. To see me smoking would be devastating for them, and probably for me.
My shift was finally over, the floors were mopped and the lights were turned off. Looking back over the day, I realized I don’t hate working there and dealing with all kinds of people. I could tell certain things about them from their cars, their dress, their ordering and payment methods, but really, does a Whopper versus a fish sandwich make that big of a difference? It only does when it is Friday during Lent.
But since I was a girl, he changed it up to "never start smoking, even if you wanna be that hot sexy girl" like this: