sh.ai.ex

Everyday at work really is an interesting day; no matter how much I complain about it.

Today was just like that. A few interesting events. I had just gone on my 10 minute break, drinking my sprite from a child sized cup when I saw a plump boy in a yellow shirt come in. I sat down where I could see the front counter clearly and watched as the newest employee, Vince, talked to him. [3 stories after the jump.]

“Can I help you?” Vince asked. Oh, such a repeated phrase… sometimes I wonder if it just gets embedded in the brain after so much time working in such a place.

The kid seemed nervous, “Uh yeah, we came through the drive thru… you guys forgot a cheeseburger in our meal earlier”. This kid couldn’t have been older than 12. Vince asked him if he had the receipt. The kid seemed reluctant… “No, my mom threw it away”. Okay… this was going to be a problem.

Vince called Oscar, the nearest manager to him. Oscar went to the front counter and asked, “what’s up?”; The kid repeated everything he said. Oscar asked if he had a receipt, the kid mumbled something. Oscar asked again, the kid seemed annoyed now, “MY. MOM. THREW. IT. AWAY.” Oscar looked at him, “Uh huh… well, what time did you guys come through?” The kid mumbled again, “At three”.

I laughed inside… this was going to be good. It was probably around 6 at that time, maybe a bit later. What was this kid doing in here at that time? Oscar apologized to him, “Okay… sorry, unless you have a receipt or it’s recent enough so we can look it up, I can’t give it to you”. Which is only logical, since anybody can say they came to the store hours earlier and they had forgotten something and have no receipt to prove it.

The kid walked out; I watched the way he walked. He seemed angry. I couldn’t help but a be a bit disgusted by his figure. He was so young, and already he seemed unfit. At that age, I was healthy and fantastic; my body was as flexible as a rubber band; yet here is this kid, the next generation; and he couldn’t even keep his arms down due to his figure. Maybe I am biased and being cold hearted about it; but really, a kid at that age shouldn’t be that plump.

I waited, watched. I knew something was to follow.

The kid came back, this time with a younger boy, and an older man. All three were quite overweight; the man seemed really angry. I sat up straight; this was going to be really good.

He went straight for Oscar. “Okay, yeah, I sent my kid in here about the cheeseburger that you guys forgot in the first place, and you guys give him hell for it?”

I was already criticizing him. I disliked overweight people that get angry over a such a small thing. They must be really addicted; I feel really bad saying that, but it’s really how I feel. I thought, ‘Okay guy… first, why send your kid… he seems frightened beyond all belief. Second… work on your grammar… third… hell? You weren’t here to witness anything. There was no hell to be given’.

I kept a smug smile as I watched.

“Sir…” Oscar started calmly, repeating what he said to the kid about receipts and times.

“I live on the other side of town! Do you think I just drive around just because you guys screwed up my order?!”

Again, I criticized in my thoughts. ‘Why did you come here just for McDonald’s…?’ and ‘Grammar, grammar, grammar’.

Oscar tried to reason with him, the guy would not listen.

“I KNOW you can look it up, you have a computer, look it up!”

Criticizing. Oh, I just had a witty remark for everything. ‘Computer = having all records? There had probably been around 300+ customers that had come through… it was busy time after all. And what if the computer only kept records up to a certain filesize? Maybe it had exceeded that limit already and it didn’t go back that far anymore’. Maybe I was being too geek now. I was talking in terms he probably wouldn’t understand. He got angrier, I could see his face getting redder… his figure certainly didn’t hide it… he did seem like the kind of person who cares a lot about his oh-so-healthy food.

“I can tell you EXACTLY what I ordered”

I could almost see Oscar shake his head, though I couldn’t actually see him from my view. “Alright… what did you order?”

The man repeated his order. Oscar asked how much he paid. The man replied with an annoyed, “Oh, I don’t know, 8 bucks?”. Oscar totaled it, it was around there, though not quite. Oscar told the cooks to make a cheeseburger.

The man continued his angered rant; “And it’s not just sometimes that you guys get it wrong; it’s EVERY SINGLE TIME! Not just every now and then, it’s EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. God…”

‘You live on the other side of town. There are 4 McDonald’s in this town; the other 3 are probably closer. If we screw up so many times; then why the heck do you come back here to get food? There’s plenty of other and probably healthier choices!’ My mind lashed.

Oscar gave him his cheeseburger, probably just tired of it all. “Next time you have to have a receipt okay? Here you are, have a nice day”. The man thanked him, though you can clearly tell in his voice that he wasn’t.

They walked out, cheeseburger in hand. The little boy looked up at his dad and asked if they got fries, to which the man answered, “No, because they SCREWED UP”. ‘What the heck does fries have to do anything with this?’ I thought.

Oh well, just another hour gone by at work.

___________

I was taking orders in the drive thru, when this lady came by ordering something like 2 Double Cheeseburgers and a McChicken. Now, at the McDonald’s where I work, there are three windows. The first one, I have never seen used, ever. The second one is where we take the money and give change, and the third one is where we give food.

Everytime I complete taking an order, I say the total and tell them it will be at the second window. Now, most people get confused since the first window is always closed and they never really see it since it’s so near; so on slow hours, some cars just totally pass by straight to the third window.

This lady was about to do that, so I opened the window right before she passed and said, “Ma’am” and she stopped her car abruptly and backed up, smiling at me, “I heard you say that, I did, haha”. She laughed heartily at me; her total was 3.23. She asked for a glass of water with no ice; it was still 3.23.She had started to look at her money and made small talk with me about Christmas shopping and how she wasn’t thinking completely; her mind still on how she was going to finish her shopping tomorrow. I told her that I still needed to do mine.

She looked at me, “Oh my gosh, really? Do you have kids?” I shook my head. Kids? Did I really look that old? We conversed a bit more, she had given me exact change in coins… I didn’t bother to count. I gave her a receipt and said “Have a nice night” and she wished me the same.

___________

Working at McD’s isn’t really something to be proud of, I realize; but it is fun there most of the time. I was still taking drive-thru orders when a group of teenage boys came through the drive thru to order some things. Everything seemed fine until I thought I started to hear an echo. “A… double cheeseburger please. A double cheeseburger please.” What the heck? I ignored it, and continued to take orders. I started to realize it was probably a passenger repeating it just to be annoying.

I finished the order, and I heard some guy say, “DO IT!” and I thought they were probably going to roar their engines at me; so I took the headset off for a bit so I could still hear what was going on, but not so much. Sure enough, I heard the loud roar of tires grinding on asphalt.

It was busy time, and I didn’t have a money taker, so I had to multi-task between taking orders with specifications such as no lettuce, no ketchup or whatever and taking money at the same time. The truck turned the corner, I saw four boys inside. “Huh, wiggers.” I thought, being critical of customers again. This job was really making me a bitter person. I told them their total and went back to taking orders, keeping my attention split. I heard a passenger in the back say something about how he loved McDonald’s. I couldn’t do anything but roll my eyes.

They honked their horn when they were ready to give me their money, and I gave them their dollar change back with their receipt, not even bothering to tell them to have a nice day. I didn’t close the window though; why should I? I was still taking orders. The window being open hadn’t been a problem until they had started to blast their annoying, soul less rap music; then I just slammed the window close on them. I thought I might have cracked the glass. Kids these days are so annoying… no respect, no courtesy; and they think everything stupid is hillarious.

When you think you are being funny at a fast food restaurant by messing with employees; you aren’t. You are probably being perceived as an idiot.

When it wasn’t so busy, I walked back to the front to talk with Samantha, who was presenting; handing out food; to the customers as they leave the drive-thru. I asked her about them, and she said that she did deal with them.

“They were annoying, huh?”

“Yeah” She replied with gritted teeth.

I laughed as I heard the beep of another car pulling up to the drive thru speaker. “Hi, can I help you?” I asked as I shook my head, amused at the things customers do.