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Burger chain blues (long)
Hi all! I've been lurking around here for a while now, and wanted to share some tales from my oh so fun job at a burger chain. This burger chain is called something like King of Burger's in America, but here is Australia is called Starving Jake's due to some copyright issue or something. The store I worked in was poorly managed, constantly in the red and constantly understaffed. The result was SC's getting away with a lot because the store was desperate for customers.
Side note: The store was very busy, but I think most of the reason it was in the red was theft by co-workers. I saw people take entire crates of Iced Coffees, bags of sundae topping, toys from the kid's meals. My boyfriend actually stole AN ENTIRE BOX of chicken nuggets AND a whole box of the M&M's and the Flake used for ice-cream O.O How did people get away with this? The managers were stealing too...
On to the tales!
Cone-ing
Cone-ing was a prank where someone would order a soft serve and when you give it to them they would grab the ice cream rather than the cone. This happened to me a couple of times. A few things wrong with this 'prank'.
-You just wasted money on an ice-cream treat you don't get to eat.
-You now have ice-cream all over your hand and arm.
-There are no negative consequences for the person you are pranking. I'm just going to chuck the cone in the bin.
I feel like this was a prank set up to prank the pranksters. Kind of a prankception, if you will.
Ice-cream-mobile
An ice-cream related prank that did inconvenience me. When I left work one time I found that someone had covered mine and one of my co-workers entire car in soft serve ice-cream. Our cars were parked just to the side of the front of the restaurant so we couldn't have seen this happening while working. Coincidentally, the same thing happened to my sister's car when she was working at The Colonel's a few years before, which is right next door.
Scratch cards
We often had a promotion which used scratch cards to win food items. Being smart little cookies, we always found a printing difference, number, colour difference, etc. that would give away which ones were winners. Naturally, we divided the cards into two piles and gave the winning cards only to nice customers. Any customer who shouted at us to “Remember their f%^&g scratch card!” got a couple extra cards for the inconvenience... too bad they were always losers
. This was the best part of the job, because it was like dealing out instant karma. 
That doesn't go there
I know it seems like your discarded pickles belong on the wall, but they don't. No, really they don't. I'm just going to have to scrape them all off later. Ditto to tomatoes.
Scammer
We had one lady who always came in and would order a cheeseburger, but would add lettuce, tomato, mayo, etc. to make it into a Signature Burger Jr. Since we didn't charge for extra condiments back then, she was getting a burger that cost around $5 for about $2. We knew what she was doing and told the managers, but they just didn't care. Until the restaurant manager found out about it that is. She told the woman that in the future, if she wants Signature Burger Jr. she'll be paying for it. From then on we also had to start charging extra for condiments, sundae toppings, everything, to deter future scammers, which kind of sucked.
I am currently bleeding
One time, we were in the middle of a huge rush and I was running food to drive thru. Some bright spark had left some packaging from something on the floor and I tripped over it and managed to cut my elbow open. It immediately started gushing with blood and my co-worker who was running front came over to see if I was ok.
All of a sudden, there's a huge sigh and the lady waiting at front counter says loudly “Where is my burger! I'd have it if you guys stopped messing around!”. Yep, I'm just bleeding for fun over here. And by the way, you've been waiting about a minute and a half.
Burgers are worth an assault charge
I was on front counter and had to make some ice-cream, and the ice-cream machine is near the drive thru window. The person in drive thru started honking their horn so I went and checked if they were ok, because the person running drive thru was really busy. I subsequently got yelled at about how long their order was taking, and like I said before, our store sucked so it was taking a while.
I assured them their order wouldn't be too much longer and as I was walking away from the window, I felt something hard hit the back of my head. The driver had thrown a half full beer can at my head.
I told my manager and they said just to get the car out quickly and not worry about it -_-. I was like 16 at the time and terrible at standing up for myself, so I just went with it, but my friend in burger room gave the car stone cold, extra, extra salty fries
. This was actually the second time someone had thrown a can at my head when I was in drive thru, but the first time it didn't hit me and the car sped off before I could even turn around.
I am not here to talk to you
This is probably the incident that stays with me the most and really stresses me out even now when I think about it. We we're understaffed as always and I was on front counter as well as running and expediting (making drinks and desserts) for drive thru. I had a man with his two children on front counter, as well as one other customer, and about 5 cars in drive thru. I had a terrible manager on that night so they wouldn't come out and help me, no matter how busy it got.
I served the man on front counter and he kept trying to chat with me while I was getting the food for drive thru. I was trying to be polite and smile and nod, but I still had to keep running back and forth from drive thru to front counter. The second time I come back from drive thru, this happens.
SC: HOW F&%$^$ RUDE ARE YOU! I AM TRYING TO TALK TO YOU!
Me: I'm sorry, I have to take care of drive thru as well so I'm just really busy.
SC: I DON'T F#$%#$^ CARE ABOUT DRIVE THRU! I'M THE CUSTOMER AND I'M HERE, SO YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO ME
Me: I'm really sorry, I just have to take food to the cars as well.
SC: I CAME INSIDE SO I SHOULD GET BETTER SERVICE! YOU NEED TO TALK TO CUSTOMERS! HOW DID YOU EVEN GET THIS JOB! YOU ARE SUCH A F$%$&^ IDIOT. YOU STUPID B$%$%&
At this point he just started hurling personal insults at me non-stop. His children seemed really scared too and the other customer in front counter was just standing there completely shocked, like they couldn't believe what they were seeing. I was 17, so I was just standing there, not responding and trying not to burst into tears.
The manager FINALLY came over to help calm the guy down, and I just ran back to the bathroom and stayed in there for about half an hour while some of my co-workers came in and out to check on me and tell me what a butt that guy was.
Did he get kicked out? Oh no, he got his food and a complimentary meal for next time he visits, for the inconvenience -_-
Special Snowflake
This lady was one that everyone tried to avoid. After a couple times, we always handed the order off to a manager when we saw her coming. She always wanted this insane special, which was basically a cheeseburger, but on the larger bun and with no pickles, but with mayo. Doesn't sound too complicated, but there is no burger remotely like that on the menu. If you tried to put it through as a Signature Burger minus all the things she doesn't want, it's too expensive and she flips out. If you use the specials to put it through as a 5 “ bun, meat patty, ketchup, etc, individually, it will only charge for the bun and meat patty, making it cost less than a regular size cheeseburger, which the manager's got mad about.
On top of this, she would often slightly change the special, one time it's no pickles, the next it's extra pickles. She would also order two or three more burgers with up to 5 changes. No pickles or exra mayo on your burger is fine, but when you order 3-4 burgers, all with different specials that read something like no tomato, extra pickles, no ketchup, no onion, extra cheese, it gets a bit ridiculous. If you're ordering something like that, you should expect it to be wrong sometimes.
But oh no, everytime she came through something was wrong (quite a few times we got the order down as exactly what she said and handed out the 100% correct burgers, but she still swore up and down they were wrong) and she would spend ten minutes moaning, “It's not that hard, every time I come here, I'm never coming here again” (ok, see you tomorrow).
The menu is pretty big, surely you can find something on it that you don't need to alter so much to enjoy.
MY FRIESSSS!!
We had a lot of customers from a town over where they didn't have a Starving Jake's yet. It was about a 20 minute drive from there to the restaurant. You'd think people would have the common sense to eat in the restaurant so their food didn't go cold on the drive home, but instead we constantly got these calls...
SC: I'd like to complain, when I got home, my fries were cold.
Manager: Ok, if you come back to the store we'll be happy to replace them for you
SC: Come back! I just drove 20 minutes to get home!
Firstly, if you left your fries for 20 MINUTES, then obviously they're cold. Secondly, if you don't want to drive back to the store, how do you expect to get a replacement? We aren't going to drive out to you. And if we did, the fries would sill get cold by the time we got there -_-
These are just some of the tales I remember right now, I'm sure there are even more...
Side note: The store was very busy, but I think most of the reason it was in the red was theft by co-workers. I saw people take entire crates of Iced Coffees, bags of sundae topping, toys from the kid's meals. My boyfriend actually stole AN ENTIRE BOX of chicken nuggets AND a whole box of the M&M's and the Flake used for ice-cream O.O How did people get away with this? The managers were stealing too...
On to the tales!
Cone-ing
Cone-ing was a prank where someone would order a soft serve and when you give it to them they would grab the ice cream rather than the cone. This happened to me a couple of times. A few things wrong with this 'prank'.
-You just wasted money on an ice-cream treat you don't get to eat.
-You now have ice-cream all over your hand and arm.
-There are no negative consequences for the person you are pranking. I'm just going to chuck the cone in the bin.
I feel like this was a prank set up to prank the pranksters. Kind of a prankception, if you will.
Ice-cream-mobile
An ice-cream related prank that did inconvenience me. When I left work one time I found that someone had covered mine and one of my co-workers entire car in soft serve ice-cream. Our cars were parked just to the side of the front of the restaurant so we couldn't have seen this happening while working. Coincidentally, the same thing happened to my sister's car when she was working at The Colonel's a few years before, which is right next door.
Scratch cards
We often had a promotion which used scratch cards to win food items. Being smart little cookies, we always found a printing difference, number, colour difference, etc. that would give away which ones were winners. Naturally, we divided the cards into two piles and gave the winning cards only to nice customers. Any customer who shouted at us to “Remember their f%^&g scratch card!” got a couple extra cards for the inconvenience... too bad they were always losers
. This was the best part of the job, because it was like dealing out instant karma. That doesn't go there
I know it seems like your discarded pickles belong on the wall, but they don't. No, really they don't. I'm just going to have to scrape them all off later. Ditto to tomatoes.
Scammer
We had one lady who always came in and would order a cheeseburger, but would add lettuce, tomato, mayo, etc. to make it into a Signature Burger Jr. Since we didn't charge for extra condiments back then, she was getting a burger that cost around $5 for about $2. We knew what she was doing and told the managers, but they just didn't care. Until the restaurant manager found out about it that is. She told the woman that in the future, if she wants Signature Burger Jr. she'll be paying for it. From then on we also had to start charging extra for condiments, sundae toppings, everything, to deter future scammers, which kind of sucked.
I am currently bleeding
One time, we were in the middle of a huge rush and I was running food to drive thru. Some bright spark had left some packaging from something on the floor and I tripped over it and managed to cut my elbow open. It immediately started gushing with blood and my co-worker who was running front came over to see if I was ok.
All of a sudden, there's a huge sigh and the lady waiting at front counter says loudly “Where is my burger! I'd have it if you guys stopped messing around!”. Yep, I'm just bleeding for fun over here. And by the way, you've been waiting about a minute and a half.
Burgers are worth an assault charge
I was on front counter and had to make some ice-cream, and the ice-cream machine is near the drive thru window. The person in drive thru started honking their horn so I went and checked if they were ok, because the person running drive thru was really busy. I subsequently got yelled at about how long their order was taking, and like I said before, our store sucked so it was taking a while.
I assured them their order wouldn't be too much longer and as I was walking away from the window, I felt something hard hit the back of my head. The driver had thrown a half full beer can at my head.
I told my manager and they said just to get the car out quickly and not worry about it -_-. I was like 16 at the time and terrible at standing up for myself, so I just went with it, but my friend in burger room gave the car stone cold, extra, extra salty fries
. This was actually the second time someone had thrown a can at my head when I was in drive thru, but the first time it didn't hit me and the car sped off before I could even turn around.I am not here to talk to you
This is probably the incident that stays with me the most and really stresses me out even now when I think about it. We we're understaffed as always and I was on front counter as well as running and expediting (making drinks and desserts) for drive thru. I had a man with his two children on front counter, as well as one other customer, and about 5 cars in drive thru. I had a terrible manager on that night so they wouldn't come out and help me, no matter how busy it got.
I served the man on front counter and he kept trying to chat with me while I was getting the food for drive thru. I was trying to be polite and smile and nod, but I still had to keep running back and forth from drive thru to front counter. The second time I come back from drive thru, this happens.
SC: HOW F&%$^$ RUDE ARE YOU! I AM TRYING TO TALK TO YOU!
Me: I'm sorry, I have to take care of drive thru as well so I'm just really busy.
SC: I DON'T F#$%#$^ CARE ABOUT DRIVE THRU! I'M THE CUSTOMER AND I'M HERE, SO YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO ME
Me: I'm really sorry, I just have to take food to the cars as well.
SC: I CAME INSIDE SO I SHOULD GET BETTER SERVICE! YOU NEED TO TALK TO CUSTOMERS! HOW DID YOU EVEN GET THIS JOB! YOU ARE SUCH A F$%$&^ IDIOT. YOU STUPID B$%$%&
At this point he just started hurling personal insults at me non-stop. His children seemed really scared too and the other customer in front counter was just standing there completely shocked, like they couldn't believe what they were seeing. I was 17, so I was just standing there, not responding and trying not to burst into tears.
The manager FINALLY came over to help calm the guy down, and I just ran back to the bathroom and stayed in there for about half an hour while some of my co-workers came in and out to check on me and tell me what a butt that guy was.
Did he get kicked out? Oh no, he got his food and a complimentary meal for next time he visits, for the inconvenience -_-
Special Snowflake
This lady was one that everyone tried to avoid. After a couple times, we always handed the order off to a manager when we saw her coming. She always wanted this insane special, which was basically a cheeseburger, but on the larger bun and with no pickles, but with mayo. Doesn't sound too complicated, but there is no burger remotely like that on the menu. If you tried to put it through as a Signature Burger minus all the things she doesn't want, it's too expensive and she flips out. If you use the specials to put it through as a 5 “ bun, meat patty, ketchup, etc, individually, it will only charge for the bun and meat patty, making it cost less than a regular size cheeseburger, which the manager's got mad about.
On top of this, she would often slightly change the special, one time it's no pickles, the next it's extra pickles. She would also order two or three more burgers with up to 5 changes. No pickles or exra mayo on your burger is fine, but when you order 3-4 burgers, all with different specials that read something like no tomato, extra pickles, no ketchup, no onion, extra cheese, it gets a bit ridiculous. If you're ordering something like that, you should expect it to be wrong sometimes.
But oh no, everytime she came through something was wrong (quite a few times we got the order down as exactly what she said and handed out the 100% correct burgers, but she still swore up and down they were wrong) and she would spend ten minutes moaning, “It's not that hard, every time I come here, I'm never coming here again” (ok, see you tomorrow).
The menu is pretty big, surely you can find something on it that you don't need to alter so much to enjoy.
MY FRIESSSS!!
We had a lot of customers from a town over where they didn't have a Starving Jake's yet. It was about a 20 minute drive from there to the restaurant. You'd think people would have the common sense to eat in the restaurant so their food didn't go cold on the drive home, but instead we constantly got these calls...
SC: I'd like to complain, when I got home, my fries were cold.
Manager: Ok, if you come back to the store we'll be happy to replace them for you
SC: Come back! I just drove 20 minutes to get home!
Firstly, if you left your fries for 20 MINUTES, then obviously they're cold. Secondly, if you don't want to drive back to the store, how do you expect to get a replacement? We aren't going to drive out to you. And if we did, the fries would sill get cold by the time we got there -_-
These are just some of the tales I remember right now, I'm sure there are even more...
Your manager is a fucking asshole for allowing that to slide.
Someone has wayyy too much time on their hands.
I've read stories here where there was a fire in the building and some customer wanted something free for the inconvenience and got really angry at the people in the shop, and another one where the OP was pulling a double shift and passed out from exhaustion and some woman had a go at her for passing out. It's like, seriously? We could DIE in front of some customers, and they'd yell at us for having the nerve to die in front of them. I suppose the only consolation is that we wouldn't have to listen to them yelling at us, because we'd be dead...
It's like in Mallrats, when the subject of "stinkpalming" is brought up..."Yeah, but then you end up with a hand that smells like shit all day".
I almost never order "to-go" food at a fast-food joint, unless I'm literally going to eat said food on the go as I walk.
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