Fast Food and Culture
I am a non-traditional college student. I spent 10 years working as a machine operator and welder/fabricator before deciding to pursue further education. I’ve been fortunate enough to receive some fantastic opportunities in college, have an excellent GPA, and a stacked resume. I have one semester left before I graduate.
Unfortunately, getting a job with almost a degree is incredibly difficult. I am currently working at an unnamed fast food establishment, where I am flipping burgers. It is easily one of the worst jobs I’ve ever held. I used to think that the job made me hate people, but I’m slowly starting to realize I’m seeing some of the problems with our society itself.
When you walk behind the counter, there’s a note taped to the wall in a place where the customers can’t see it. In giant, bold letters, it says, “ASK THE CUSTOMER IF THEY WANT THEIR ORDER AS A VALUE BASKET. MAKE SURE YOU CALL IT A VALUE BASKET. DO NOT JUST SAY BASKET.” Someone paid for expensive market research before creating this sign. The place I work isn’t cheap. It’s the most costly junk food I’ve ever seen, but management desperately wants the customers to associate our product with value.
Most of the cashiers are high school students. This is their first experience in the workforce. Interestingly, this is the first lesson society teaches them. Welcome to your first job, here’s how you’re supposed to manipulate people for money. I get that the economy is important, but you would figure a nation supposedly founded on Christian values should remember that Jesus said that the love of money is the root of all evil.
I’ve also noticed a pattern with the customers. The ones who come into the building to place their orders are usually the nicest. They’re polite and make normal orders. On the rare occasion they show up while we’re starting to close for the night, they typically order something easy to make. When they complain, it’s usually through an anonymous Yelp review or a call to the manager after they’ve already left the building.
Drive-through customers are a bit worse. Most of them are somewhat rude, which has given me an irrational aversion to people who say things like “Give me” and “I need.” They complain loudly and often, sometimes before they’ve even finished ordering. A few days ago an older man spent several minutes screaming at the cashier because the board didn’t reflect his request for lettuce on his chicken sandwich. If he had stopped yelling for just a moment, he might have been able to hear the cashier explaining that it didn’t say ‘lettuce’ because that already comes on the sandwich. Occasionally, drive-through customers will place a massive, complicated order a few minutes before we close for the night, but that is absolutely an exception, not the rule.
Online customers are the absolute worst. They constantly order difficult-to-make items with numerous substitutions. They make massive orders a few minutes before we close. They are also the most likely to complain. Several times a day, we get requests for refunds because the DoorDash driver was slow and the food was cold. They still ate all the food; they just want a refund for it too.
I am a fallible human. I’m sure my perception bias accounts for some of this. Most drive-through and online customers are perfectly reasonable people. I don’t mean to imply that if you’ve ever ordered fast food in this way, you’re a bad person.
Online echo chambers, social media, and the ability to block anyone with whom you disagree have made it incredibly easy to forget that there are people who live entirely different lives. Things like online ordering have made it incredibly easy to forget that there is a real person on the other end of the app, responding to your request.
We don’t live in a world where robots do all the shitty jobs, at least not yet. Our society values money above literally everything else. You can live your life without ever stepping outside your bubble. You never have to interact with someone who is different from you.
But those other people still exist. There is only so much room in the world, and their living their life is going to have effects on your life, in some way or another. People have grown so distant from one another that it is easy to hate a group of people you know nothing about because you’ve never seriously interacted with them.
No wonder we’re in this mess right now.
Featured image from Jonathan Borba on Unsplash.
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This article was originally published to James' Substack, Sarcastrophe. Consider taking a look at other published works.