The Concern of Drugs and Users at the Workplace #1 (Trigger Warning)

TW: Drugs

Flashing lights, sirens, a whole battalion of squad cars, firetrucks and ambulances; just another day on the job...

Last month we had a strange man constantly skulking about the property. Most likely on some form of drug, he would come in, tarnished clothes and thrashing arms as he sidestepped his way about the lobby. Repeatedly, he would fall asleep at one of the tables, or would cause some disturbance, and we'd end up kicking him out.

This man was in his late 40's and homeless. His hair a brunette mess of dirt and curls, and his beard scraggly and misshaped along his face. Often, if not always, he sported a green trench coat and well-worn boots. Some days we wouldn't notice him in the store until someone would point out that he had returned, and he would have to be removed from the property once more.

I recall the last time he entered our store vividly. We hadn't seen him enter the store, but customers had noticed his intrigue with the restroom and thought it a good idea to mention it after he disappeared into the stalls for some time. While this was of no immediate concern as it hadn't been long since he entered, we did make note to check in a few minutes to see if he was still in there.

Some small amount of time drifted by as the hour got busier, and none of us had even thought to check at the time until one customer went to enter the bathroom. What he saw shocked him and he rushed over to the counter to inform us of his discovery: The man was sitting cross legged on the floor at the doorway.

I was first to check.

As I rounded the corner and opened the door, I saw him there. His back to the door, he was completely unresponsive to me as I made noise and asked him if he was okay.

I returned to my manager and informed him of the situation. 911 was called, and within minutes we had cop cars, ambulances and firetrucks stationed outside of the store. Police and EMTs swarmed the bathroom, ready for the worst. They brought in medications, water, and more.

This man wasn't just despondent,  he was overdosing.

For the next thirty minutes, the store would be cleared of customers for the first time midday since it opened.

In and out uniformed men and women would rotate like a revolving door. They moved the man to the booths to the left of the front counter and worked on him there.

A wave of success flooded the store as they were able to bring the man back to a conscious state. Drool still covered his mouth and he was barely able to move by the time the police began digging through the backpack he was carrying.

You see, this man wasn't just a homeless man. As it turned out, this man was a wanted felon, who was wanted for distribution of massive amounts of heroin and cocaine.

After a quick search turned up some paraphernalia and bags of substances, the man was escorted out to the ambulance and brought away.

This was a surprising occurrence for the day, but it was and is not all that uncommon. We've had cops and ambulances in and out of the store several times since I began working here a few years ago, and I doubt it'll stop any time soon.

It's hard to break stereotypes about places like this when these happenings continue on a regular basis.

Anyway, I just thought to share that story. It was interesting to me and I hope it was interesting to you.


If you like this and want more content regarding the life of working in fast food/customer service, please take the time to follow me for more content on here, on facebook, or on twitter.

Vol. 11: Holidays

To begin this intriguing introspection on working holidays, I'd like you all to know I hate it.

Working fast food is difficult enough with the usual bustle of customer service clouding your every effort to do so much as breathe, but the aspect of working fast food changes entirely on days off.

I figured it was a good time for a comeback for this blog, as times are changing and I am learning effective new ways to utilize my time so one day I might be able to escape the endless cycle of 9-5 in a food service environment. While the job is still good, and the managers still wonderful to work with, I am finding it increasingly difficult to deal with the smallest aspects of the job, as constant days are wearing me thin, especially since becoming a manager.

Days off had practically become nonexistent and I have become tired as a result. The whole of this job has become somewhat an eyesore with a lack of days away from the place, and even days off I have to pass it on the way to college. Tomorrow is the Fourth of July (Independence Day) and as usual for every holiday (despite being told every other one would be given off) I am going to be working it at the busiest intervals. Now, though I am a fan of fireworks and fun, I am glad to say there is the possibility of rain, and I've never wanted it more than for tomorrow.

Working holidays, as I've finally gotten around to speaking about, is hell. Double, even triple customers at peak times and even slow times, a strain to even be able to step away for one minute with the chance of being flooded with streams of customers on all fronts, and a residual impact of extra customers through the weekend, as people have come in to visit family and friends. By no means am I truly a "People Person", and this is not looking to be a helpful scenario.

I've hated working holidays, parades, and festivals for some time. Even game days for local school teams are arduous and ill-fated provided I have to deal with the backlash of people swarming the scene the minute halftime approaches or the game ends. Grill work provides no better feeling as the table erupts in a haze of sandwich wrappers, meats, and cheese, and the grill gets covered with raw and cooked meat until the hours are up and either someone takes your place or you close.

It's safe to say people should cook out on the fourth, but that congregation that seeks local fireworks in a public area end up starving their night away until finally they relinquish their vile feelings of hunger with a burger from the local fast food joint, tightly packed in a wrapper and half-falling over. Complaints are caught within the congested traffic of a drive-thru, especially by those intoxicated after a night of party and poppers. These are people I wish would find solace in an out-of-town fireworks show or the favor of their own backyard.

Well, anyway, the night will usually hit peak times roughly halfway through evening until close. It's normally a good seven or eight hours of grueling away at a grill, or half-smiling at people you wish would just choose to go to the fast food place across the street, or just go home to sleep. However, this is the job, and what a job it is.

While this is the first post in a long time, I do plan on returning to form with weekly or bi-weekly inserts. If you would like to read more, please follow me here on my site by saving it to a bookmark and checking in regularly, or following my social media on facebook or twitter. Thank you for your time. If you'd like to support my efforts to relinquish myself from this disgusting job to follow more of a passion in writing and continuing school, I will be linking a patreon by the next post. Thank you once again for the time and I hope you all have a great day!

If you are reading this before the 4th or any other holiday, I hope you go forward with your plans responsibly and that you have a safe and fun time! Just please don't show up at my store when you're hungry. Cook burgers with your friends or family or, hell, even just alone. 

"IT'S ONLY BEEN TWO HOURS?!" - Looking at the clock during a 9-5 job

Don’t look at the Clock

I think one of the biggest mistakes to do when working in any location is looking at the clock. It could be on the wall, on your phone, or on a computer, but the results tend to stay the same. You look once, you no longer feel time passing as quickly as you once did. It plagues just about every person that’s ever worked a 9-5 job and will continue to forever more.

Yeah, life’s fun when you look at a clock isn’t it? It’s almost as if something is purposely slowing down time, or at least your perception of it. I wonder if there’s a name for this phenomenon? I’ll check it out before I post this, and if I find something, I’ll put it in the description with the links! You’ll know as soon as I do!

I think it’s honestly somewhat hilarious when you catch someone dealing with the problem. You’ll see them walk over to where the clock is, or pull out their phone, glance for ooooone second and suddenly their expression just changes. Sometimes, one of them will actually verbally express their discontent with a well placed “Dammit!” under their breath.

Fast food is pretty bad when it comes to this phenomenon, but the worst I’ve ever experienced it was when I worked in the grocery stores. Time already drags when all you do is ring people’s groceries up, or you put out produce, or slice meat, so when you look at a clock, it just pisses you off, even more, to know “IT’S ONLY BEEN TWO HOURS?!” Amazing, truly.

Recently, I’ve come up with a way to actually hold off this problem, though it only works about 30% of the time…

It’s, quite simple, actually. All you have to do when you look at the clock is to say, both in your head and aloud, “Man, I can’t believe it’s already [INSERT TIME HERE]! How incredible that so much time has already gone by!” I do this every time, and, in some cases, I can even feel like time has sped up!

This is the best advice I can hope to give. If you have any ways of dealing with this psychotic-break-inducing problem, please leave them in the comments below, or on whatever social media outlet you found this on.

Thank you for reading!

Why ask for Change? Wages and Hours in Fast Food

Who are we to ask for change?

From working hours to wages, we want change, yet who are we to ask for it?

All we do is work in fast food, a job that anyone can do!

Well, that’s not all true, not when you look at it from a truthful perspective. If you ask someone to come in and run the drive-thru with no training or understanding, how are they gonna get it done?

If you ask someone to man the grill, even with a day or two of training, how fast will they be? Will they run out of food in the cabinets?

Training in fast food can be grueling, as it is on-the-job and many of the employees are less than willing to accommodate your newness or help you, and many managers will ignore your need for help entirely, expecting you to learn and understand on your own.

Yet, when it comes down to it, who are we to ask for those few dollars more an hour to sustain our lives?

People tend to look at fast food as a simplistic job, capable of being done by anyone, but that isn’t true either, now, is it?

No, we slip, we fall, we carry and operate heavy boxes and equipment while maneuvering around others constantly. We have to perfect how we work, or we end up falling behind and deal with heavy reprimanding and the possibility of cut hours and even loss of job if it isn’t fixed fast enough.

But why should we want our hours fixed to work better? Why would we not want to wake up at 3 a.m. or get home at 2 a.m.?

What purpose is there that these places stay open until past midnight, or open so early in the morning? Nobody comes in after 11. Nobody wakes up at 4 and thinks “Hey I want to get some fast food!” I don’t see a soul until at least 5:30-6 when I work mornings. I didn’t see more than one person trying to get food after 10:30-11! But that doesn’t matter, because the greed of those higher than us trumps how late we need to be awake, or how early. No, we need that one extra sale.

So, again, who are we to ask for more wages?

We work in tough, fast-paced conditions that require ample training and practice to do properly. We carry heavy equipment, large boxes and work with chemicals constantly to clean, restock and more, going so far as to use and maneuver with them around other people who are as susceptible to getting harmed as we are. There is constant yelling from both management and customers, regardless of fault and blame being on us or not, and there are many who work there that get treated like dirt the whole time they’re there. On top of it, some of us are in such a position in life that we had to sink ourselves into debt to pay for things as a result of the working conditions and less-than-commendable pay. Sometimes, we even get second jobs in other places doing the same things to make ends meet.

So, why should we be the ones to want higher wages?

More like why shouldn’t we?

Nostalgia: My Mind's Short Interjection

It’s days like these that take me back to a time before the long hours spanning weeks, responsibility coming in droves. The fresh spring-like air, filled with humidity only present when rain falls the night before, brings me back to times of walking the local trails, mom or grandmother in tow as we paced ourselves along the muddy paths.

The ground mushing below my feet as I walked and the sight of pavement pulled another memory from the recesses of my mind, back to that insightful child, so underappreciative of the naivety and freedom that was so truly abundant at one point or another. I can remember my search for puddles on the fast-drying sidewalk in the neighborhood I lived in. Chasing back and forth with the girl I still call my sister to this day on bikes as we splashed the pavement with each wheel connecting to the remains of a once vibrant torrent of water from the sky.

It was freedom. It was fun. An air of childlike enthusiasm and nostalgia beat at the cage I let it rot in, and I couldn’t help but let it breathe once more.

Schedule Plan for the Week and Overtime Talk

Good day to you all! Once again, I am here after a decent break over a long weekend to sort some things out while working my usual shifts at my local NotDonald’s. If there’s one thing that’s always been a bit of a problem whenever I’m working, it’s that I work a bunch, yet can run out of money due to bills, expenses, etc. It’s hard to save money on $8-11 an hour, let alone survive! My next few weeks will actually be packed with lots of overtime that I have to somewhat coerce out of my managers so I can make ends meet when it comes to some upcoming bills, including school and insurance.

I already have a schedule down for what I’m going to try to do without getting too badly reprimanded for such actions: I am scheduled off on weekends and have plenty to do errands-wise, so I’m going to continue my usual sleep schedule of waking up between 4 and 5. However, I’m gonna make it a little more interesting! First thing’s first, waking up a little earlier. If I can jumpstart my day with a cold shower at 3:30, I can be up and ready to go by 4:30. When I do that, I’m heading to work to see if they’d like some help. 9 times out of 10, they do. We have a lot of call-outs due to many reasons, though most are purely out of laziness. I’ll see about working an extra 4-5 hours a day on those days. That’ll get me to at least 44 hours, depending on the weekly schedule.

Secondly, I need to come in a bit earlier, and leave a bit later every day that I work usually! What're 30 more minutes at the beginning and end of a shift? Well, for me, it’s 2 and a half more hours. This, plus potentially heading in for 1-3 hours before classes start on Tuesdays and Thursdays will boost my hours by a whole bunch! In total, I think I should hit 48-52 hours a week. That’s over two days of work right there, and that doesn’t even count my on-and-off second job!

So, you’re probably wondering why I’m writing about this today, huh? I think it’s important to realize that in this line of business, if you want more money, you have to work like crazy, dealing with long hours for your crappy pay. This isn’t a sales job, it’s a 9-5! Well, NotDonald’s is a bit bad when it comes to trying for more hours. They don’t like people on overtime and will do a lot to keep you off of it, despite how many people will call out or no-call-no-show. Labor hours are important, and despite not having help, can easily become problematic if it shows one single person working insanely high hours while the rest sit at 30-35 hours a week.

I know by the end of the next few weeks, I’ll most likely be given a warning or something about my overtime. Honestly, if they do, I’ll probably respond with something like “Increase my wage somewhat substantially and I will stop trying to come in so much!” For the effort, time and dedication I and many others have, we really don’t get paid enough to deal with the workplace and the problems that lie with it. I hope this can shed some light on the system of working many hours and the potential problems that come with it. I will be talking about wages and savings (when possible to save) in my next post. For now, I hope this was a bit entertaining and somewhat informative to read regarding how I schedule my time during my 40-80-hour weeks.

If you enjoyed, or didn’t, please leave a comment in the section below, or the social media site you found this on! If you like my content, please follow me on here or on twitter, and keep checking in for more!

Weekly Recap #1: Health Inspection!

Work this week, like all weeks, has had its good times and its bad times. Starting off this week on Monday, we had a rather large rush, coupled with an order of 50 breakfast burritos, 30 sausage biscuits, and 30 hashbrowns. It’s interesting to note these people ordered this from a mobile order, then came to get it 3 minutes later expecting it to be done, when they said they’d be there around 30 minutes from then. Probably a typo on their part, but it was still unprecedented for them to show such disdain for an order that large.

Wednesday, I ended up sick and couldn’t show up. I would’ve been there 6:30 to 3, but they seemed to get along fine.

Friday was where all the fun happened. I had just gotten to work around 30 minutes early when I learned two of the managers were already there much earlier than anyone else. It was inventory day, and someone in the managerial team lost some of the deposit slips. This was no good, especially considering they were supposed to be playing the boring adult version of a matching card game with these and the receipts that came with.

As Friday continued along at a steady pace, I was placed in several different parts of the store. Mostly, though, I stayed on the second lane’s headset, making drinks and dodging actual customer interaction minus being a voice over a headset. Our headset for lane two is somewhat of a pain in the ass, to say the least. The sound is somewhat garbled and pops in and out at times, and the way you know there is a person at the lane is by the loud “DING DING” at a high enough pitch to almost make dogs whine. I hated this part of lane two in particular, and would not shut up about it for at least three hours as the dinging continued to deafen my right ear. It was a lovely time.

Despite all this, I was soon to get off of lane two after a grueling 6 hours, and I was ecstatic. I would be moved into the realm of customer interaction at the pick-up window, which, besides my lack of contentedness with people, sounded like a godsend compared to listening to the headset ding one more fucking time. I spent a meager 20 minutes in the window before the person in the grill decided it was time to act like she didn’t know what she was doing. She should’ve, as I trained her originally months ago and she had two managers back there, but alas, she did not know shit, my friends.

I hate to be this way most of the time, I really do, but when it takes 6 and a half minutes to get me one cheeseburger and I have to deal with the impatient customer, you bet your ass I wasn’t going to abide by that! I turned to the manager in charge, kindly asked if I could correct the problem we didn’t need to be having, and subsequently did. A good ten minutes went by, we went through a good forty or fifty orders, and I went back up front.

Of course, me being up front wasn’t going to last long either. Knowing all the positions can be a pain sometimes, and this day was definitely testing every bit of my patience with those around me. I was working the front register, one of my favorite positions as it is simple and there are far fewer customers to deal with than drive-thru. As I was enjoying the peaceful life, fully aware I had roughly an hour left, the GM came in the store. On most occasions, my GM is relatively nice, calm and doesn’t try to show any negativity in the workplace if he can help it, but this time was, no doubt, different, for the health inspector was here!

Ah, yes, the health inspector. If there was one image I always kept for health inspectors, it was that one image of the fish one from SpongeBob on the episode with the “Nasty Patty”. Pretty sad, considering they almost killed the man, but what can I do? It just stuck with me! Well, this guy looked nothing like that fish for sure. Mostly because that’s a cartoon fish, and this was a real-life person. He was nice, but he’s relatively strict (which is a good thing no doubt, but a few of the things were a bit ridiculous!). He wandered the store, checking the ins and outs of all the different tables, equipment, and other such things. As this continued, we were busy as hell with a rush that just HAD to be going on at the same time as an inspection. Tables were dirty, floors unswept, towels strewn about in various places for a quick cleaning as the orders continued piling on both on the front counter and in the drive-thru, and times were back up to an all-time high as people waited minutes on end for the most minute orders.

It didn’t take another few minutes before I was being forced back to the grill to accommodate the severe lack of understanding from our dear friend on the sandwich table. It was almost hilarious to me how ridiculous this ended up being within just a forty-minute time period! Well, anyway, the rush died down, we scored lower than usual on the inspection and I went home shortly after.

Saturday and today were wonderfully mundane. Working 5-hour shifts from opening at 4am to 9am is simple, and the only problem is stocking up my area before my spot is overtaken by another person or two, as the usual suspect likes to act like she can’t do anything! I finished early today and was sent home roughly thirty minutes earlier. It was nice, and now I get to sit here and type this bad boy up! I believe that’s about it for my weekly work recap!

I hope you all enjoyed reading this one! If you did, leave a comment somewhere on here or social media where you found this, and subscribe/follow for more on here, Twitter or Facebook! Give a like if you enjoyed wherever you found this too!