Working in Fast Food

If you did badly in school, the threat was that you'd end up working in a fast food restaurant. However, when I found myself working in such an establishment last year (not related to doing badly in school), I realised that there are far worse career prospects in the world. After searching for a job for no less than three years (not counting a brief stint as a Christmas elf) I received a call to an interview in a fast food branch within one of the largest shopping centres in the country. After being successful in the interview, I embarked on a seven month learning curve in to the world of fast food.

The most daunting moment was when my trainer had left me alone on the till for the first time. Customers would approach as normal and order their food, unaware of my inexperience, wondering why it was taking me so long to press a few buttons. What customers don't see is the labyrinthian screen in front of crew members, with every possible decision a customer could make mapped out in front of them. Furthermore, crew members are required to be extremely enthusiastic, outgoing people; greeting customers like old friends. This is difficult in the early stages, as it is really easy to be terrified of customers, as they could potentially make life extremely difficult for you.

After overcoming shyness and memorising the till, the next step in the journey is learning how to handle difficult customer situations. These situations fall within the spectrum of "My chips were too cold!" to customers literally throwing their food in your face and security needing to be called. While serving customers sub-par food is of course unacceptable, usually these situations can be resolved easily. However, now and again, there will be customers who find it unfathomable that mistakes are made, and these customers and the ones who make you feel that it's time to call a manager over to deal with.

Throughout a person's time working in fast food, they will learn that there are different types of customer, and it is usually easy to pigeonhole customers into a certain bracket to give them the service that would suit them best. For example, businessmen, or people who seem to be in a general hurry, probably don't want to stop and have a conversation before they order their food. Teenagers are likely to want to know what special offers are available. People with children may want to know what toys are available in children's meals and it is always nice to interact with the children as well, as it means they too are having a positive experience.

Everyone's favourite customers are the older "regulars". They will come about four to five days out of the week, and usually will only order coffee. My favourite regular was a man with a glorious moustache, who always ordered black coffee with four extra milks. We also had a customer coined "Latte Lady", for the obvious reason. These customers are always lovely, and will guarantee to perk up your day with conversation or just being happy that you remember their order.

The most terrifying customers (aside from rude customers) have to be potential "Gap Busters". This is the term used for customers who are essentially secret shoppers, who visit the establishment to check that it is being run to standard. They will note down whether you greet them properly, whether their food is excellent, whether everything looks clean (including you, the crew member), and whether you part with a farewell. The worst part is that they could be anyone; they are rarely obvious, and the only way to tell if the person is a potential Gap Buster is that they will only order certain items and only come during certain periods of the day. As soon as you hear what a potential Gap Buster orders, your heart will race and you run to tell a manager and kitchen, to make sure everything is perfect. Not that everything isn't perfect anyway, of course. 

There were a few strange requests from customers during my experience. The amount of "I want a PLAIN hamburger, with NOTHING on it, not even ketchup or mustard" I heard was ridiculous (in future, just ask for a plain hamburger, I can guess for myself what that entails). Another favourite order was a cheeseburger without cheese (so, a hamburger?). Some people would ask for what was essentially just a cheese sandwich. Luckily, I have yet to serve a customer who had read about the legendary "secret menu", and tries to order something I have never heard of. Just a pro-tip, the "secret menu", to my knowledge, doesn't exist in England. Many, if not, all of the negative rumours about fast food restaurants are usually about American fast food restaurants. In England, our restaurant used well-sourced produced and disclaimed all that was in their food on their website.

One of my pet peeves when working in fast food is that people thought I was stupid. Some customers would talk very slowly when ordering, particularly if they had any special orders. Near the start of my working in the restaurant, a customer told me that their friend hadn't managed to get an interview there because they were "too clever and had gone to a Grammar school". I happily informed the customer (probably cheekily), that I had gone to a Grammar school and was also at university, along with the majority of my fellow staff. Just because you work somewhere does not mean you can't get a job somewhere else, you may just enjoy your job, know that you're good at it and feel comfortable in that environment.

Where I worked, there were plenty of opportunities to better yourself, whether that was through the Apprenticeship scheme which, on completion, gained a person the equivalent of five A*-C GCSEs, or through the charity fundraisers that occasionally cropped up. Completing training in different areas was always encouraged so that you could be promoted. This meant that you could learn Health and Safety both with food and generally within the workplace, good service techniques, how to prepare different food and cleanliness practices.

Working in fast food was extremely stressful at times, particularly as my establishment was within one of the largest shopping centres in the country, and I worked from June to January, covering both the summer holidays and the Christmas holidays. During these times, queues would run to the back walls of the store and were more like mobs than "queues". You wouldn't be able to have a conversation with these people, as they were already complaining that they'd been waiting ages, and you were rarely met with a friendly demeanour. There would be a high growth of customer complaints during this period, as the kitchen were under intense stress to make special orders on top of making sure they hadn't run out of the regular food. Even when there was no one to serve, "Leaning is cleaning!" so you would wipe down surfaces etc.

The best part of the job has to be the people you work with. As you're all in a high stress environment, everyone usually pulls together as a team and won't let you struggle on your own. Everyone is eventually trained both for front counter and in the kitchen, so while it is easy to shout at the kitchen for being slow when you are on front counter, you will eventually learn that it isn't so easy being in their shoes. Everyone develops a sense of humour, so that you can laugh at awful situations like accidentally spilling a large fizzy drink on a customer (while apologising of course!). It makes life far easier than if you just panic. It's a job that makes you much braver, so that you can confront complete strangers with ease.