Wacky Days At My Workplace

[Fauna]

I work cashier and partial janitor at a restaurant. While it's fun when there's moderate traffic, there are truly no terms than can describe how awful it is. Of course, that maybe comes from how I'm a timid person who likes to do things slowly and carefully to make sure I get them right, and that's not at all what's required in a give-me-my-food-in-the-next-three-minutes-or-I-burn-down-the-building environment.

On the plus side, it yields some great experiences.

A man approaches the counter with twenty coupons in his hand. He holds out one for a two-for-$5 ham and egg breakfast sandwich deal. It is seven o'clock PM. He stares at me, irritated by my hesitation to ring it up.
"Sir, we don't sell these after eleven in the morning. And you're aware that it's well after seven in the evening...?"
"And a senior's coffee."

A woman comes up to me. One of her eyes is pointing in the wrong direction, and she walks like a penguin. She starts mumbling about getting the Mama Burger for $2 with cheese.
"You mean the Spicy Mamas? (This being our special, the only thing for sale under $3.) And you want four of them?"
"No, I want them with cheese."
"They already have cheese."
After some going back and forth, I determine she wants a normal burger. I proceed to take the time to explain to her that the normal burgers are, in fact, not $2. After confirming that she wants two rootbeers and a small coffee and two onion rings and one large fries, and repeating this order about five times at her request, she's ready to pay.
The card is one of those Royal Bank temporary cards; they're blue, with the account number and client name written by a bank teller on the front. She swipes. The Interac machine chimes with "Faulty Card".
I look at it, worried. "It says...faulty card."
"I guess I'll have to cancel the order."
"...Cancel the order?"
"Yep. Cancel the order."
Satisfied, she toddles off back to the parking lot.


Believe me, there's going to be more later.

[AprilSeven]

OMG Fauna that is PRICELESS and I'm not surprised!! I worked as a waitress/cashier/cook for around 10 years, so I'm sure you've got some real corkers to share. Dealing with the public is an education in itself.

And YES, Jeffbert!! When the moon is FULL -- it's even freaky-er!!

[Fauna]

I doubt I can do this job for any longer, but yes, there's plenty of stories. Now that I have this experience, I could actually move up to something nice, like the electronics department at Superstore. At least there the worst thing is getting dinosaurs asking if we have packs of floppy discs.


Now, this one didn't happen to me, but I was in the general area at the time...it's around the time of the lunch rush, and there's a bit of a delay in the kitchen. This one guy drives ahead of two cars in queue and right up to the drive-thru window, punches the windows open on poor Chichi (our African-Canadian drive-thru cashier) and yells "WHERE'S MY CHUBBY CHICKEN BURGERS?"
She says, "Sir, there's people who've been waiting longer than you--"
"WELL, I'M IN A HURRY."
So she moves back and goes to prod the kitchen to produce some chicken burgers, or somebody's obviously going to get shot. After a minute, our assistant managers Drew and Alexa come back with Chichi and the burgers. The guy throws some money at them, literally, then takes the burgers and drives away.
He then received the permanent nickname here of Screaming Man.

Then there was one Sunday afternoon where I was working 7:30-4, and I never even said I could work before 8 AM but I was there anyway, and I was also the only person assigned to any sort of cleaning duty. As a result, I was either going through mounds of crap, or having to be cashier during the lunch rush while slowly watching the restaurant turn into a sty.
At about 2 PM, I seriously had fifty plastic trays to spray down and re-line, and I'm about halfway through them when an elderly woman cautiously approaches me.
"Excuse me...I just wanted to let you know...that garbage can over there is full."
I had twenty-five more trays, and there were still more all over the restaurant. I looked back and forth from the woman to the trays, bewildered.
"Just wanted to let you know." And she just turned and left.
(That one kind of gets less amusing when you consider how the day after, I got so ill from having to handle the garbage, mug washing, general stress and overall cleaning maintenance duty that I had to miss school.)

One time we ran out of onion rings about an hour before the end of my shift. I'm pretty sure this is never supposed to happen. An old woman with a tight arm around her husband's elbow came into the restaurant and immediately ordered two Teen combos with onion rings.
"I'm sorry, but right now we're out of onion rings."
"Really. Then we'll take our business elsewhere."
And she just turns and pulls her husband to the exit. Judging by the look on his face, I'm sure he wouldn't have minded getting fries instead. (It's cheaper, anyways.)

My other favourite was the guy who ordered a Mozza burger meal. I hit the combo button, because the word meal = combo, and you get a drink and a sidedish like at any other restaurant. I read it back as a combo, and that bothered him, so I had to go through an entire speech about why it's the same thing. I don't think he believed me.


You know, I've been tipped twice during the six weeks I've been working here; it's only amounted to $2.27, but it's kind of like a hug after the ninety people who want to know why we call our meals combos.

[Anime Girl]

I have to get a summer job when I get my driver's license next summer. I'm gonna see if they have an opening at Claire's, a cute little botique at the mall. I spend about half my money there and Mom was like, "Gee girl, I'm surprised you aren't part time owner." LOL!

[jeffbert]

I have a few experiences related to restaurants, only 1 in which I actually worked there, unless you count pizza delivery. I was for a very short time employed by a McDonalds restaurant. I worked the frying vat, and was between hot oil & hot bun warmers that were on wheels. The floor was far from clean, and my feet were far from firmly planted. For the new ones, I have a spastic left side, both arm & leg, so the bun warmers that the burger guys were unintentionally pushing toward me were constantly menacing left hand with burns. Not only that, but I was being pushed closer to the hot oil vats. I might have been better-off with sweeping the floor, etc.

Then there was the manager who, lacking even a scissors, opened a ketchup packet with his teeth. I quit after < 1 month.

Pizza delivery: when somebody paid with pennies, if it came up short, they took it out of my $! irate: I was out with two pizzas for different addresses. It was snowing, & I cut across the grass. Oops, lost the pizza (try carrying a large pizza keeping it upright with only 1 hand), it flipped over. What to do! I do not remember if I went to the customer & tried to explain, etc., but soon learned that that pizza was for the other customer anyway. My bad. Again, I quit after less than a month.

I had a few bad/weird experiences as a customer, too. But because there is gray in my beard, I occasionally get the senior discount.

[Fauna]

Well, I got fired. Everybody I tell this to in real life sees me do a thumbs up at the end of this; I was let go because I didn't work well under stress. Either way, I know they were going to make me work on Christmas Eve and the day of my anime convention, and I've never been happier to be sporadically unemployed. I was always sort of dreading working there, and I think I gained two pounds while I was there. :d oh: (Note that I was even avoiding eating the food.)

Next month...I apply at a department store or the photography shop! In the meantime, I do have more stories:

So, there's this burger called the Double Teen. This guy in his early thirties orders a Teen Burger with his family (whom is taking up two tables, might I add). He glances at the overhead menu while I'm off cleaning tables and says loudly, "It says Double Teen. Why do they call it a Double Teen?"
Because it is the exact same burger you're eating, sir, but with two patties.

My favourite story (in a good way) will always be the Chinese woman and her son who came buy and asked for some food, and it was all normal until they asked for "Enyrun Rengx". I was incredibly confused until the son pointed at the onion rings sign. After, the mother checked with me for the proper pronounciation.

There was also the time a poor woman and her young son came in and tried to decide on what they could get with less than $10. I helped them choose a substantial amount of food for cheap, and gave the kid a free lollipop (since we literally have buckets of them, but nobody asks for one). I just hope they're all right now...

[AprilSeven]

Ohhh noooo -- but then, this may be a super blessing-in-disguise, Fauna (I've been there a number of times!). Enjoy the holidays and the convention and I'll be keeping you in my thoughts/prayers for a POSITIVE employment experience this time around! Department store work can be very similar to food service . . . but the photography shop sounds intriguing....

My most bizarre waitress experience came when a slightly tipsy wedding guess called me over to hand me something wrapped in a cloth napkin.

"Here, dear, I have something for you!"

"What's this?"

"It's a little mouse. But don't worry, it's dead!" she replied rather cheerfully. Talk about rallying all my composure -- here I was surrounded by over 100 customers, holding a dead mouse in a napkin. So I thanked her and apologized (she found it on the floor) and moved quickly to the back of the restaurant -- where I SCREAMED.

Oh yeah, then there was the time I picked up a box of champange glasses while the non-English-speaking dishwasher cried "No! No!"

I thought he was concerned I couldn't lift the box. Uh uh. That's not why he was upset.

No sooner did I lift the box up, then a bunch of COCKROACHES (think PLUTO manga) ran up BOTH of my arms!

Oh, yeah. I never moved so fast in my LIFE!! No TIME to screech -- I was flapping my arms so fast I thought I'd fly like Astro!

[Xenops]

Wow, great stories! Sorry to hear you got fired Fauna, I got fired from a movie theater for (I think) the same reasons. But the cars stopped working shortly after, so maybe it was just as well.

I worked at Dominoes one summer, and we had a steady string of pizzas to make, and for some reason my coworkers decided to use the old pizza dough and have a dough-ball fight. I continued to make pizzas and take orders. The next day everyone was written up except for me, and my coworkers acknowledged I did my duty too. So that was nice.

[Fauna]

@AprilSeven: Ick! I'm fine with dead mice, especially if they're already wrapped in something, but with the cockroach thing I probably would have just gone "OH MAN IT'S LIKE ALIENS" and dissolved. And yes, I'm going to apply to a place called Don's Photo, which is a little more relevant to my interests.

@Xenops: Something like always happened a little too much at my work...like, I'm taking orders while the delighted screams and curses of my night manager Shane (I think he was like 24) and the young kitchen staff. Every now and then I'd be forced to remind them that there's still people eating in the building. Or when Shane was throwing little things at me through the food rack, and I'm the only person out front bagging drive-thru orders...

But still, during Christmas break, I'm going to be looking for a more relaxed, creative part-time job.

[Astro Forever]

I had missed this thread last month. I'm sorry you lost your job, Fauna, and hopes you will find something better soon! Your stories were amusing. I have worked as a bank teller, but can't recall so many strange things happening to me.

My favourite story (in a good way) will always be the Chinese woman and her son who came buy and asked for some food, and it was all normal until they asked for "Enyrun Rengx". I was incredibly confused until the son pointed at the onion rings sign. After, the mother checked with me for the proper pronounciation.

The opposite happened to me. A Chinese old man comes to me and proceeds to tell me what he wants in Chinese. We were not in a Chinese neighborhood and none of us spoke Chinese. I really couldn't understand what he wanted, so I went to my boss who came and somehow understood what he wanted. hmy: A few weeks later, he came again and I listened carefully. In the middle of his Chinese sentence(s), you could understand two words in French with a strong Chinese accent, which was the amount he wanted. Fortunately, he always wanted the same amount. I never attempted to ask him what exact bills he wanted, I just handed him whatever the machine would come up with!

I also remember some ladies who were preparing a trip to Italy, seemingly of Italian origins. Back then, the currency was the lyre, and in comparison to the dollar, it really wasn't worth much. She went to another teller who also worked only in the summer and had no more experience than I did, which was not much. American dollars were easy to deal with, but we had to order the other currencies. After like 20 to 30 minutes of filling the papers with the help of a senior employee, the lady said the amount she was getting couldn't be right and left without completing the transaction. She came back the next day asking for the same thing, but she happened to come to my desk! Needless to say, I also had to ask for help!

Some people seemed to loved chatting. I didn't really mind except when I could see a long line. Once, a man wouldn't leave my desk and started speaking to me about astronomy, telling me the speed of light and other things that seemed quite precise. I was starting to be impressed until he told me that the sun was rotating around the earth.