Having worked at a Wendy's Hamburgers resturaunt for spare change for college, I'm a bit scared of the place. zgirll must have been part of the day crew. Damn the day crew...
I worked there for many moons, and now I find myself avoiding the place like a plague.* Let's start with the service. We try our best to be kind, at least until we just can't take it anymore, which is about 2 hours into the shift.** Every person that has ran the register always came to this simple conclusion: "People are fucking morons!" The store is completely run by teenagers, and when it isn't, that means a manager only a few years older than the teenagers is present. The only one older than 25 is the General Manager. I'm just starting college, but somehow someone younger than me is running the store. He's a short Mexican that replies with "poke your butt" when presented with the question "guess what". He's 17 years old and has a kid.
And you know that sign on the door when you walk in that states that the store is designated a non-smoking area? Well, after the front closes we all like to gather 'round a couple tables when the drive thru isn't busy and puff away our problems. And we have a LOT of problems.***
My advice? Don't go there after 10 at night. That's when the front closes, and to us that means the time to close down the store completely is at hand. We start making a few shortcuts. Fries tend to stay in the basket and go unsalted until they're gone (which makes them nice and squishy). The grill burns unattended, since The Grillah is too busy wiping his stations down and cleaning his floor. "Sandwhich makers" (the dudes that randomly throw shit onto your burger) pre-close their stations by sending their dishes to The Back Bitch, leaving their condiments in a sorry state (wet cheese, choppy lettuce, and what you think is mayo and ketchup, but could be mustard mixed with onions and fries--don't ask). The person on register becomes rather annoyed with the idiotic customers (please, for the love of God, say "99-cent nuggets" instead of "99-cent five-piece crispy chicken nuggets"... we know what they are, dammit). As you might have already gathered, "fresh" is not in our vocabulary. In response to zgirll, the meat we get is prepackaged and stored in the walk-in for days.**** So is the chili, That spicy chicken you just ate probably dropped down to the floor to say "what's up" (har) before being placed on a bun. Only God knows how many toxic chemicals I handled before covering the sandwhich maker's break.
I mostly worked in the back, but spent a great deal of time on the grill, a considerable amount as a sandwhich maker, but just a small amount on the register. While in the back, it's peaceful (except for the bitching the front tends to do... "drop 5 and 5", "get some fries", "patatoes are up", "get some biggie cartons from dry storage"... it's the "Back Bitch" for a reason). I don't have to interact with people much, and since I'm pretty good at the job (or so the managers tell me), I can get away with chillin' back there for an hour or two without being noticed. Some of the things you can come up with to do while back there can get pretty disturbing. Oh yeah, the title "Back Bitch" disappeared a few days after I arrived, since I have little tolerence for such things. But I use it when I'm not the one who's back there. (Fast food can turn a nice guy into an asshole surprisingly quick.)
The working conditions couldn't really be worse: Boiling grease everywhere, as well as incredibly hot surfaces (it's never cool behind the counter). Ever got boiling grease in your eye? Trust me, it ain't a pleasant experience. Also, my hand turned into swollen, bumpy flesh after a couple days with the dishes. What the hell do they put in those soaps andsanitizers? Oh, and the pay... as I've mentioned before, the managers think I'm a pretty good worker, but they sure-as-hell don't know how to reward good work. I never got a raise--not once. They said they would, but never did. An immeasurable amount of anger has been generated within me because of this ill treatment.
You like the chili? In this order, throw down some meat on the grill, burn it to a crisp, feeze it, boil it, chop it up into little peices, and mix it with a special blend of herbs and spices (just various kinds of beans and peppers with some sauce), and BAM, you got Wendy's chili. The hamburgers... have you seen the grill they're prepared on? Sure, they're nice and shiny in the morning, but wait until my shift comes around... some sort of black shit sticks to it. The fries? Last time I checked (Aug 15 2002), the date on the fry bags said "Jul 19 2001"... need I say more? The chicken sandwiches come frozen, so we just dip them in the deep frier for 5 minutes. Baked potatoes are pretty good, so I've heard, but... ever wonder what happens to them before they're wrapped? The same sink they're washed in is the same sink we wash dishes in (and you remember what I said about the soaps and sanitizers, right?). The salads are just about the only things that are safe to eat... depending on who's preparing them, anyway. And yeah, the health inspector dude comes around every now-and-then... the kicker? We get good scores.
* Disclaimer: This is just my experience at Wendy's and may not reflect actual working conditions at any other Wendy's, but it sure as hell happened at mine. I still hate the fucking place.
** Here's a nice story: The girl at the register was having a bad day, and a customer was being a bitch (trust me on this one, she was a flat-out bitch), so the girl let the customer know that by sending them off with "have a nice day, bitch". The car rolled a couple feet, stopped on a dime, and backed up to the window. The customer wanted to know what the girl said, so the girl repeated, saying "have a nice day...". That customer called a few minutes later, demanding the manager (the 17-year-old manager) to fire the girl or she'll take legal action. The girl didn't get fired, of course, yet we didn't get put through court. We simply lied. Well, the young manager lied, with the help of the other manager on duty. The GM was manipulated properly, so the whole thing was over with in a couple days. But it was entertaining while it lasted.
*** We also make our problems fly away. Pretend you have massive amounts of small food at your disposal. What would you do? Food fight, of course. The sheer scale of our food fights is staggering, and the time required to get all the stains out even more so. Sometimes the little pickle-on-the-back turns into a bucket-in-your-face. This means that some people out there take things more seriously than they should. It happens. Entire walls are lined and splattered with mustard and ketchup while pickles stick to every surface imaginable. Tomatos get some good distance too, and let me tell ya: potatoes hurt. Also, when you have a store full of teenagers from the ghetto, you have drug dealings and under-age drinking like there's no tomorrow. Managers provide the hook-up, but they'll give you the ass-end of a deal if your not careful.
**** Square patties. What the fuck. Symbolism be damned, man! Putting SQUARE patties onto ROUND buns doesn't make eating the shit any easier. It makes it difficult and therefore annoying.
Run away from Wendy's. RUN, DAMMIT!