I suck at titles. Here are some stories and tidbits of adivce for you all I have from working fast food for 6 years.

Story

It was a night shift during the summer when we're open until like 1, and that late at night all we get about 99.9% of the time are teens or stoners, or a combination of the two. This was that .1% where it wasn't either.

So my coworker and I were being stupid and playing music over the headset to each other while we cleaned, and he decided it would be funny to do it to an actual customer the next time someone came through. He picked a random song, and it was the theme song from Cops. Lo and behold, I check the camera and it's a cop car.

We. flip. shit.

The cop doesn't even order. When we shut the music off after realizing who it was, he just rolls on up to the window. I just look at him. He sits there for a second with a weird look on his face, and then he starts laughing hysterically. He said, "This has got to be the best food run I've ever had, god damn" and orders like nothing's wrong. I was still trying not to wet myself as he drove to the next window for his food.

Advice

This pretty much applies to any store. Don't show up 5 minutes before we close and get irritated when you have to wait for service, because we will hate you. At this point we're closing down the machines, cleaning, starting to close down the registers, and then you come into the lobby and get irritated when we ask you to take your food to go because we have to lock the doors, and then you're also irritated you have to wait for fresh food since we don't have anything hot and ready. It's no bueno for everyone. Go through drive through.

Advice

So yeah, I completely get that your little munchkin deserves the best cheap plastic toy that they'll lose in less than a week, but it's really irritating and a little rude when you're in drive through and you ask me to leave my post to see if we possibly have a different toy, making everyone else behind you wait for a hot wheels car. We don't keep all of the toys up front, so it can take a few minutes to go all the way to the back to check. I could have gotten 5 orders out during that time.

If it really, really matters (why), come inside where other people won't have to wait behind you and we'll be more than happy to help.

Story

This is kind of sad and funny. So I was working front register in the lobby and fairly robust girl comes in, maybe late high school, and orders quite a lot of food. She says, "Oh yeah I'm ordering for my friends" and I don't really say anything. After her order is ready, she goes to the back of the lobby where I can still see her, and proceeds to eat it all by herself. Again, like $20 worth of food.

She then proceed to come back up and say, "Yeah, my friend wants me to get him a large chocolate shake and then I need some cookies for my other friend too", so I get her her goods and she goes back, once again, to eat it all. Alone. I was conflicted whether to laugh or cry.

Advice

We are not Mary Poppin's magic bag. We run out of things, and pretty much like any store, if we tell you we're out and you ask us to go check, we'll go back and twiddle our thumbs for a few seconds before coming back to apologize that we do not, in fact, have what you're looking for.

Advice

The whole, "You had one job!" thing? Not true in fast food. When I'm taking your order, I'm also cashing out another person's order, trying to get a bag out the window, putting bags together, making smoothies, mochas, etc. This is never a "one job" job, so if we have to ask you to repeat something it's not necessarily because we're lazy (though it can happen). Give us a second to catch our breath.

Story

So this woman comes through, and the person working at the first window (I was at the second window) says to me over the headset, "Hey, uhm....I think this lady's drunk." What? So I go over to the window to give her her drink, and her eyes aren't focusing, I can hardly understand her, and it's just generally a hot mess. So I tell her to pull forward because her food's not ready, and my manager calls the cops. Cop shows up, and turns out this woman was a known druggie who had overdosed in our drive through. Classy.

Advice

This. This right here. This is probably the most irritating thing about fast food. You'd be surprised at how many times I've been called a high school drop-out, an idiot, a good-for-nothing, etc., all because people assume that if you work fast food, you're unintelligent and unmotivated. Not true. Many of the people I work with are in high school with honors courses, they're going into the military, they're in college, etc. Also, many of the others are highly intelligent people who just haven't had the good luck to be able to afford school. So, please don't make assumptions.

Story

This is pretty much the most memorable night I have of work. It was about 10 minutes to closing, and who I can only describe as the Queen of White Trash comes through and orders about $40 worth of food for her mini-van full of spawn. I tell her that we'll have to make it all fresh since we threw everything out due to closing in 10 minutes, and she throws about the biggest fit ever. But whatever, she says she'll wait.

15 minutes later when it's all ready, I giver her her stuff and close and lock the window. I take a second to lean back and rest when I feel the window slam forward and hear this loud-ass, sloppy thud. I turn around and strawberry milkshake is dripping down the outside of the window, and she's screeching like a damn banshee in the middle of the drive-through lane as loudly as she can at about 1:00 a.m. Class act. I slowly open the window and ask what's wrong and she screams, "YOU FORGOT ONE OF MY CHICKEN NUGGETS!" I figured she meant an order so I ask, "Was it the 6 piece order or the 4 piece order?" and she says, "NO, A SINGLE CHICKEN NUGGET"

.........

Trying not to laugh, I get her her chicken nugget, and when I return she says, "Oh, and I want a new milkshake too!" Without a word I closed the window and walked off. Pretty sure she threw something else, but what can ya do?

Advice

If you're going through the drive through, PLEASE DON'T BUY ENOUGH FOOD TO FEED A SMALL VILLAGE. DEAR LORD. We're going to ask you to pull up because we don't have that much food ready, you're going to get mad, blood will be drawn, etc. Just come into the lobby where you can comfortably wait while we put your order together. Easy-peasy, kill me-pleasy.

Advice

This happens a ton, especially during lunch/dinner rush, or when we get call in orders. We can only cook so much of this greasy stuff at a time, so if you have to wait we'll apologize, but on the flip-side (heh burger pun), you're getting fresh food. Not too terrible.

Story

I have to admit, this didn't actually happen to me. This happened to my best friend while she was working (I won't say where), but even though it's not my tale it's too good to pass up.

So apparently they were getting ready to leave for the night when one of her coworkers noticed that there was a car parked in the lot that had been there for a few hours. So she goes over to check it out (she was the manager at the time), and there's a woman slumped over the steering wheel. She's not moving, so my friend thinks, "Shit she's dead, I'm going to have to stay over." She starts to move and her arm drops to reveal a needle that falls to the floor.

My friend starts to flip shit, runs back inside and locks the doors and calls the police. Not one, not two, but about four or five police cars show up, including some state troopers, and get this lady out of the car. Turns out she had a couple warrants already and they'd been looking for her for a few months.