Fast food service stories.

Back when I was in highschool I worked at Taco Time. One time there was this guy who came through the drive thru and ordered ice water. We thought that was a little weird but didn't make too much of it. When the guy came to the window he asked the girl working what she was doing and if she wanted to go out to a movie. She responded that she was working. It was quite strange. He did this again a couple of days later. I think they did end up going on a date out of the whole thing.

There was also these friends that I knew that worked at McDonald's. They would apparently have random food fights... really it was just ice and ketchup packets.

I have no personal experience with fast food service, but I know several people who do, and have this to offer:
Grill soup = everything that's left over on the grill at the end of the day, scooped into some sort of container. Apparently reserved as a seasoning for the really "special" customers.

Haven't actually worked in a fast food joint, thank the gods, but I can clearly recall the times when the service (at a motorway rest stop near London) has been terrible:

Waitperson took her time in coming to the table...
The supposed "fast" food took 30 minutes to arrive...
When it arrived, it was cold...
The waitperson (a teenager) was fairly disinterested in our complaints...
The managerperson was also fairly nonchalant about complaints (suggesting that the organisation & its customers have low expectations for their food quality & service...)

And, worst of all, there were little kids running full pelt at 100mph back & forth... right in front of the kitchen door, out of which the staff were carrying laden trays of food & drink!

Plenty of scope for comic chaos there...

BTW Mebbe you could change the name of your fictional fast food joint to something less litigious than M*D****ds?

Last May I spent 3 months working nightshift at MacDonalds with four 20-something male friends of mine. It was, how can I put it, an interesting experience. We would often play stupid games to help the time pass this would include the joy drunk burger wanting customers, very few customers who enter the building at 2am are sober so its fun to confuse them, see how many times you can repeat their order wrong, tell them that they are in burger king not macdonalds, basically terrorise them. Especially if they decide to throw up on the floor.

Then you can have mop races, generally you need two small people, and two large people for this. Often played at the ending of the evening, when you clean up before the end of shift. The two smaller people stand on the head of the mop, close onto the pole so there is still manouravbility and then the two larger people have to push it round an obstacle course of chairs.

The obstacle course can also be used to slider around of "tray-on-foot-skates", wet clothes, spilled sauce and any other movable objects (often the trolley the cleaning stuff is left on has wheels which can be fun.

One time we played the game where one person stands behind the other and is his hands for about two hours, this led too the attempted groping of a drunk woman, a large amount of spilled coke and a nose bleed for the employee in front.

Ah how I...don't miss Maccy Ds!

No yeah, I know I'm not really going to call it McDonalds. Though, something very close to it. Ya know.

Thank guys. Keep the stories/ideas comming.

I like the confusing the drunk people idea. I'm sick like that, plus I think it would really work for this story.

*rubs where chin hair would be*

When I worked at McDonald's and we didn't have any customers late at night we'd get the crew together and play broom hockey. We'd take a frozen chicken nugget, arrange the chairs as goals, then take the brooms and have at it. Always amusing.

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"If idiocy was a crime punishable by death, we wouldn't ever have to worry about overpopulation."
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2005: "Spiritually Unaware" - 40k
2006: didn't compete
2007: "Between the Mist" - 0k

Okay, so, question, did you people not ever worry about the store people, managers watching the cameras? Or did you just not care?

Do you care, or rather did you care about your McJob?

I worked at a movie theater, and often I was behind concessions, which sort of counts. Often when there was nothing to do the managers would be playing broom hockey, etc. with us, depending on who was on duty: if we were avoiding work that was Not Cool, but if everything was really done that needed to be done a lot of the managers would turn a blind eye. (Some of them were tightwads of course, so the amount of horsing around we did depended on who was on duty.)

2003: Anomaly (won!)
2004: Duodecium (won by a large margin!)
2005: Follow the Tides (won, but hated the story)
2006: Glass Jars and Seashores (won! This was Anomaly, mach II, with 100% new characters and a completely re-outlined plot)

Not every fastfood place has cameras set up, and even if they did, it's not as though a manager or owner is going to look through an entire day of video just to see what the employees are up to. ;) And there are times when the manager is the one instigating the entire goof-off time.

We always played broom hockey when there wasn't anyone in the store. We were also very careful of which managers we played it with (since the one manager was the one who arranged the game anyways). And if we saw a car pull into the parking lot, then we would hurry and stop and just pretend like we were actually cleaning.

At any rate, I hated my McJob as it was. So glad I don't work there anymore. Fast food services are for the very patient, that much is for certain.

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"If idiocy was a crime punishable by death, we wouldn't ever have to worry about overpopulation."
~~~
2005: "Spiritually Unaware" - 40k
2006: didn't compete
2007: "Between the Mist" - 0k

I worked in a mexican grill over the summer. There was only one security camera, and it was fixed on the cash register at all times, essentially the most important part of the store. If I think of any good stories, I'll be sure to write another response.

NaNoWriMo 2007 entry: http://uneasilyslumberingstory.blog.com/

Well I worked at a pizza place called Pizza King for a year and a half and then again on breaks my freshman year of college. though it's not the same as working at McDonalds so much crazy crap occured there such as:
- Creating a game and keeping score of who killed the most flies, this only went on for one weekend because obviously flies in a restaraunt is not good
- playing hangman until our boss let one of us go home early (it really works)
- super evangelical religious groups coming in and making my manager cry by telling her she was going to hell and then a very tall very metal kid taking the tract and eating it
- high and or drunk people coming in and getting food
- kicking kids out for doing various sexual acts in the booths
- trading food with other fast food places
- having a manager jump on a table and dance suggestively
- having the same manager ride a broom like a horse through the kitchen and then dance agaisnt it suggestively

There's a lot more but I can't remember it at the moment.

Also, this happened one time when I was in a McDonald's...my friend who was a male called another one of my friends (a female) a slut jokingly and an old drunk man got in his face about it and asked him if he wanted to take it outside. The McDonald's people seemed to be having the time of their lives about it and got a big kick out of it when the cops came to question the drunk guy.

I worked in a KFC for about a year as my first job. The only thing that made it a good job were my coworkers. The main way I passed my time was my manager would tell me stories over the headset. She would make them up as she went along.

If there was no one in the building we would turn the bouncy ball machine upside down to get the quarters then buy a bunch of balls and throw them across the dining area. Or just steal the quarters.

We had no camera and the "owners" never came by after dark and the managers were always in on anything we did, as long as we cleaned up, they didnt care.

I know that when horrid customers got the better of me I would go into the frezzer and kick boxes and scream, good relief.

We would see how far we could throw chicken out the drive-thru window.

Oh and one time a manager brought in basically legal uppers and handed them out, I remember getting some strange looks from the customers without knowing why.

Love all the other stories,
Mahi

I personally have no stories, but at http://community.livejournal.com/customers_suck/, there's no shortage of fast food stories, as long as you don't mind shifting through them.

2006- Into The Dark
2007- Coming Home

Hey buttercup, thanks. That does help. However, I kind of skimmed it, and it almost seems more like, people just complaining. Which, I deffrenly need, but I want you know, throwing chicken out of windows. Seeing who can shove the most fries in their mouth in one go... Who can down a soda fastest. Who can... Make the drunk say "slippery chicken". I dont know.

But thank you all. Very helpful.

*takes notes*

I used to work at a Quizno's, and things got pretty weird there sometimes, so hopefully I can suggest something useful. xD

1. Squirt bottle fights. Complete with cheesy cowboy movie talk ("So...you feelin' lucky /punk/?") Just don't use chlorine, or the Orange stuff (I have no idea if this was a Quizno's only brand, but it actually said "Orange Stuff" on the bottle. .__O)
2. Frisbee. 8D
If the restaurant your story takes place in has some kind of catering service, or a party platter, the cheap plastic lids used for the trays make very good frisbees. The final fantasy battle noises are optional of course.
3. Customer death plotting!
...Pretty much self-explanatory.
4. Musical night! Just go into the back where no customers, or people walking by the restaurant on the street can hear you, and start belting out various disney tunes.

We were so l337 at Quiznos. :B

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2006-World's End-Winner
2007-Dead Land

Well, I actually work in a supermarket, but we always used to have food fights on Saturday afternoons after the store was shut which involved us throwing an assortment of rotten fruit at each other. I can't tell you how many rotten apricots I've copped in the face. We found this soggy black cucumber at the back of the fruit and veg cabinet once and I chased a coworker screaming through the store with it. In the deli department, this girl I work with is hopeless. She's dropped chickens in the sink (they float), underneath the bai maree, and legs and wings in the fan in the oven (the thing is, there's a grate covering the fan, so I haven't figured that one out yet..). We also make a game out of killing flies. If you shoot them with oven cleaner they fall straight out of the air and this guy I used to work with literally split one in half by flicking it with a glove, which was seriously one of the mst impressive things I've ever seen.

The "Orange Stuff" is not just a Quizno's thing - I worked for Empire Theatres in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia for a little over a year, and we used Orange Stuff, too. We also had Yellow Stuff (basically, dish detergent), Blue Stuff (basically Windex), Green Stuff (a sort of all-purpose spray cleaner for really sticky stuff), Clear Stuff (a spray lubricant and for shining metal), and Hot Stuff (basically over cleaner, for the popcorn kettles).

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ML: Pictou-Antigonish Region
2003: Of Mages and Pickpockets * 2004: untitled * 2005: Zombie * 2006: All the Freaky People * 2007: currently untitled

Regarding cameras: I worked in an "express" fast food place inside a major retail chain, and there were a lot of cameras in the store, and apparently really tight security. However, there were no cameras in the kitchen that I knew of.

One thing some of my coworkers did was put rubber mice by the work stations for whoever had the job of opening up.

A lot of my friends and family members have worked at McDonalds, and everyone of them would sneak home food. They would come home with a bag of frozen chicken or ten parfaits. Also, when a friend of mine got fired she stole the grease traps from all the deep fryers and took them out with the garbage. ^^

NaNo 2005: Under the Influence - failed
NaNo 2006: The Color of Insanity - Winner!
NaNo 2007: ???????

I used to work at Burger King.
If you mix all of the sodas in the soda machine together (Coke products) and the iced tea / raspberry tea / hi-c, it tastes exactly like bubblegum-flavored toothpaste.
Pickle-flinging was also a good past-time, especially in the kitchen. If you fling a pickle at someone and they don't notice (usually if you get it on their back) you get more points than if they catch you and throw it back.
Also turning the lights off on people in the freezer is fun.

"The Many and Varied Adventures of Psychedelic Frog Skin Boy"
NaNoWriMo 2007. Current chapter: Planning (Ch. 0)

I use to work fast food at a Dairy Queen (dunno how many of you know about them but it's pretty much like any other fast food place with a ton of soft serve ice cream)

This isn't so much funny (well it was to me, at the time) as more of an incident of fingers being too button happy.

A woman came through drive through placed her order and when she paid she decided to pay by debit. I pressed in the cost of her meal and she approved and paid for it. The unfortunate part was when I looked to make sure that the transaction completed I charged her $200 more then what her actual order was.
I went and told the two supervisors on hand since they were both together and they were both rather amused by it. One actually called the customer an idiot, along with a few other things. The other supervisor decided to talk to her at the window since we hadn't given her the order and I hadn't told her about it.

We've had over flowing slush machine, the coffee machine that wouldn't stop making coffee, the mysterious rank from the fridge, dares of eating strange combination of foods, people swearing at the drive through intercom for the entire store to hear, Oh and I also had a man on rascal scooter come through drive through, and the woman ahead of him decided she wanted to pay for his order which was a milkshake.

Oh you can't forget the customers that berate you because you don't hold the same specials as another place or they argue with you about where they are. I've had a few do that with me in the past.

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2007==> The Gift of Demise: Planning stages, 0/50,000

When I worked in Maccas, some woman came in and asked what the (then new) Double Beef and Bacon burger was like. When I said I wouldn't know because I'm vegetarian, she said I shouldn't be allowed to work there. (Hey, they weren't paying me to eat it...)

Another girl came in and ordered almost every burger available and then asked me if it was true the ice cream had pig fat in it. I wanted to say, "You've already ordered every animal we have, even bacon, so why do you care?" Couldn't but I was so tempted.

I don't have any personal stories of silliness but sometimes the sucky customers can really be just as fun, especially if you laugh about it after with your co-workers.

I worked at Arby's for a couple of years, and I only ever saw someone get tainted food once. When you think about it, with the time you food is supposed to be in your hands you really haven't got time to mess about unless the customer makes a big deal out of themselves and holds up the process, annoying everyone in the building.

Don't forget the secret languages! We had these complex code phrases for everything, like....Um. Hot customers.

Conversation would usually go like this (if there was a hot person in the drive thru)

Drivethru: Hey, (insert name of coworker) did you see the schedule?
Coworker: (Comes to the window) Yeah, I did. I think it's thursday night.
Drivethru: Really? I thought it was Saturday morning.

And the customer goes on their way, none the wiser.

Monday morning was obviously the WORST time of the week, and Wednesday night was when it started looking up. You could have three day weekends, too. Rarely was Sunday given out, since it was the "Holy Day".

I think I maybe only saw two Sundays the entire time I was there. ^_^

One time a girl drove through the drivethru with no pants on. I recall that quite well.

Whitney
Kennesaw ML
Blog Here
Rome is more Eternal than you think.

Oh, another thing-- we had names for all the drinks we made by mixing up sodas from the fountain. I don't remember that many, but "smurf" was blue icee with whipped cream mixed in, "Orange thunder" was Sprite and orange soda, and "The Hulk" was mountain dew and sprite.

2003: Anomaly (won!)
2004: Duodecium (won by a large margin!)
2005: Follow the Tides (won, but hated the story)
2006: Glass Jars and Seashores (won! This was Anomaly, mach II, with 100% new characters and a completely re-outlined plot)

I still work at a fast food place (Subway) and it's usually the night shift. Some of the things we do/have done are:

- Mock battles with the frozen bread
- Learning how to juggle with the cookies/tomatoes/etc.
- Using a bit too much water while mopping the floor, then seeing who can slide the farthest without falling down.

The last is usually pretty fun... until someone walks in.

2004: Why Do Stars Fall? (59%)
2005: Heartseer (100%+)
2006: She Might Shatter (73%)
2007: ???

Orange thunder!

It is yummy.

Really original names, right? We had the Blue Stuff too, but our Clear Stuff was just water with chlorine in it.

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2006-World's End-Winner
2007-Dead Land

I love reading through these. It almost makes me miss working at Quizno's just for the crazy stuff that used to happen. xD

I wasn't here for this, but I heard it all from one of my friends who worked at the same place. We had a bit of a mouse problem (it was two mice, not really a problem), and some of the other employees caught one, named it Albert, kept in a big plastic tub for the rest of their shift, then released it in the Subway's next door.

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2006-World's End-Winner
2007-Dead Land

I worked at McD's for over a year.

Two friends of mine were horsing around in the grill area, one wearing an extremely expensive drive-through headset. A slap upside the head resulted in the headset falling into the fry vats. The shift manager wrote it off as an accident. :]

In a similar incident, a friend put ice cubes down my shirt and ran. I chased her, chucking Happy Meal toys at her as I ran, and one went PLOP-- sizzle right into the grease vats. It was a Neopet toy, if I recall correctly.

Saying weird things in drive through was fun- "Your quest will continue at the first window. Please journey forth." Stuff like that.

Some people, when offended or aggravated, would put open packets of barbeque sauce at the bottoms of other employees' drinks. Works best with dark drinks, like Coke or Dr. Pepper.

Off the clock employees hung out around our McD's a lot, so we'd do things like putting trays under the back two tires of people's cars (makes the front tires skid like crazy). Not to surprise them or anything, they were always present- it was just an amusing site for a minute.

I hated that job, but I loved the people I worked with and the fun, crazy stuff we did.