re: Questions for those who have worked in the service industry or as restaurant kitchen staff

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I don't drink fountain drinks

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This. Most decent places will clean and soak the nozzles every night but some don't and their fountains are disgusting.

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The best workplaces i had were kitchens.
But it's also a stressful job if you get in the weeds every night.

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The Rush is the attraction for lifers. We're essentially flow-state junkies.

Kitchen staff at most places have no clue who is eating the food. Plus if they have to remake cook something they just want to get it out there face asap and work on the other orders they are dealing with. As a bartender I won’t Eff with your drink but I will loud cap you about being obnoxious, a shitty tipper, being skeevy towards women, etc.

Can’t believe this thread made it 5 pages without someone complaining about tipping.
Thats OT progress right there.

1) Often
2) Only if they are dickheads
3) All restaurants

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I've never worked fast food but all bets are off when it comes to those.

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My first job was at McD. There isn't time to screw with people's food. All I knew was, "1 McLean, 1 Cheeseburger no mustard" on a ticket. There was no time to think about whether the girl taking the order used to date the guy that came into the store with his new date and do anything.

Then again, I didn't work there in the age of fatigue where no matter what you send it is always wrong. I remember one order that said extra mayo, I put extra, they wanted more. I painted it with four times the normal amount of mayo, they left satisfied, and I never knew who they were, or cared.

I worked at a pizza shop back in college and I can honestly say I never thought about fricking with someone’s food, and I never saw someone do it, or even joke about doing it, no matter how big of an a-hole the customer may have been.

Was in the industry for 30+ yrs and never saw something like that…of course if I did, they would be fired.
Did have a real a-hole customer run us through the ringer for an entire meal…finally got thru it and then he asked for decaf coffee…we were out so my manager gave him half coffee/half water…as the GM, I should have stopped it but I pretended not to notice and then laughed about it after.
Last thing I wanted was to talk to that a-hole again.

Im assuming that was a typo and you meant servers, but servers don’t frick with food either. They just want your food done correctly so they can get you out the door and hopefully salvage a tip.

Restaurant workers value our paychecks as much as you do.

Do you spit on or wipe your arse with cps reports some a-hole asked for?

No? You’re a regular human being who doesn’t do dumb shite that could get you fired just because a customer pissed you off?

Guess what? We’re actually real people who value our income, just like you.

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Do you believe many convicted felons work back of the house and front of the house jobs? I haven't heard of any restaurants ever background checking their staff.

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Of course I do. Half the people I’ve worked with in kitchens have been felons. But the key word in your question is “work.”

Yes, felons work in the restaurant industry at a high rate. And a large percentage of those people are there because they’re trying to lead a law-abiding life. Hence: they are at work and not a corner.

Sure, there are recidivists. I’ve fired more than a few cooks and dishwashers who couldn’t leave the gang or prison bullshite behind. But if your point is supposed to disparage restaurant workers because a lot of them have records, I’d argue the exact opposite.

Kitchen work is one of the few purely meritocratic professions left in this country with a path to the middle class. Somebody can walk in with a felony, face tattoos, hand tattoos, a gang history, no degree, and nobody gives a shite as long as he shows up, works hard, learns, and can do the job.

Restaurants hire people that much of the rest of society has already decided aren’t worth taking a chance on. And I’ve watched that opportunity turn former gang members and ex-cons into respectable, hardworking, taxpaying adults with real careers and real lives.

The dish pit is usually the first place those guys land, and it’s a shite job. It’s also where the truly unredeemable tend to self-select themselves right back into crime. The ones who can actually leave the gang and prison bullshite behind keep showing up, work their asses off, and eventually earn their way onto prep or the line.

Does that happen with every one of them? Of course not. But some of the finest, hardest-working cooks I’ve ever known are felons who built legitimate lives because a kitchen gave them an opportunity when almost nobody else would.

And if I’m putting all my cards on the table, and I am, a lot of those guys strike me as finer human beings and harder workers than half the jerk-off accountants and sales douchebags on the OT who were practically railroaded into a middle-class life by their parents and now strut around acting like they hit a triple.

So what exactly was your point?