“No ma'am”
“Yes sir”
“Would you like a refill?”
“No, we do not give out birthday treats”
“I'm sorry, ma'am”
“How may I help you?”
Memorize a simple phrase or two
just do it.
But is it really that simple?
Imagine you show up and you're
a little heartbroken
And you ask a customer “how are you today?”
“Great, how are you?”
“Well, I just lost the love of my life”
No.
You say, “I’m wonderful, thank you”
and act like their order of a hamburger - make SURE there's no pickles -
is the purpose of your existence
Really, working fast-food is
like living a lie.
not quite like lying to
your parents or your girlfriend
but you lie to strangers every day
and maybe that's worse
or maybe that's okay?
I think about it sometimes when I'm stuffing bags
with cold fries and telling the customers
“they came right out of the fryer”
or using expired beef ‘cause I don't really care
and my boss told me to
or like lying about how great you are doing
or that their screaming child is “so damn cute”
or that you don't mind cleaning up its throw-up
in the playplace
or that you can definitely stay two extra hours
‘cause family time definitely doesn't matter in comparison
to dealing with angry middle-aged women
and inappropriate comments from old men
you’d think the uniform would be unattractive enough
Now imagine you told the truth.
“Yes ma'am, I understand your complaint. Those fries have been sitting for two hours.”
“No sir, that beef is not fresh. You probably shouldn't eat it.”
“I'm doing terribly.”
“Yeah, your child might be cute if it could learn to shut up.”
“Your kid made the mess, you clean it up.”
“No.”
but you're there because you don't have a college degree
not in debt
but stuck
so I guess here's the real conundrum
how to work a fast food job:
get a college degree
“Bachelor of Arts in Professional Deceit”
-mrp