I’ve worked in the food industry for 3 years–here's what it’s like behind the counter
For most of my time in high school, I have worked behind the counter, and most of the time, everyone is respectful and quite nice. But there is always that one person who can ruin your day with a few words. Many people would agree that fast food workers are treated very poorly. Due to the common mistreatment of these workers, fewer people are willing to take on these jobs. Working in food service is hard enough, being hot, sweaty, with 12-hour shifts, and just being in a rush all the time, the last thing we need is someone blowing up over something like a forgotten tomato on a sandwich.
Abuse in the food industry is unfortunately very normalized and more common than you think. This abuse can come from customers, coworkers, and even managers. Greg Kingen states that more than three-fifths of restaurant employees reported suffering emotional or physical abuse. Nearly half of these employees have endured disrespect from employees and even from managers. A growing problem in the fast-food industry is low wages and minimum pay. Fast food employees already work hard enough with the pressure of doing many things at once, while getting paid the minimum possible.
Many workers are striking and protesting for pay high enough to support themselves. No one should have a job and still go hungry because there is not enough food to feed their children. Some restaurants operate while they pay their staff under the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Restaurants are allowed to pay their staff as low as $2 an hour, making them rely solely on the tips from their customers. Some customers don't believe in tipping, so the employee would only be making around $ 2 per table, which makes it not even worth their time or effort. With the low pay and rude customers, not tipping may cause the employees to get burnt out and be emotionally exhausted over time.
In New York, planned walkouts for fast-food workers were scheduled for the late afternoon and early evening. Rachel Wilde said she would not be participating in the walkouts due to her fear of losing her job. She said she would participate in a protest for the company's failure to provide health insurance, though. She stated, "If you walk out on your job, that's grounds for dismissal." What she said was true because many would like to protest and help support the cause, but can't participate due to the fear of losing their job.
Business Insider quoted a survey, and the results came back with 62% emotional abuse from customers and 49% reported abuse from managers. When customers are rude to employees, it just makes their day much harder, on top of what they have already dealt with earlier that day. More often than not, employers dismiss incidents involving unhappy and angry customers. Without support from the managers or proper leadership, the employees are left to deal with it on their own. When management fails to properly support their employees, the consequences can be severe for the whole company, risking more employees leaving and finding better jobs. Being insulted and verbally attacked can lead to employees taking these comments to heart, affecting their self-esteem and confidence.
When employees do not feel safe at work, they may be more likely to quit or lash out at others more easily. The more frustrated you are, the easier it is to be rude to customers who deserve it. To avoid employees getting angry at customers, they can be trained on how to de-escalate situations better. To help employees not receive as much hate, the employer can establish a zero-tolerance policy and state that any abuse towards employees will not be tolerated.
Unfortunately, in many countries, including the U.S., laws against abuse of customer service workers don't exist, and authorities can't do much about it unless there is any physical harm or threats. Jo Causon states that in the UK, assaults are set to be made a standalone offence under the new Crime and Policing Bill. Even though people are starting to make progress in providing protection against public service workers, more still has to be done.
While many people believe that fast food workers should be treated better and paid more, others do not agree with that. People believe that customer service jobs are "dead-end" jobs and that the only people that work there don't have degrees and bad work ethics. When this is everything but the truth, a lot of fast-food workers have multiple jobs and are only there to make extra money to help support themselves. A lot of people need to work more than one job because jobs aren't paying enough to help people support their families.
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