Working fast food seems simple enough. You go in, you take some money, and you flip some hamburgers. Or so everyone seems to think. Working fast food, especially an “upscale” fast food place like G.D. Ritzys, can be tedious and downright exhausting. Ritzys prides itself on making all of their ingredients. They make their own ice cream, their own croutons for the salads they put together themselves; their own chili, coleslaw, and they even shred their own cheese. Many don’t realize that it is often times the employee’s responsibility to do these everyday tasks that people don’t think of. You can go on thinking working fast food is the easy way out, but just take a look inside our workdays and you will find it is not anywhere near an easy thing.
I arrive at work at 8 a.m., even on the weekends. We don’t open until 10:30 a.m., so there are two and a half hours of preparation before we even open. We all are assigned our own jobs. My job is to do salads. I go in, put on my hairnet, booties, and gloves, and get busy. The first thing I do is see what salads and toppings are left to use from the night before. I have to check all of the leftover salads to make sure they are all fresh; freshness is very important to the Ritzy image. I discard the ones that have any hint of brown in them. Next, I take the leftover lettuce from the night before and fill up the lettuce containers for the sandwich makers. I take all of the leftover lettuce to the salad, where I chop it up. We have huge sinks in the back that we fill up with chopped lettuce to make our salads; we usually go through around 70 salads a day. The chopper is heavy and a burden to use, but it’s what has to be done.
After I chop the lettuce, I start making salads. I get out the tomatoes, the hardboiled eggs, and the carrots. I have my own way of making my salads. I line up as many bowls as I can on the counter of the sink. I fill each container with salad, and then I top each with two tomato slices, three hardboiled egg pieces, and a handful of carrots. Then I go through and put the lids on each one, stack them up, and bring them to the refrigerator. This whole process has given me nine deluxe salads. I repeat this process until I have 70 deluxe salads, 16 side salads, and 6 taco salads. It would be lovely if my work ended there.
I then must chop more lettuce to give the people working the next day some help. I chop until I have an entire container of it, and I put it in the fridge. I then cut more lettuce for the sandwich people. Around this time, it is nearing 9:30. I have to have my work done by 10 in order to get my break, so I start hustling. I cut, chop, and dice more tomatoes to fill the container. I cut up more hard boiled eggs, and I skin more carrots. By this time, I usually have a big mess to clean. I must clean every bit of lettuce out of the sink so the dishwasher can start to use it. I must clean every bit of the little pieces of lettuce left in the chopper, which let me tell you, takes forever. Lastly, after my mess is cleaned up, I am to help whoever has not finished their tasks yet; no one goes on break until everyone is done. Finally, 10 o’clock rolls around and I can take my twenty minute break to eat.
That’s probably one of the busier parts of my day. By this time I am usually already exhausted with all the lifting and carrying I had done. But then, I must start my 10:30-4 shift. All day long I work the cash register and take peoples orders. I get them salads, I get them drinks, I get them ice cream, and everything in-between. I clean up spills, I deal with angry customers, I wipe tables, and I refill ingredients, to name a few. We don’t get any breaks to sit down. We are literally on our feet all day. By the time 4 o’clock rolls around, everyone is beyond exhausted. I go home with a sore body, an exhausted mind, and a terrible grease smell imbedded on my clothing, hair, and even skin.
I’m not saying there aren’t rewarding parts to working fast food. You do, after all, get a paycheck every two weeks, and you will occasionally deal with customers that you just love. But for the most part, it is just an exhausting job. I’m not sure how there are some people there that use this as their full time job. Flipping hamburgers is alright and all, but I’m beyond glad to be at college so that I can have a job one day that doesn’t require me to ask “would you like fries with that?”
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