The Truth About The Fast Food Industry
Written by Chi Nguyen
The Fast Food Industry
“I’ve been scared to leave the store at night in case they are waiting”
This is what had happened to Lochlainn Connor, an employee at McDonalds. After being threatened and degraded by abusive customers, Lochlainn was scared to even go home after a night shift. He felt so shaken by this experience, that he felt “scared to leave the store...in case they [were] waiting”. He said that there was a “crowd of homeless people outside the store watching in”. No one should have to feel terrified to go home after work.
Picture working behind a counter and being yelled at by a red faced customer. Having hurtful phrases and derogatory comments thrown at you. The customer threatens you and throws another wave of destructive language at you, before quickly leaving the store. How would you feel if you were in this situation? Do you believe that you deserve this kind of treatment?
Working in the fast food industry is a common first job amongst teenagers. It is not unheard of for young adults to find a job within well known fast food franchises such as McDonald’s, KFC and Hungry Jacks. These are minimum wage jobs where many underlying stresses occur. People may view from the outside that people who work in fast food are lazy and have an “easy” job. They see working in fast food as just “flipping burgers”. Although this may have been true to fast food 20 years ago, in this day and age, working in fast food can be an extremely stressful job. There are new additions to the job, such as UberEats, which wouldn’t have existed 20 years ago. The rostering system is also all digital, pressuring you to be punctual. You can now be punished for being late, even if it is just one minute. The pay is now also connected to the rostering system, so those accumulated minutes can add up. Dealing with physical and verbal abuse from customers occurs so often, it feels like it's part of the job. Being paid minimum wage does not help either. Employees have to deal with difficult customers and rush-hours, which can be highly stressful, especially if the restaurant is understaffed. Employees are simply being pushed to their limits.
“87% of respondents experienced verbal or physical abuse” at work, “It is completely unacceptable”
It is evident that customer abuse in the fast food industry is a rising issue. Within the fast food industry many employees are being subjected to unacceptable customer abuse, both physically and verbally. The SDA had conducted a survey in 2018, in which over 1,000 fast food workers responded to. 87% of respondents confirmed that they had faced verbal abuse or aggressive behaviour whilst at work. Alan Padgham highlighted that their members had been “verbally abused, spat on and…[had] objects thrown at them”. He also said that members of the SDA were “called every name and slur” in the book as well as having to “suffer physical violence”. The way that fast food workers are being treated is “completely unacceptable”. The concerning thing is that the majority of employees at these fast food chains are young adults. In a school environment, this kind of behaviour is not tolerated, so why should it be tolerated at work?
“The customer is always right”
From the moment you start training at a fast food restaurant, or in fact any store within the service industry, you are taught and forced to remember the outdated mantra, “The customer is always right”. From the training at McDonald’s, employees are encouraged to never “compromise the customer’s wants and needs” and to “just say yes”. This is essentially the stem of this issue. According to Alan Padgham, “customers can use this as a license to abuse staff” since “whatever they say goes”. Customers are able to get away with this kind or behaviour as “companies are afraid to lose customers”. By complying with this unacceptable behaviour, businesses are putting profits before people.
The SDA also saw another factor which contributed to customer abuse in the service industry. “Customers [are] seeing staff as servants, not real people,” that deserve and “should be treated with respect”. The customers don’t view or treat the individual behind the counter “as a human being just doing their best”. Workers in service industries are being treated inhumanely and have to face horrible experiences at work.
A Worsening Issue…
With the recent panic from the COVID-19 pandemic, the future doesn’t look brighter for those working in the fast food industry, let alone the service industry. Alan Padgham, the communications officer at the SDA, reported that “the COVID-19 pandemic has produced even worse customer behaviour”. There has been a spike in reports of “verbal and physical abuse”. He states that it is “completely unacceptable” and “there is absolutely no excuse for customer abuse”. These employees are working at the front line, exposing themselves to dozens of people who could potentially be infectious, and are “working harder than ever to get Australians what they need during this crisis”.
Customer abuse is not only limited to the fast food industry. It is a unanimous issue within the service industry, which is an enormous sector of the Australian workforce. As of February 2019, almost 50% of the Australian workforce was employed within the service industry. With the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, customer abuse has become heighted throughout various sectors of this industry. From pharmacies to supermarkets, employees have faced traumatic experiences with panicked customers. Newspaper articles have appeared, reporting the experiences that supermarket workers have faced from disgruntled customers. It is completely understandable that many people are feeling stressed about the coronavirus, but it is vital to understand that they are not the only ones.
With the unnecessary stockpiling of products, customers are acting in a horrible manner towards supermarket employees. In Mandurah a customer had verbally abused a worker before spitting on them, a particularly insensitive thing to do during this crisis. A Woolworths employee also revealed in a Yahoo news article that they and their co-workers have faced customer abuse during the COVID-19 crisis. They claimed their “heart was pounding” when restocking products, especially those in high demand like toilet paper. Woolworths employees were also forced to use barricades whilst restocking and have felt anxious to even go to work.
A First Hand Experience
I have worked in the fast food industry myself. I worked at McDonald’s for six months. I have faced the stresses and difficulties working in this industry first hand. Before working at McDonald’s, I didn’t realise how difficult it was to work in fast food. I have had horrible experiences with some customers, but I like to think that I have been lucky, having only faced 2 challenging experiences with customers.
Unfortunately, in fast food restaurants it is common for an order to be mixed up. People should have a little more sympathy for those fast food workers in this situation, particularly since employees are always happy to replace your order if you raise your concern. Especially during rush hour, employees are flooded in orders and are pressed by time. During this time the store is packed and all you can see from the front counter are seas upon seas of people. There are order receipts flying everywhere and employees may struggle to keep up with the seemingly endless number of orders. It can be difficult to ensure that 100% of the orders are correct when you are faced with so many other orders. Also, most customers typically check their order immediately after receiving it.
One time I had worked a morning shift and served a customer. About 20 minutes later she had come back to the restaurant red faced. She complained that we had mixed up her order and cost her 20 minutes, as she had to go on a tram and back. We were happy to fix her order immediately, but that wasn’t enough for her. She started a whole scene, complaining about the service, and then targeting me. She threw hurtful language before leaving with her correct order. At that moment, I felt lucky she hadn’t done anything else. I felt lucky that my experience with that difficult customer was mild and thought I wouldn’t ever have to face a situation like that again. Oh boy I was wrong.
A couple weeks later after that incident I had an experience with a customer which will remain ingrained in my memory for the rest of my life. That afternoon, I was working on the front counter during rush hour. The entire store was packed with people. I had just served a customer. When he had received his order he checked his receipt. At first he complained to my co-workers and had said that they needed to give him an extra milkshake, which he claimed to have paid for. My co-workers explained to him that he had only paid for one milkshake, not two. By this point all the employees working at the front counter had surrounded the serving station, trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. Quickly realising he couldn’t get what he wanted, the customer began to change his target. I hadn’t been standing near the serving counter as I was taking orders from other customers at the cash register. Seeing his chance, he directed all his fury at me. He yelled that I had over charged him and “she doesn’t deserve this job, she should go find another job” in front of dozens of other customers. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to him, but I had reached my breaking point. Tears flooded from my eyes; I couldn’t help it. Under no circumstances would this kind of behaviour be tolerated at school.
I am not the only one who has been subjected to this kind of behaviour in the fast food industry. An anonymous interviewee, who had also worked at Maccas for 6 months, mentioned she had interacted with a “number of customers who [were] immediately very racist and/or aggressive”. There was even an instance where “a customer [had] physically crossed the line”. Although the interviewee did not want to delve further into the details of this specific incident, it is evident that this kind of behaviour is completely unacceptable. Not to mention that this interviewee was under 16 years of age when this incident had occurred. No one should ever have to tolerate racist or aggressive behaviour at work, let alone physical abuse. It is just not part of the job. Lochlainn Connor, who has worked at McDonald’s for 9 months, voiced that he has experienced “many instances of customer abuse” and that he even had a “bucket of coins” hurled at him. Physical aggression from customers is just simply unacceptable. Borth employees have also witnessed their co-workers face customer abuse. The first interviewee said she had seen “other co-workers experience the same verbal abuse from customers”. Lochlainn has “seen it happen to almost everyone” he “know[s] at work”. Customers seem to believe that “they have the right to blow up at” workers “for the minor inconvenience” which is “often..[their] fault”
A solution…
Unfortunately customer abuse in the service industry is not an issue which can be solved overnight. For this issue to resolve or to be minimised, there must be a “focus on two fronts: the attitude of customers and the attitude of employers”. From a union’s point of view, customer behaviour must change. The SDA ran a “No One Deserves a Serve” campaign, which communicates to customers that employees are “just doing their jobs”. They also launched an ad, focused towards customer abuse within the fast food industry, with a key message: “Working in fast food doesn’t put us below you.” It is crucial for customers to understand that there is “no excuse for customer abuse” and that they cannot use employees as an outlet for their own emotions during tough times. Alan Padgham also mentioned that changes in the attitude of employers were also important. He said that employers were “at first afraid that campaigning against customer abuse would be bad for business”, however these businesses later found that there was “strong community support for action on this issue”. Sending messages to customers through signs such as “Respect our team” and “Zero tolerance to abuse” was also suggested to be a way for employers to help minimise this issue.
From an employees point of view, the two interviewees who worked at McDonald’s suggested making Maccas “a better environment” to ensure that “employees can talk to managers about what happened”, as well as “standing up for workers” and “calling the police” (when necessary). However, it was discussed that there “isn’t much to be done to help” employees, since customer abuse can present as a “difficult situation”, even if “managers do their best”. Lochlainn also brought up that one of the managers at his store once refused to comply with the demands of an angry customer. He said that she yelled at them and kicked them out. He admitted that this was a “drastic” action, but that the customer “didn’t come back” and they hadn’t “come back for more”. Lochlainn revealed that “when the customer gets what they want a lot of the time in that situation they come back for more.” Although this may appear to be an extreme situation, similar action (e.g. making it clear to the customer that this kind of behaviour is not tolerated and is unacceptable) is necessary to reduce customer abuse. If customers know that they cannot behave that way to workers, they will not behave in a similar conduct again.
For customer abuse to be resolved or minimised, it will take great community support. There must be an upheaval of society’s view of the way that they can treat those in the service industry. It can start from anyone’s change in attitude, including yours. So next time you go to a fast food restaurant, think before you say, treat employees with respect and remember that the person working behind the counter is also a human, just like you.
[thumbnail image © Camille Chu]