Fast Food Workers See Some Crazy Shit

All illustrations via Drew Shannon.
Fast food restaurants are breeding grounds for chaos. Last year, they made $160 billion in the US alone. Their chains are often so ubiquitous and cheap that people tend to leave all their fucks at the door and walk in like it’s their living room. There’s an air of desperation that surrounds both working and eating there that puts everyone a little more on edge and insane than they would typically be.

Born out of this chaos are a countless number of public incidents, like the lady who successfully

sued McDonald’s for her hot coffee, or the manager who performed a strip search on her employee. Given the nature and sheer number of these oft convenient and well-priced restaurants, I was certain there were more gems like this hidden from the public eye. Since nobody knows fast food restaurants chaos like their employees, I reached out to some of them to hear some of their untold stories.

John’s Revenge

I worked on the floor with these two guys who straight up hated each other. One was this short, deaf guy, John, who stood at around five-foot-six. The other was this huge meathead, Daniel, who stood at six-four. Anyway, the meathead guy was always picking on the deaf guy for his disability and the way he talked. He would laugh in his face, shout at him from behind, yell at him when he didn’t understand. One day Daniel shouted an order across to John, who wasn’t looking and didn’t hear him. Daniel strode over and shouted sarcastically right in his face:

“MAKE DUH FOOOOOOOD!”

John looked up at him and knocked Daniel out cold with one swift punch to the jaw. They never fired John—after reviewing the tape they said Daniel had it coming.

McGolden Shower

One day the store manager was in the bathroom, snaking the pipes or whatever. This guy walks in the washroom and my manager’s like, “Sorry, sir. It’s out of order.” And he’s like, “Oh, yeah?”

Then he pulls down his pants and pisses all over my manager. He grabs a few paper towels as he’s pissing on my manager and is like, “Take your minimum wage salary and clean this shit up.”

So the manager comes like dripping out of the washroom right after and tells the assistant manager: “I gotta go home and take a shower. Someone just pissed on me.”

She’s like, “Whoa, yeah, OK. Do your thing.”

Creepy Hans

We had this 28 year-old German guy Hans managing our store once and we always thought he was kinda creepy. He was always eyeing the female customers down, and showing them pictures from his phone. One time after the store had closed it was just me and him closing up. I hadn’t seen him for a while. I walked to the back to try to find Hans, and I see him with his tongue down this girl’s throat, who I later learned was 16. He told me to “Get the fuck out of here,” so I left and went to the monitor room to watch. He turned the lights off to try to hide it and all I heard was: “I wanna taste you.”

I cleaned up awkwardly while Hans banged this 16-year-old by the freezer. He got fired the next day.

Here, Catch

One day I was helping unload new food that was being delivered. My buddy and I didn’t want to clean up all the boxes piled up in the middle of the floor, so he was just throwing tomatoes over the boxes to me and I was catching them. As we’re doing this, this guy we worked with walked in behind me, but neither of us noticed. So he’s throwin’ them at me, and as he gets one tomato he fakes it low but throws it high. I jerked my hand up to catch it and felt my thumb go into the guy’s eye. I pulled my thumb up to get it out and heard a squelching sound as my thumb rubbed his eyejuices. I looked back and the guy was banging on the wall screaming,

“AHHH, MY EYE! MY EYE!”

Me and my buddy just kinda sat there and laughed at him, which didn’t go over well when they looked at the security tapes. So then after we’re like, “Well we’re gonna take you to the hospital, but we gotta finish these tomatoes first, so you gotta wait in the crew room.”

He had to wear an eyepatch for a while, but he’s fine now.

Guardian Hobo

I work in a 24-hour fast food joint, and we get a lot of homeless guys and hobos coming in. If they’re not bothering anyone, we usually let them sit there if it’s not busy. This one guy had been sitting there completely peacefully when he started shouting nonsense: “Give me a fucking break! All of you on your watchtowers think you’re so fucking rich!”

The security guard was on break, so I walked over to ask him to leave.  When I got close enough, he charged at my stomach full force and knocked me to the ground. We started wrestling and it turned out this guy’s actually surprisingly strong so I can’t get him off of me. Then someone pushed him off me, and I look expecting to see the security guard, but it’s another homeless guy. Now the two of them start rolling on the ground fighting. Meanwhile everyone’s like backed up against the walls clutching their burgers and children. Luckily a policeman was walking by outside and came in and pried the two apart.

As they were escorted out, the hobo who saved me gave me a wink like, “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.”


@keefe_stephen