You don’t need to search too hard to find social media posts with fast food workers getting into it with rude customers.
Whether it’s folks telling off patrons in the drive-thru, or workers sharing how they deal with unruly shoppers who make life more difficult than it needs to be, there’s no shortage of food service industry workers venting their frustrations with individuals who firmly believe that “the customer is always right.”
And a TikToker/McDonald’s employee named Fara (@prettygirlslovefara) uploaded a viral TikTok of her own that’s accrued over 384,000 views on the popular social media platform that suggests this type of willingness to pop off on a fast food visitor may be a byproduct of how much time someone spends on the job. So if there was a graph plotting the years spent in a place stacked against the alacrity in which someone will verbally unload on a customer, it would show a positive correlation between the two.
@prettygirlslovefara Like girl go to the crew room, I’ll take his order 😭😭😭😭 #studsoftiktok #foryou #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp #🏳️🌈 #lgbt #foryoupage #joselinehernandez #trending ♬ original sound – Follow for memes 🤪
The McDonald’s employee records herself acting like they’re texting on their phone when their attention gets drawn to a ruckus that’s being caused by their co-worker, who sounds like they’re embroiled in an argument with someone else, presumably a customer.
A text overlay in the clip reads: “POV you closing w/ that one coworker that’s been working in fast food for WAY too long” and a caption for the TikTok says: “Like girl go to the crew room, I’ll take his order”
Judging from the responses from folks who responded to the TikToker’s video, it seems like there were a number of people who’ve found themselves in a situation similar to Fara’s—where they work with someone who isn’t afraid to, at a moment’s notice, proverbially “throw down” with a customer who is giving them a hard time: “my coworker just like this she be on go”
Another person wrote that they enjoy sharing shifts with these co-workers because they always ensure the shop is closed on time and no one is there past its posted closing hours: “those be the best shifts tho cus we get outta there on time. start closing 4 hours before we actually close”
One TikToker said that they were the employee that Fara is referring to in her video: “This was me used to start closing at 630 and the store closed at 930”
And another said: “no fr when i opened a store and i was one of the last og on nights. Everyone was mad af that i was cleaning 2+ hours before closing.”
A 2019 Vox piece penned by a former fast food service worker focused on the “burnout” that they experienced while working in the industry, stating that while many media outlets focus on the anxiety associated with white collar jobs, working in an environment where a manager is constantly looking over your shoulder and judging your work, all while you’re subjected to customers who are ready and willing to chew you out for getting their order wrong or not fulfilling it in a fast enough manner, is a special kind of hell: “It can be hard to understand the stress of having someone constantly looking over your shoulder if you haven’t recently—or have never—had to work a job like this. By definition, that’s most everybody with power in this country.”
The writer went on to say that after the newspaper they worked for closed down, they took up jobs at an Amazon Warehouse and at McDonald’s in order to see how the landscape of working service jobs changed in the 10 years that they were employed as a professional journalist, and remarked that that environment in these vocations were much more stressful than they recalled: “Even having done a lot of research, I was shocked by how much more stressful low-wage work had become in the decade I’ve been working as a journalist.”
On the flip side of that coin, however, redditor @Which-Decision posted on the site’s r/UnpopularOpinion sub that after being employed in the fast food service industry, they ultimately developed “less empathy” for fast food service workers.
They primarily expressed that just because someone is having a bad day or a hard time at work it doesn’t mean that they necessarily need to take their own anger or frustrations out at customers, stating that they decided to govern their own reactions and maintain respect and kindness for patrons regardless of how they were feeling: “There are days where I wanted to cry because of how mean people were. The whole time I’d have a smile on my face and would have people call corporate about once a month because they thought I was so wonderful. I’ve worked after closing at 1 am because there were still cars in the drive through with a smile on my face even though I just wanted to clean up and go home. I’ve even done 10 hour closing shifts. It’s not my fault you hate your job. There’s no reason for you to be snappy and roll your eyes at me right when I step up to order something. There’s no reason for you to close 30 minutes early and turn away tons of different people at an ice cream place that closes at 8pm. I don’t care that your life sucks. I don’t care that you hate your job. Don’t be a b*tch to people who say please and thank you.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to McDonald’s via email and Fara via Instagram DM for further comment.
