Food Retail Archives - Page 17 of 64 - I Hate Working In Retail

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The 9 Struggles Every Coffee Shop Barista Has to Endure

Working in a coffee shop can have its highs and lows, like any job. There are customers you love and certain orders that you hate but it’s money in the bank after all.

 

However, sometimes being a barista can really test your limits.

 

strugglesofabarista.wordpress.com

 

1. Asking what size a customer would like their drink and getting the response of ‘normal’.

Yes, coffee shops tend to use different names for small medium large but the concept is still the same. Normal, however, is not a size so don’t sigh at me like I’m making this hard for you. PICK ONE.

 

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2. Calling out a drink you’ve made, then three drinks later having a customer come up to you pointing at a drink and saying “is that mine?”

Believe it or not, random stranger, I don’t know if that drink is yours given that I don’t know your name nor do I know what you ordered. I also don’t know what is wrong with you.

 

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3. Using the left hand side till throughout the entirety of their order, only to have the customer try and put their card in the right hand side machine.

I know you’ve not had your coffee yet but please try and function for just a few more seconds.

 

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4. Having your mood crushed instantly as the singular customer at your till pulls out a list of 20 drinks for them and their colleagues.

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5. Getting the response “we can still sit upstairs though right?” when telling people they can only have their drinks to take away as you’re shutting the store.

Yeah we like to just shut one side of the store and leave the rest open for people who have nothing better to do with their evening. LEAVE.

 

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6. Having a customer approach your till whilst on the phone to someone and act like you’re unreasonable for attempting to take their order.

They say “Sorry about that” but are talking to the person on the phone. Oh.

 

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7. Getting customers that take the wrong drinks and wonder how they managed it.

They have ordered a cold iced drink but somehow mistakenly picked up a boiling hot one instead and wondered off without noticing their mistake. Or taken one that says ‘Emily’ on the side of it despite them being a 40-odd year old man. They come back complaining their latte tastes funny when they’re clearly drinking a hot chocolate with whipped cream on top. You don’t need coffee, you need help.

 

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8. Having change slammed down on the counter in front of you after they’ve counted it all out in their hand.

You’ve politely reached out to get their money as they’ve leant forward yet they still feel the need to slam it all down on the counter for you to pick back up coin by coin. Just take the moral high ground, smile and hand them their 5p change… by putting it on the counter.

 

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9. People don’t understand the difference between a latte and a cappuccino.

Latte = espresso, lots of milk, some foam. Cappuccino = espresso, some milk, lots of foam. When you ask for a Cappuccino with less foam, you’re just ordering a latte. If you ask for a latte with extra foam, you want a Cappuccino.

 

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Hang in there.

Sourced from thedailytouch.com

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30 Things You Didn’t Know About Working as a Hooters Girl

South Korean girls of Hooters
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Today, we celebrate the 30th birthday of a national treasure, a beacon of light amid the ever-darkening times, a place to rest your weary bones and eat chicken wings, a place with boobs: Hooters.

The first Hooters opened in Clearwater, Fla. and, as legend has it, one cofounder convinced that year’s Jose Cuervo bikini contest winner into becoming their first employee. Thus was born the Hooters Girl.

Tonight, Hooters is hosting a nation-wide Hooters Girl Reunion to celebrate. In a video on their site, one Hooters Girl gushes, “Working at the store is awesome. It’s like being a rock star in my own little town.”

But what does it really take to work at the restaurant? We asked a few former Hooters Girls. Here’s everything they had to say:

Hooters
Ethan Miller/Getty Images

1. It doesn’t really matter if you have any serving experience. Hooters cares more about your personality.

2. More importantly, Hooters found a loophole to hire their girls based on looks: They get away with hiring “thin” and “pretty” girls because they are hired as entertainers, not servers.

3. You don’t have to have double D’s to work there though. All sizes of boobs are welcome, from A to F! But some girls will wear two or three bras or bras that are too small, to amp their cleavage up.

4. During training, they take the time to teach new hires how to draw an owl in ketchup.

5. Hooters Girls must wear sneakers and socks. And there is a correct way to scrunch the sock. If done properly, it can actually make your legs look leaner.

6. And pantyhose, which the girls have to buy themselves. The official coloring is “suntan.”

7. Hair must be down at all times. No ponytails allowed, ever.

8. You have to wear makeup every day. It’s in the handbook. (Their website says makeup “should appear natural to best accentuate your features” and that mascara and lipstick are required.)

9. Hooters Girls only wear black on Friday.

10. Once a month is special costume day and Hooters Girls must supply their own costumes. November might be military themed, December is Christmas or winter themed. There’s firefighter night, police night, country night, animals night, etc.

Hooters
Tony Bock/Toronto Star via Getty Images

11. Hooters Girls can trade tank tops with other stores. So if you ever see a girl at, say, the Hollywood location in a Boston tank top, she went there and traded a top with another Hooters Girl. The only location that won’t trade is Vegas. They make you buy the tank top and show a pay stub for proof you work there.

12. You have to get approval to wear the Hooters crop top. “Basically your stomach has to be flat and you can’t have any muffin top,” one former Hooters Girl told us. “Which is basically impossible in those shorts.”

13. It varies by location, but some stores have “seasonal” attire (i.e. Hooters Girls in somecold weather climates get to wear long sleeves).

14. Hooters Girls cannot come to or leave work with their uniform showing, other than the shoes (for safety reasons). If a girl wears her uniform outside of work she is supposed to be fired immediately.

15. That said, former Hooters Girls do get to keep the uniforms, so you can wear it for Halloween after you quit or get fired!

16. Shifts are assigned based on sales. “Hooters Girls hustle the merchandise to try and get better shifts.”

17. There are 16 steps to Hooters Girls customer service and, technically, a minimum of three Hooters Girls are supposed to stop by your table during your meal. It’s called the E3 system: Every Hooters Girl, Every Guest, Every Day.

18. If a couple comes in, Hooters Girls are supposed to sit next to the girl—never the guy—to appear less threatening.

19. “College guys make the best customers,” our former Hooters Girl revealed. “The ones that go to Hooters tend to be shy but far more respectful. Drunk 40-year-old-men are the worst.”

20. Hugs are discouraged between Hooters Girls and customers. Sometimes forbidden.

South Korean girls of Hooters
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

21. When it’s slow, it’s not uncommon to find Hooters Girls playing board games with the customers. “I’ve had a blast playing Connect Four with some Marines,” one Girl told us.

22. You learn choreographed dances during training and if you hear a particular song start playing when you’re on the clock, you’re supposed to stop every and dance.

23. There are songs and chants for birthdays and “Hooter’s virgins.” Our former Hooters Girl says, “They pretty much exist to make the girls look dumb and embarrass the guests.”

24. Cell phones are forbidden on the floor. The Hooters Girls we spoke to had never seen it happen, but had heard stories about managers taking girls’ pouches and slamming them on the ground if they think she has her cell phone on her.

25. Hooters Girls get free meals every shift…if they choose to order the Hooters approved “healthy” options, which don’t appear on the menu. Otherwise, there’s a sliding scale on meal discounts (usually 50 percent off for wings, etc.)

26. Fries are full price.

27. Some restaurants offer discounts on tanning and gym memberships for Hooters Girls.

28. Hooters Girls are supposed to yell “Hi! Welcome to Hooters!” every time someone walks in the restaurant. (“It dies quick.”)

29. Come for the wings, stay for the curly fries. “Hooters has the best curly fries.”

30. Yes, your Hooter Girl is making minimum wage. Please tip accordingly.

Sourced from uk.eonline.com

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21 Confessions Of A Former Fast Food Worker

I can’t tell you which chain I worked at, but you know it. You’ve been to it probably more than once. It’s not the biggest, but it’s in the top 5. And my experience is not the exception to the rule.

1. If you are a girl working the drive-thru window (like I was many times) you will definitely get hit on in really obvious and offensive ways. And the manager won’t do anything about it.

2. That picture that went around the internet of a big woman sitting on a chair in the line at a fast food restaurant: That is not unusual. In fact, usually customers who do that are much, much bigger than her and they will drag a chair around with them everywhere they go.

3. Almost any time you try and engage in any kind of polite conversation with the customers, they will either completely ignore you or respond to you in an even more aggravated way. “How are you today?” is just met with their food order.

4. A lot of customers are so big and look so physically unhealthy that you almost feel like a bartender who should be cutting them off. They’ll order family packs and three value meals and you can’t do anything about it, even though you know it’s killing them.

5. A good percentage of the customers are regulars, some multiple times a day.

6. The ice machine is by far the grossest place in the whole restaurant. It gets cleaned out sometimes, but not as often as it should, because it’s a job no one wants to do and everyone thinks “Oh, it’s frozen, it can’t be that bad.”

7. The managers were always on the verge of quitting, or brand new, so the cleaning never got done the way it should. Everyone just wanted to go home at the end of the day so the rule became “If you can’t see dirt, it’s clean.”

8. Never look under the grill in a fast food restaurant. Just, don’t do it.

9. Pretty much everything comes in frozen, and the stuff that doesn’t, you almost wish it did.

10. If you are ordering something that isn’t very popular on the menu, ALWAYS order it fresh and wait the extra five minutes. I’ve seen things stay under the heating lamps for an entire shift because no one orders it. If you get it at the end of that, it will taste and feel like cardboard.

11. One time I found a bug in the french fries while I was scooping them out and my boss just told me to throw it away and keep scooping.

12. The soft serve machines never get cleaned out. In my year and a half at this location, I never once saw anyone give it a thorough internal cleaning.

13. The most depressing thing you see by far is morbidly obese toddlers and children who are already eating one or more grown-up value meals with extra large sodas.

14. The safest orders on a menu are: the most popular sandwich, chicken nuggets, and french fries. The turnover on them is so high that there’s very little chance anything bad has happened to them.

15. I’ve never seen anyone spit in someone’s food (though I know it happens), but I’ve definitely seen multiple things dropped on the floor and then wrapped up and served. The five second rule is more like the thirty second rule.

16. Most employees are not allowed to take lunch breaks during shifts so we are STARVING through the whole afternoon.

17. Pretty much every employee is talking shit about the customers at all times, but I think that even normal people become absolutely insane and so rude when they order fast food. They act like we’re their slaves and they don’t have to have manners. And then there are the people who are so socially untrained they basically can’t eat anywhere else.

18. The worst customers are the homeless people who yell at you and the teenagers who sit in the corner for hours, make a mess, and try to sneak alcohol in their cups. It’s impossible to tell which is worse of the two.

19. Almost none of the employees at my location were teenagers. Most were working parents who were supporting themselves with multiple jobs, or people like me who were college students.

20. Even if the calories are marked a certain amount on the website, the products are all way more fattening than that because of how much grease is used on the grill.

21. Even if something says it’s vegetarian, chances are it’s probably not. If you’re trying to stick to any special diet, my advice is to not go to a fast food restaurant. It’s just not for you.

 

Sourced from thoughtcatalog.com

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