Chronicles of Life: Back To Work, Back in Action

Day 2 at Wendy's went exceptionally well. I was able to return to my favorite position in the store and work amazingly well. As you can probably guess, I worked as the Front Register Operator. I believe that there is something special and exhilarating about working on the front counter. The luxury of being able to move at my own determined pace is probably why I love it. At times, I can generally move at a quick pace; some customers have been able to notice my speed because I do slip and slid on the floor, and ricochet off the door handles and counters. It can be so fun. The only two negative aspects with working in the front are that I have to clean the dining room at the end and then I have to interact with customers. Between you and me, I hate person-to-person interaction on all levels, work, play, and even eating.

Working in a fast rood restaurant that has a drive-thru window has one striking flaw. That flaw is clearly, that in most cases, in the winter the cold north wind blows through the window and lowers the temperature of the store greatly. Customers and workers always come in and complain that it is too cold to do anything. I found myself shiver and sniffing because it was so cold with the wind blowing on me as I took and served orders. Customers begged me to increase the heat setting. We cannot increase the heat setting when it will just get colder when the drive thru window opens. I, never did communicate, that fact to the people, unfortunately. At one point, I was going to put a Wendy’s coat on, but I felt weird because the coats were all too big for me. I managed to get over the coldness eventually.

Yesterday proceeded without haste. I was able to secure a raise, so I can make essentially, hopefully, two hundred dollars more than I had originally projected, so I can hope to get new Wii games and such. I hope even to earn enough to acquire Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, if I earn enough.

One of the other problems with working in any place in which customers orders must be taken involves order accuracy. When I left Wendy’s a few months ago, one of the most repeated qualities that Wendy’s Propaganda for employees stressed was order accuracy. I remember one claim in which workers are required to repeat the order three times to the customers. (On a side note, if we repeat it, enough we could eventually trick people who do not remember their order into getting less than they paid for; a truly nefarious thought indeed). For some reason, I felt the need to repeat everyone’s orders because I hate the fact that people forget what they say. The disgruntled customer that I served decided to add to her completed order three small Vanilla frosty’s. I assumed that the new button on the register was automatically rigged to total up three small frosty’s. In actuality, it was rigged to do three medium frosty’s (a flaw of the computer, for the chocolate frosty the computer automatically rings it up as a small chocolate frosty). Therefore, I totally the order up and then proceeded to cash it out. The woman realized that I had charged her for the wrong thing (she was able to do mental math multiple 99-cents by three to get a reasonably price). I followed this and realized my error. I had to race and get the manager to do a void of sorts. My manager claimed that there is a difference of 20 cents, which there is. However, even with this, there is some other problem with the inflation of prices with tax. Therefore, we, even though we were right in that she would get 60 cents back, the woman claimed that we still did not give her enough money. The manager went into the back to verify this on the calculator. In the meantime, I had to stay up front and entertain the customer. By entertain, I mean listen to her tell me and everyone else in line about her struggle with making money and her fight to fight for every single bit of money that she has earned. Therefore, by us taking two minutes to get her an additional dollar, she was claiming that this was a galactic fight of epic proportions in which one dollar would cost her, her entire life savings and projected new worth. I was like, please calm down, it is just one-dollar, you can easily find one-dollar in the bottom of your couch at home. Of course, I did not say that aloud. Overall, everything was straightened out.

The night ended sharply around 11 PM. I was able to finish everything in breakneck speeds; thanks in part to my ability to do the entire dining room clean up in a fast speed. I have it all literally memorized. I get today and Thursday off, and then it is back to the Wendy’s for fun on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.