I worked both. Distant stare
Ah… miss those times I see?
I have worked in food service and retail and to tell the truth I would choose “picking up shit with a shovel” over either any day of the week. Wouldn’t even blink, give me the fucking shovel no problem boss
I’d rather do heavy labor. As long as I don’t have to work in shifts.
FWIW, if one’s foodservice experience is bartending, you are given significantly more license to stand your ground and kick people out. Legally defensible license to do so. I genuinely enjoyed bartending most of the time, especially when it wasn’t a high-volume place.
When it’s at a bar/grill restaurant, if you and the cook don’t run tag-team being bad-cop on every table that gets weird to spare the server staff, you’re doing it wrong. You are a weapon to be wielded. A 6-top often loves the suggestion that someone not getting a tip is a mutual villain making drama and that the server is the only person making magic happen against all odds. It’s theater, right? You provide dinner and a show.
I’d sooner chew my pinky finger off than ever work in food service again. I’m dead serious.
Dead. Fucking. Serious.
My first job was in food service so I figured, ok, this is what working is like. Never again.
You have way more chances to get back at shitty customers doing food service.
Get a cunty customer and you just smile a little too large, be a little too eager to fix their issue and let your eyes glint just a little. Then fix their issue exactly what they asked for with nothing wrong with it and untampered with. When you return to the table put a little too much emphasis on “Enjoy” when you give it to them.
They will spend the entire meal trying to figure out what you did or call the manager over and make a big scene about how you did something but cant point out what. Ruin my night, I’ll ruin yours.
Or you could also just actually fuck with their food ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
10+ years and I only ever did it to one person, but that racist piece of shit 100% deserved it.
That’s risky (criminal level risky)
Right so in the jumpscare genre you use psychological trick, and in the psych horror genre you use jumpscares on shoplifters and bad customers who can wait an extra minute for their help.
You don’t have to jump out on them, though. One time I had this guy SCREAMING about his order when there was a huge line and he was like #3, yeah? Well he was there for about an hour and while he was ranting at 300Db about how I never do my job yards yadda I had a colleague go get his fridge. He was waiting for that hour impatiently and I kept reassuring my team this would be worth the wait.
Anyhow he goes and gets someone to fetch their supervisor so I walk up once I’d been called.
WHERE IS MY ORDER IVE BEEN HERE FOR 2 HOURS‽‽
sir by my account, you’ve been leaning on it for the last 45 minutes. Your order is already completed in the system and the invoice is printed and on top of the box, do you need help loading it or finding anything else today?
He just screams like Tarzan and starts to push it outside. 5 minutes later quietly shows back up in my now-much-shorter line and sheepishly asks for help loading it.
TLDR: I also like to play ‘ruin my night, I ruin yours.’
For me food service was worse because it was harder to get breaks. In retail I could just tell bad customers “I’ll check the warehouse”, and then never return. But at the restaurant I couldn’t opt out of bad customers.
I’ve done both, and I’d say food service is generally worse. Neither are as bad as being on an assembly line, I can tell you that much.
Fast food service: Covered in grease AND dealing with customer’s bullshit.
Now that is shocking to hear. You do not have to deal with the whims of the general public. One would imagine anything would be better.
You still gotta deal with the most absolutely bored co-workers who are so disillusioned they create petty drama to fill their days. The 60 year old lady with a mullet who has been working the job outta high school is going to set an absolutely unmatchable pace for zero reason other than to give their ego a pat on the back, and not give two shits for the problems that pace might create when the shit they send down the line starts to inevitably back up.
All while doing absolutely back breaking and fatigue inducing actions for long periods while operating machinery that will dismember you before you even notice something is wrong. Your mind is so bored by the repetitive tasks it erodes at caution though, so good luck not messing up.
I bet that the question depends more on management than the customers or type of work.
Like a good manager that doesn’t take shit from customers will be way better than the ones that bend over backwards for any complaint.
Same thing for the ones who are chill as long as things are getting done vs the one that is more interested in seeing the illusion of work being done even if things are neglected (because all their attention is making sure people look busy rather than really understanding the work to evaluate results).
The quality of management is near universal, that’s the problem. They don’t pay enough to keep good people
special case, Walmart is Cronenberg levels of body horror.
keep in mind, it gets worse the darker it is outside.
My wife did both in a Californian suburb and this is accurate in that retail will make you lose faith in humanity while waiting tables is actually kinda fun but very tiring.
In her case, it wasn’t the Karens but rather the amount of terrible parenting she would witness. One kid shamelessly stole thousands of dollars of Pokemon cards, get caught, and the mother took his side and blamed the store (?!). Plus, so many kids just left there like it’s a fucking daycare, too. Touching and messing up stuff. My wife was working alone most of the time, too!
Not to mention, no chair, no real breaks, minimum pay, and so on. At least with food service, good places have tips and you get to bring home food. If you sell alcohol, it’s extremely lucrative in states that don’t dock your pay. An occasional jump scare is worth making more than an average college grad, and one of her friends opened a sushi place and gives us a discount. Food service is cool.
Depends on what you’re selling, I guess
Yeah this is what I was thinking too. I worked for a mom and pop hobbyist store, and Starbucks. Obviously Starbucks was worse. But would it be worse than, say, a mall clothing store or Target or Walmart? Not sure.
For me retail was terrible, fast food was a special type of hell. But working as a busser was far and away the worst and strangest work experience I’ve ever had
What was strange about it?
Everything those other fellows mentioned, plus great stuff like: the manager making me shave my facial hair off before allowing me to work; getting put on 12-hr shifts back to back even though they knew I was a student and had classes; staff expecting me to know everything about the table numbers and layout on my first day and getting pissed when I didn’t; also the amazing capitalist culture of Trying Super Hard So I’ll Be A Line Chef/Mgr One Day and all that comes with it.
I quit after two days and never looked back.
Nasty customers leaving messy tables. Host/server breathing down your neck to bus their section yesterday. Dishwasher disappeared so they need you to pitch in at the dish sink. The bin behind the bar is overflowing.
Where were you?!
Hosts flat seat -> server workflow gets frontloaded -> servers spend all their time greeting and grabbing drinks/setups instead of prebussing -> bussers have to do more work to get a table guest ready -> hosts start to panic as the lobby fills up -> hosts yell at bussers to teleport around the restaurant as soon as a guest so much as thinks about the check -> repeat
All of this just barely works until someone drops a glass in the ice, or we get behind on a starter, or a piece of equipment breaks, or literally anything goes wrong. And that’s just front of house, when you factor in the drama that can happen back of house when we’re understaffed and FOH demands too much too quickly it’s a miracle that there aren’t mass walkouts.
I live in the death spiral. I have a different seat but we’re all on the same damn ride.
Can confirm, also partially explains my taste in art
I’d rather work in customer service.
That’s just the Indian in you bro.
That’s racist!!!
Anyway, I thinking how I won’t have to deal with people who are not physically there.
I’m Indian too, so think of it as our n-word.
The cs-word if you will.
I wasn’t serious, weren’t three exclamation marks not enough???
