#food service

[mollyjames]

Sometimes I think about how many people I met in food service who smoke. I think about growing up in an upper-middle class neighborhood, and how it was drilled into me that smoking is addictive and bad for your health. I think most people, in America at least, are well aware of that. Whenever I would decline a cigarette, on the rare occasion it was offered, saying I dont smoke the reply is always "good, don't start."

I think about the long shifts, working on your feet all day, with breaks scheduled down to the minute. Every second of your day controlled by the clock, regardless of how tired you might be. However, in food service, there is one exception. The smoke break. Most managers respect the smoke break. The old school ones do, at least. The newer crop less so. Food service is fast paced, highly stressful work, and nicotine, in addition to all of its addictive and damaging properties, is a relaxant. If a burger flipper or barista says they need to step outside for a smoke, you let them do it, and you dont begrudge them for it.

It's such a strange bit of kindness. One that we know is terribly harmful in many respects, but performed anyway. I think about all of the interconnected systems, of health, of education, of exploitation, that leads a person to knowingly trade in years of their life for five minutes of peace. I wonder how many people in my upper middle class neighborhood would propose simply banning the smoke breaks. I wonder how many people I know would just break.

[iww-gnv]

California fast-food workers are forming a unique kind of union

Lizzet Aguilar has worked at a McDonald’s in Los Angeles for 17 years. She’s never once been given a paid day off. She’s never taken a vacation. When her husband or nine-year-old son get sick and need her to care for them—or if she gets sick herself—she has to call out and lose a day’s pay. “Es difícil,” she says: It’s difficult. Her wages are already low. She makes $16.78 per hour. “Estamos luchando día a día. Es difícil vivir en California,” says Aguilar: We live day to day. It’s difficult to live in California. But for many years she was afraid to speak up and join the Fight for 15, a national movement to raise the minimum wage that started with fast-food workers and has since seen 14 states and Washington, D.C., raise their minimum wages to $15 an hour, increasing pay for 26 million workers.   Then the pandemic hit and Aguilar’s boss didn’t give workers any hand sanitizer, gloves, or even masks. Six coworkers got COVID-19. “Ese me puso a decir, ‘Basta,’” she recalls: It pushed her to say, Enough. She got involved to protect herself and her family.  Now Aguilar will be part of the next evolution in the Fight for 15 movement: She and her coworkers will announce on February 9 that they are forming the California Fast Food Workers Union, which will be part of SEIU. Hundreds of workers from different fast-food companies will gather in Los Angeles to sign union cards. It’s time, Aguilar and her coworkers decided, to become more formal members of a union and pay dues. It’s a fresh start, she says, on the road toward securing bigger gains.

Read the rest here.

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[kyacchan-comics]

DISCLAIMER: the point I’ll try to make here is about kind, genuine compliments, not cat calling or sexual “compliments”, OF COURSE.

So... a thing I’m trying to learn is to receive compliments. Yeah, really. I suck at it like many people and we usually learn that you have to reject them bc you need to be “modest”, “humble”... but trust me, accepting kind compliments have two good effects: one, it’s VERY good for your self esteem! Trust me! You won’t become an egocentric a**hole just for that. Two, it’s good for the person who made the compliment, they (and you) get a nice interaction and won’t be put in an awkward situation. I bet I’d explain my point better in my native language but... you know what, that’s good enough! Yeah!

(and yes, in a sea of rude customers, there’s plenty of good ones, luckily)

[goshyesvintageads]

Great Northern Railway, 1946

[sreegs]

Rating: NOT CUTE!!!

While a fully-stocked kitchen and well-sharpened knives will make the line cook very happy, you can tell something is very wrong here. Notice its quiet demeanor and folded-back ears. I don't think this one has had a smoke break in the past day, let alone the recommended frequency of 1-2 hours.

[byler-alarmist]

Do people know most paper receipts are harmful to their health?

I'm going to get up on my soapbox for a minute, but do people realize how pretty much everyone is being overloaded with endocrine disruptors like BPA/BPS on a near-daily basis??

I don't think many people understand that ever since most of the world transitioned to thermal paper receipts (cheaper than ink), almost every receipt you handle from the gas station to the grocery store to the Square terminal printer at the local co-op is coated with Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its chemical cousin Bisphenol-S (BPS).

These chemicals have not only been proven to cause reproductive harm to human and animals, they've also been linked to obesity and attention disorders.

Not sure if your receipt is a thermal receipt? If you scratch it with a coin and it turns dark, it's thermal.

BPA/BPS can enter the skin to a depth such that it is no longer removable by washing hands. When taking hold of a receipt consisting of thermal printing paper for five seconds, roughly 1 μg BPA is transferred to the forefinger and the middle finger. If the skin is dry or greasy, it is about ten times more. 

Think of how many receipts you handle every day. It's even worse for cashiers and tellers, who may handle hundreds in a single shift. It is also a class issue, since many people who work retail and food service are lower-income and will suffer worse health consequences over time from the near-constant exposure.

Not only that, receipts printed with thermal ink are NOT recyclable, as they pollute the rest of the paper products with the chemicals.

People don't know this and recycle them anyway, so when you buy that "green" toilet paper that says "100% recycled"? Yup, you are probably wiping your most sensitive areas with those same chemicals (for this reason, I buy bamboo or sugarcane toilet paper as a sustainable alternative to recycled paper).

This page from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has some good links if you want to learn more.

As consumers, we need to demand better from our businesses and from our governments. We need regulation of these chemicals yesterday.

If you are a buyer or decision-maker for a business, the link above also contains a shortlist of receipt paper manufacturers that are phenol-free.

If you work at a register, ask customers if they want a receipt. If they don't and you can end the transaction without printing one, don't print one!

As a consumer, fold receipts with the ink on the inside, since that's where the coating is. Some more good tips here.

And whatever you do, DO NOT RECYCLE THERMAL RECEIPTS

[hobgobknowsbest]

food service was the real monster all along

[redrabbu]

Kobeni sticker I made for December’s substar reward! Will be coming to my [ store ] sometime next month!

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[iirulancorrino]

People ask me all the time what’s the worst thing a customer said to me, or what’s the craziest story I have from work. I always say: I don’t remember. I used to store things like this, anecdotes to share on social media, but by the end, I went into work, I got through my shifts, and when I left, I wiped my brain like a chalkboard. When people ask me this, I get the sense that they’re looking for entertainment. What, I wanted to say, do you think I do this job for anecdotes? People will say that, too. Oh, it must make you a better writer, seeing all these people and the crazy things they say. 

It has not made me a better writer. It’s made me lazy. It’s made me love money. It’s made me see that life is more than writing, it’s lessened my chokehold on dedication. I no longer identify as an ambitious person. I identify as a person who wants to make the life that they can scrape together as comfortable as possible. 

I do think being a waitress has done one great thing with respect to writing: it has made me understand deeply and fundamentally how many writers are full of shit. It has altered my view of privilege and money and the ways that people complain that mask the fact that in their world, they would never have to do a job that equates to basic manual labor, because their intelligence is worth more than waiting on others. (Side note: Sweetbitter was an overrated waitressing book, Love Me Back is underrated.)

...

For so many years I thought that I was missing an element of secret knowledge about how actual jobs worked, and that therefore I would be stuck forever. But now that I do other work, I see it all for what it is: everything is a system. The restaurant is a system, the content management is a system, the computer is a system. Everything is so much simpler than I imagined it was. I thought I was doing an easy job, but everything is an easy job when you know the system. Other professions weren’t magic. They were systems too.

[incognitopolls]

This is specifically about things that affect your ability to clean the table afterward, not about if they were rude customers/didn't tip/etc.

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

[kyacchan-comics]

Dude, big mood, but also: chill.

[read “Cone or Cup?” on Tapas]

[fallingthruspace]

Work is not going well today my friends

[hi-can-i-take-your-bullshit]

Customers with Seating Preferences: The Tiers Meme

As a restaurant host, I deal with a lot of customers who are very picky about where they sit. They are annoying, but not all equally annoying. I think that the Tiers Meme format will help me illustrate my point nicely. Text version is under the cut.

S: People who understand that the food will taste the same no matter where they sit.

A: People who politely inform me of their seating preference immediately upon entering the restaurant.

B: People who politely inform me of their preference while we're walking to their table.

C: People who say they want to sit elsewhere after I've put the menus down.

D: People who say that they don't want to see the server station or the kitchen.

E: People who walk in and say "booth."

F: People who move to a different table when my back is turned.

[caffeinewitchcraft]

Sorry, but if a customer is being mean, just plain mean, has a history of being mean and foul and evil, I’m going to gaslight them.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I told Clark as he lambasted me for my service. I turned to get his coffee.

“I don’t feel anything,” Clark snarked at my back.

“Oh, it seems like you’re having a lot of unhappy feelings.” I smiled at Clark as I handed him his coffee. “I hope you have a better experience next time!”

“You make it so difficult every time,” Clark said.

“Maybe I won’t next time,” I said. “Do you need your receipt?”

“I’m calling the district manager,” Clark snarled.

“Oh then you’ll definitely want your receipt,” I said, still smiling. “It has my name on it.”

Clark snatched up his coffee and bustled out of the building.

I’m going to find Clark one day. I’m going to find him in the wild and ask him if he’s having a better day yet.