Food Service/Retail Woes

[solanis]

Back to your original arguement stating a $15 dollar steak is the equivilant to a $2 burger. A $15 steak can be Filet, Ribeye, or New York Strip. But you are saying that's cheap and crap right? I get NY Strip for $3.50/lb at my meat market when on sale but I bet that's shit too right?

on sale? so the meat that's left over and has been sitting out? even then, if it's $3.50 it's probably shit yeah, enjoy your anus

Don't get in an argument with solanis, it's absolutely fucking pointless. Just let him keep looking at everything with disdain.

you wound me

[Mikus]

Maybe in Wally-world where the quality of the meat/bread is shit, I could never buy all that for $7. Pound of chuck, $3-4 dollars, cheese around $2, bread is easily $2-$3, and a 2 litre of soda? ONE DOLLAR AND FIFTY MUTHA FUGGIN CENTS!.

My town, Jackson Michigan, is pretty decent on food prices. I shop at Meijer for most things but buy all my burger, steak, chicken, and pork from the meat market by my house. The ground chuck is awesome. They do buy 5lb and it's $2.50/lb. Otherwise it's $2.90/lb. If you were to buy a pound of the same thing at walmart, meijer, etc and then the stuff from the butcher, you'd clearly taste the difference .

Other stuff is sale price except the soda, which would be Meijer brand. I could post links to the prices if you guys really wanted...I'm not doubting you guys pay a lot more depending on where you live. When I lived in Sarasota Florida I spent a ton more then I do now. Cost of living is a huge reason why I live where I live now.

[tyven]

im carpet shopping at JC penny niggas

[Neoscrilla]

My town, Jackson Michigan, is pretty decent on food prices. I shop at Meijer for most things but buy all my burger, steak, chicken, and pork from the meat market by my house. The ground chuck is awesome. They do buy 5lb and it's $2.50/lb. Otherwise it's $2.90/lb. If you were to buy a pound of the same thing at walmart, meijer, etc and then the stuff from the butcher, you'd clearly taste the difference .

Other stuff is sale price except the soda, which would be Meijer brand. I could post links to the prices if you guys really wanted...I'm not doubting you guys pay a lot more depending on where you live. When I lived in Sarasota Florida I spent a ton more then I do now. Cost of living is a huge reason why I live where I live now.

Plus, we got fucking FAYGO here!

"Send yo' mama straight up to the sto', tell that bitch to bring home a FAYGO!"

[Fievel]

I'll never understand why people order cheap steak, shit's just awful.

I've tried ~$15 steak at a few different restaurants, basically places like applebees. Every single time it's chewy or dry or simply just tastes awful. If you're at a restaurant with cheap steak, just save your money and get a burger or something, it's going to taste much better, and be cheaper.

[Mikus]

Plus, we got fucking FAYGO here!

"Send yo' mama straight up to the sto', tell that bitch to bring home a FAYGO!"

Oh lord.....I'm 14 all over again listening to ICP....haha
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...QEwAA&dur=1672

[Pirian]

on sale? so the meat that's left over and has been sitting out? even then, if it's $3.50 it's probably shit yeah, enjoy your anus

This is only sometimes true. I have a friend that works in a meat market and cuts steaks for me (seriously melt-in-your-mouth goodness), and I actually asked him about that. He said that sometimes the meat is "kind of old", but even that isn't really old. Also said that the majority of the time it is just planned sales to spur sales, and it's the same meat you would otherwise be buying.

I love getting fresh and fantastic 1" cut rib-eyes for like 7.99 a pound. He'll normally cut 3-4 steaks for me and give me the best marbled, too, lol. He spoils me <.<; I can just as good back home, but it cost me 12.99 a pound. Not that I really care for that quality, but having the hookup is nice.


oh, and I guess to stay on topic - fast food sucks, don't eat it, etc. etc. Can't honestly remember the last time something came out wrong from a restaurant, and I usually eat out with someone that is gluten/casein free and they haven't messed his order up either.

[Mikus]

I'll concede, I've never ate at a restaurant like Ruth's Chris or anything else high end. The most expensive steak I've ever had was a $30 16oz. NY strip at the nicest restaurant in town and I wasn't impressed.

[Celeste]

im carpet shopping at JC penny niggas

I better not be seeing any pictures of you painting over the fucking carpet if you end up not liking the color after you put it down.

[Pirian]

I know I'm going to sound like an ass, but I didn't realize Ruth Chris was high-end <.< My buddy had his Bar Mitzvah party there, but I think that was the last time I ate at one. When it comes right down to it, Ruth Chris is just another chain :\

[Fievel]

I'll concede, I've never ate at a restaurant like Ruth's Chris or anything else high end. The most expensive steak I've ever had was a $30 16oz. NY strip at the nicest restaurant in town and I wasn't impressed.

You'll have to try Ruth's Chris, their steak is worth every dollar. So good!

Edit: @Pirian, I wouldn't really call it "high end", but the steaks I've had there are probably the best I've ever had, and I've gone to more expensive "higher end" places.

[tyven]

I better not be seeing any pictures of you painting over the fucking carpet if you end up not liking the color after you put it down.

lol, you just may.

[Celeste]

lol, you just may.

Fuck.

[Shakki]

tl;dr: Don’t ever work at Del Taco, that shit sucks.

Incoming wall-o-text!

I work at Del Taco. For anyone who hasn't lived in CA...it's popular. Not In-n-Out popular, but still. It’s by far the worst job I’ve ever worked…and the most difficult. I work my ass of for $9.50 an hour. (That’s shift leader pay. Regular employees make minimum wage.)

My manager:
-Only gives raises to the cooks, not to the cashiers
-Won’t give any sort of pay bonuses for working holidays
-Thinks it’s appropriate to discipline employees by berating them in front of everyone
-Regularly forgets to order crucial ingredients
-Blatantly plays favorites

There was one day where we had an infestation of bees. They were swarming everywhere outside the restaurant, around the menu board, around the drive-thru window, etc. We had customers who were allergic who had to drive to a different part of the parking lot and wait for us to come outside to collect their money because of the swarm. So one of our employees is allergic to bees and refuses to work drive-thru because she doesn’t want to get stung…so our manager tells her that if she won’t work by the window, she needs to clock out and go home, and that she’ll need to have a talk with her later about “having an attitude.”

Another time, one of my coworkers accidentally accepted a fake $20 (we’re supposed to have counterfeit pens, but we don’t)…so she told him he had to go to McDonald’s to spend it or he was going to get in trouble.

In general:
Del Taco essentially sets its employees up to fail. Most of the equipment we’re using seems like it’s been there since the restaurant opened. The headset is terrible, so about 50% of the time it’s nearly impossible to hear what people are saying. For some stupid reason, they have a plastic cover advertising whatever current special covering the speaker, so a bunch of people end up driving right past it, not realizing what it is. We don’t have a screen that the orders appear on, so if a customer has driven too far, is talking too quietly, has a brotruck with an impossibly loud engine, etc., things like “bean,” “beef,” “cheese,” and “green” all sound the same. I’ve had people start shouting the words at me in Spanish (which I didn’t speak a word of before starting this job) and found myself grateful because at least “frijoles,” “carne,” “queso,” and “verde” sound nothing alike.

The main draw of our food is that it’s cheap—$0.49 regular tacos, $0.99 bean and cheese burritos, etc.—so obviously you get what you pay for. Nonetheless, we get people complaining about the amount of meat on their tacos as though the employees are skimping on it just to spite them. I can tell you the exact ingredients on a regular taco—it’s 3/4 ounce of meat, 3/4 ounce of lettuce, and 1/4 ounce of cheese. These are the standards set by the company. When we get audited, they weigh that shit and mark us down if it’s not exact. Even giving as little as we do, we still usually come up short on meat after every inventory. You know what the next step is when that happens? For our general manager to tell us to use less meat.

We’re constantly trying to save money on labor, which means my manager schedules plenty of people when she’s working and not nearly enough when she’s not, then interrogates the employees to try and find out why the orders take so long and there are so many complaints on the night shifts. “Lose-lose” is pretty much the name of the game here.

In regards to giving people the wrong orders:
Don’t give whoever is handing you your food shit about this. There’s so much crap that can go wrong along the way that much of the time it has nothing to do with an error on the part of the cashiers. For instance, many of the abbreviations for food items, as they appear on the order screen, look extremely similar. Special orders come in all the time, but there’s not a convenient system in place to mark them (at least at Del Taco; I know places like Burger King and such have boxes on the wrappers you can check if there’s no onions or extra sauce or whatever), so sometimes the person bagging the orders will ask the cooks which is which…and get the wrong answer. Sometimes they mark it, but you can’t tell what it says. Sometimes the cooks make the food correctly, but the cashier had keyed it in wrong initially. Sometimes the cashier marks the food with “ASK” (meaning ask how the item needs to be made because it can’t be easily conveyed on the screen) and the cooks just ignore it. Sometimes customers drive off before we’ve given them all their food (see example below). And all these problems are exacerbated when it’s busy…which is most of the time.

So, in short, you know what the person behind the counter is thinking when you’re raging at them about the lettuce that accidentally got put on your $2 worth of tacos? “That wasn’t even my fucking fault, and I’m not paid nearly enough to deal with this shit, but I’m trying my best to smile and be polite because I’m poor and desperate and don’t want to get fired.” It’s not a great feeling to go to work with every day.

Specific examples:
Yesterday I worked a closing shift, so I came in at 5. By 7:30, we had run out of beans, which is a main ingredient in about half our menu items. We had people raging at us, saying they were going to call corporate, etc. and had to deal with all of it despite the fact that the beans take about 4 hours to cook, which means that the whole thing was totally out of our control. The previous shift didn’t leave us any beans and didn’t start cooking more until at least 4; what the hell am I supposed to do about it?

People regularly ignore what we’re saying entirely. For instance, one time a woman ordered 12 hard and 12 soft tacos. The cashier handed her the 12 hard tacos and said, loud enough that everyone currently working heard her, “Here are your hard tacos. We’re just waiting for your soft tacos.” The woman just drives off. Five minutes later I get a call: “I was just there, and the cashier handed me my bags and said ‘Here are your hard and your soft tacos,’ but none of my soft tacos were there.”

I’ve had customers ask me if the chili fries come with fries, ask if I can check the balance on their checking account, and tell me they KNOW I didn’t put enough meat/cheese/whatever on their food because “we eat these ALL THE TIME” (bitch, I make this food every goddamn day). I’ve told people, “I’m so sorry, but we’ve already closed for the night” and had them respond with “Are you shitting me?” or “Fuck you.” I’ve worked every holiday (Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, Easter…you name it, I’m at Del Taco) for the past two years and haven’t gotten paid a cent extra for any of it, with the exception of Thanksgiving.

First world problems, etc.

[bigrougabagel]

$0.88 for 2 litre of soda

I don't want a large Farva!

[Mikus]

I don't want a large Farva!

[Celeste]

I find that police officers are the only consistently sane customers I get at my store. @.@

[tyven]

whats your store?

[Elvis]

Ordered Angus wrap from McD one time. Vomited it up an hour later. The McD was in Canton, Ohio and I live about 45 min. away.

Reading CreamSoda's posts has inspired me. I should have came back and vomited on the floor and said, I have some vomit in my angus wrap, make me another.

But really, i've never complained about these sort of things (I should). So i genuinely applaud your aplomb.

[Priran]

Ordered Angus wrap from McD one time. Vomited it up an hour later. The McD was in Canton, Ohio and I live about 45 min. away.

Reading CreamSoda's posts has inspired me. I should have came back and vomited on the floor and said, I have some vomit in my angus wrap, make me another.

But really, i've never complained about these sort of things (I should). So i genuinely applaud your aplomb.

I applaud your use of the word aplomb