February, 2023
By Brayan Davis, Staff Reporter
Like many others my first job was a fast food place. My experiences there were unreal. Things I’ve never seen before were an everyday occurrence where I worked. I worked long 12 hour shifts where I thought the day would never end. I worked for a sorry twelve dollars an hour, but since it was my first job I didn’t really mind the pay; I was just happy I was making anything. Now I’m not trashing fast food places because my co-workers and managers were cool and always had my back. I think the only reason why I quit was because of the customers.
The audacity some of these customers had was insane. I never really experienced racism because I was always around my own people, but when I worked there I got called things like vato, border jumper, I got told that I should go back to Mexico, and many other things that I don’t even wanna repeat. I’m not the most mature person but when dealing with these types of customers, I would wonder how such a grown person could be so immature and disrespectful. I’ve seen some dreadful things like homeless people getting naked in my lobby and people overdosing in our restrooms. I won’t be able to cover all my experiences, but y’all get the idea. Even after all that, I did have some nice experiences and many laughs, especially since I worked with people close to my age and just cool people in general. We also had this one YouTuber by the name of Tyler Oliveira where he came in and brought a gym to our restroom.
Working here really taught me a lot. It taught me to be nicer to people, to be more respectful and mindful of everyone, but in this case, especially workers. We endure a lot throughout the day and a little bit of kindness can really make someone’s day. As a former fast food teen: I can say I enjoyed my time. Working there had its ups and down but like some people say, memories don’t have prices and, in my opinion, my memories there were like no other and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
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