His eyes were glazed over, and he didn’t seem to be all there. He was finding it really difficult to decide between a massive muffin or a Kiwi brekkie bagel. Fortunately, it was the breakfast menu and there wasn’t anybody else around, so he was free to spend ten minutes choosing, and I was free to awkwardly wait in front of him as he chose.
He finally ended up going for the brekkie bagel combo, which is like a massive scrambled egg, sausage, bacon, cheese, with chunky tomato sauce in a bagel type thing.
He went and sat down in the foodcourt, and things are pretty noisy behind the counter, so when he started yelling something about sauce, I thought he was asking for more, so I grabbed a whole handful of little tomato sauce packets (my logic being: he’s stoned, he probably needs all the sugar he can get) and went over to him.
Turns out he was complaining about the fact that his bagel had sauce in it.
“Why has this got sauce in it?!” he demanded, “I don’t want your f***ing sauce!”
He sees the little ketchup packets I’m holding an he whacks them out of my hand. “What the f***?!” he cries again, “I don’t want your f***ing sauce!”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” I say, genuinely feeling like it was my fault for not telling him that there was sauce in the bagel, “I can take the bagel back and we can make you a fresh one without the sauce.” I try telling him several times as he continues to swear over me.
Being only 8:30 in the morning, and the mall shops not having opened yet, I’m the only one on counter, so I have risked a little business by walking out to him to see if he was alright. I mean, this is what I do, if I’ve forgotten something, or if something’s late, I’d run it out to them, apologise, and wish them a good day.
But this guy didn’t seem to appreciate it. “What the f*** are you doing?” he seemed to fully realise that I was there, “Get back to your f***ing counter!” he pointed me away, “Get back to your f***ing counter!”
I raised my hands in surrender, “Woh, okay!” and I walked back to my counter. I was actually quite upset that he didn’t want my help. I was sorry that he was upset with what I had given him, so I wanted to fix it, but he wouldn’t let me fix it.
My next customer, a woman, had been walking up to the counter as this was happening, and we sort of fell into step. “Are you okay?” she asked.
To be honest, this was probably the worst thing she could have asked, because it forced me to look into myself and ask, “Am I okay with this?”
I found that I was not okay with this, but what could I say?
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I sniffed a little dejectedly. But I was thankful for her kindness. At least she asked, instead of ignoring the whole pretty-unmissable scene.
A Year in the Life of a McDonald's Employee 