Attacked At Work!

I work at a fast food place. Or at least I will for the next five weeks before I move interstate. But that's a blog for another time, probably soon. Anyway, I'm a manager at a fast food place and I work nights. I work five graveyard shifts per week and have been doing it for three years now. But something happened tonight which I wanted to recount because, frankly, it's insane and this sort of thing tends to happen all too often.

So the place I work at is open 24/7. Or rather the Drive Thru is. The dining room closes at 11pm and reopens at 6am. This is going to change soon, I hear and I am glad to be getting the hell out of the business before I have to endure THAT. Having dining room closed means more security, better to handle a bad situation and so forth.

I'm leaving soon. Two of the crew working tonight have been there for years and are going to be taking over my position when I leave. A good promotion and they can handle most things. Some nights we get drunks trying to walk through the drive thru lane. The store is closed and one of the reasons is it's more secure to deal with someone from their car window than standing directly in front of you. If we were going to serve people on foot then the store would be open. But people still try to walk through. Of course I can't serve you. Honestly, just use your head for a second. I work for a major fast food company. Everything we do is recorded on a shit ton of cameras throughout the store. We get audited regularly for our practises. Yes, just serving you on foot just that one time could get us seriously fined. And besides, it's dangerous. You're drunk. People are driving around drunk. People speed. No part of this recipe is good.

Something that really bugs me is the selfish indignant attitude that my current industry attracts. Maybe it's because we plaster the message out there in such a massive way of doing things the way they want to and being open or available all the time that people fly into a rage when it's denied to them. Or simply can't understand why we can't "Just do it for me." Would it be fair to serve one walker and not all of them? No. Of course not. If I serve one then I should be serving all of them. As I say we're on camera. You're in a dangerous position. You're putting my security at risk, too. No I am not going to do it "Just for you." You are not special. You do not deserve special treatment above anybody else. I don't know who the hell you are and frankly I couldn't care less.

So I had a few of my guys working tonight, two of which are being promoted to night manager. Somebody walked down the lane and tried to be served. I was in the office doing some admin when I saw this going on the cameras. My guy could handle it. He'd tell them no and leave it at that and get me if he had to. I did my work but kept an eye on the screen as I saw the guy come back two times Then he vanished. But not for long it would seem.

Suddenly I heard a loud banging sound coming from the dining room. I knew what it meant right away and picked up the phone. See, we have a patio area protected by a fence. The patio leads to two sets of glass sliding doors which lead into the dining room. Two flimsy sliding doors and a gate which is easily climbed over are all the security I'm given every night. I go to work every day knowing that if somebody really wants to get into my store then they are going to. Knowing this I picked up the phone and called 000. (Which is the Australian version of 911.)

I walked to front counter to find a slim hooligan going off his nut. He'd grabbed a metal frame which holds out dustpans and started beating the shit out of front counter. Some of my training kicked in, looking for his height and whatnot. He was about average height. Shaven head. Northern England accent and drunk off his face. And just going off for no god damn reason. He started wailing on front counter, smashing against the registers and pounding on the charity boxes and other items. I stepped in front of my crew person, who is a short fellow and was quite understandably worked up. I placed my hand on his chest and got him to stand back. I walked up to the man, as close as I could as he was swinging the metal pole around.

The funny thing is that I've seen this whole routine before. It saddens me to say that this is nothing new. It also saddens me to say that, in my area of Perth, the people who cause this kind of trouble the most often are english immigrants. Soccer hooligan types. I get all kinds of people coming through at night. A lot of immigrants work the crappy late shift so they stop by. I can't speak for other parts of Perth and I know where I live there are a lot of English people living. But honest to God, it's these English hooligans that have given me the most trouble over the years.

But not always, mind you. Sometimes Australians do it too. It usually works out something like this: Guy tries to walk through. We tell them no. They completely fail to comprehend the idea. We tell them no, usually several more times. Once they understand they absolutely lose the plot.

One has to wonder what kind of person lives like this? Who goes off the rails over something as simple as not being able to buy a god damn hamburger? The whole thing seems absolutely insane to me. I often picture what these people are like in their day to day lives. if they blow up and lose the plot over such a mundane thing then how else are they reacting to other problems? Worse still, what is going to happen when they encounter something truly terrible or shocking? If violence comes so easily with such little provocation then I shudder to think what'll happen when things really kick off someday.

So I'm standing as close as I can as this guy waves his metal pole around and does his temper tantrum. It's funny that these English guys tend to lose the plot much faster with my Indian employees than with me. They still lose their temper at me, but these people are clearly racist. My boys are not bad communicators and they're certainly not rude. As I stood on counter with the phone to my ear, calling 000, I could tell that this was a drunken, racist, English immigrant doing his nut.

I've seen it all before. I'll probably see it again in the five weeks I have left. The wired thing is that I wasn't really scared, other than flinching a little at the pieces of register that were flying around as he smashed. I got through to the police, and looked at this man with a calm and slightly bored expression.

'I'm calling the police,' I said calmly but assertively.
'Good! Call the fucking police! See if I care!' the drunken lout muttered in his thick northern accent.
'I'll remind you mate, that you're on camera right now,' I said, gesturing around the ceiling with my finger. 'I think you should leave.'
He muttered something and stopped thrashing around as I got through to the police helpline. I placed the phone call, directly in front of this guy, looking him in the eye as I did so. The steam seemed to have gone out of him.
'Just go,' I said pointing over to the sliding door. He turned around, ready to go. But the doors were shut and locked. This seemed to confuse him and he flared up in anger, spinning around on the spot for a moment. He wanted to leave. I could tell. I pointed at the other door.
'Just go to that door and press the white button, mate. It'll let you out.'
He wandered over and looked confused, but still aggro.
'What fucking button?'
'Just there.'
He left. He went out, jumped the fence and started to run. Obviously he didn't want to be caught by the police.

The damage done to the register and the EFTPOS pin pad.

Once I was sure he had gone and I had finished placing my emergency phone call I turned to my crew person and started to laugh. What else can you do? The whole thing is just ridiculous. The only sane response to something like this is to see the humour in it. I chuckled.

The cops got there about twenty minutes later. I felt like ringing the emergency line back and telling them not to bother because I was dead already. I didn't. The police came and took statements and photo's. They left soon after. The whole thing has been recorded on camera of course. My boss has access to the digital footage and will pass it on to them soon enough.

But the annoying thing was that the bastard had smashed the controlling register on front counter. This register controls all the main screens on front counter and the kitchen. It also affects the network on the drive thru screens. Basically, it crippled us. We couldn't see the orders were were taking. Plus we could only take one at a time, instead of several, slowing everything down. So I rang the helpdesk and spent an hour on the phone with them while we set up another register as the controller. Finally I managed to get the store running smoothly again. I thought about closing right after the incident, but honestly I felt like it wasn't worth it. I felt as though I'd handled him and we could just move on with our night.

This kind of rage happens a lot, though. I've been at this same store for seven years now and I've seen it countless times. Mostly I find the whole thing amusing. Once I would have otter worked up at the man too and yelled or screamed at him. These days I just don't react. I've seen it all before. Nothing new. Do your bit and just fuck off. I'm not afraid you.

I have 26 shifts left at that job. I hope to god that I can change careers and get some kind of office job where I don't get covered in grease every night or abused by drunks and freaks. Sure every job has it's issues, but I really need a change of pace. The threat of violence has stopped worrying me or stressing me out. It bores me now. I think that's a sure sign that I need to find something better.

Song: "Not Dark Yet," by Bob Dylan.