A Childish Job

Is working in the food and beverage industry bad? I didn’t think so until my latest job where I was working as a line cook at Buffalo Wild Wings.

I started at Buffalo Wild Wings on March 1, 2021, just a couple weeks before my 19th birthday. It was the perfect job until a month into the job I got hit by a drunk driver.

I was out of work for about 7 months when I was recovering from having 2 torn ligaments in my foot and bulging discs in my spine. I had to go to many doctors appointments as well as go in for x-rays, MRI’s, physical therapy and chiro. My time out of work was great. I was able to sue the other driver and I had gotten money from the lawsuit. But then it hit me. My relationship was starting to fall apart. We were arguing almost every day and night. I was cleaning the house the best I could while taking care of my dogs as well as trying to figure out if I was going to go back to college. I decided not to go back to college and I decided to quit my second job as well.

When I decided that enough was enough, I wanted to go back to working, because I had changed drasticallly. I told the doctors that I felt fine and I was walking just fine with no pain. So, I went back to work.

I go back and there is a whole new crew. I was thinking to myself, if this happened while I was out, what else had changed? I go back in the kitchen, they have too many people working back there to the point where everyone was stepping all over each other and started to argue with each other. That‘s when I knew that I was in for a rude awakening.

I was very versatile. I was able to work every and all stations with no help. I had nothing on my screen and the guy on grill but drowning. “Do you need help?” I asked. He said, “No, I don’t need your help. I’m fine.” But with a little bit of an attitude. So i go back over to my station and I’m just waiting for food to pop up on my screen. Nothing pops up for a good 10-15 minutes. The manager comes back and asks if I can go over to help him since I had nothing to do and he was drowning. I walk over there politely and I said, “Where are you at in the lineup?’ He comes screaming at me and comes up to my face and yells in my face, “Don’t be coming over herewith an attitude”. Me being me and not going to take shit from anyone, I go back in his face and say, “You are going to talk to me like that. Talk to me like that one more time and I promise I will get you fired from this place.” Who, in their right mind, would walk up to a 19 year old and say something like that? Be the more responsible adult and say to yourself, I’m almost twice her age, don’t say that, be the bigger person. That’s what I would’ve done. Meanwhile, the manager was on the line and did nothing about this. The immature worker was transferred to another store a couple weeks later.

Fast forward about a month or a month and a half, we were notified that corporate was coming in within the week. Now, when I started in March, we didn’t have any health hazards. But, after I came back from LOA, there were so many health hazards as well as physical hazards. In the salad drawer, there was black mold growing on the inside of the drawer, people weren’t doing FIFO or changing the food to new, clean containers, chicken wings on the floor in the wing cooler for months, nothing was kept up to the right temperatures, the fryers haven’t been cleaning for a couple of days unless my coworker or I cleaned them, mold on the cheese in the fridge, and the sauce pumps aren’t cleaned between refilling them. I could go on and on. Management was notified about all of these problems but never did anything about it.

Let’s talk about management. They played favorites, gave certain people more problems than others, don’t let you take a break when you need it, some people got paid more than others for doing the same jobs, some people were written up for stupid reasons like having an attitude at someone else. I had called corporate about all of these problems and all the region manager had to say was that’s not really something to worry about.

That’s why I quit.