being a manager sucks balls half the time but the cashier kids im in charge of trust me enough to dick around in front of me so ive been keeping a running list of the shit they say that makes me laugh randomly: -"guys, is it cheating if you play fortnite with your ex" [4 seperate others, immediately]: "YES" -"there must be like… infinite sentences" -"bro what bro what the fuck bro what's that mean bro why'd you say that bro what" <distraught response to a girl randomly greeting him with 'hey there big boy' in an old timey transatlantic news reporter accent
[a ticket reads that a customer wants their burger cut in half]
-"What the hell why are they so picky??? That's like for kids. That's like something my DAD would-- wait i don't have a dad-- that's like something my MOM would do"
-"BRO WHY ARE YOU CUSSING ME OUT IN SPANISH???" for some reason shouted so loudly that customers still in line all start laughing
-i open the restaurant and notice the kitchen is still kind of dirty and try to glean who closed last night, and i overhear two of the boys talking about yesterdaay
me: "so, you helped in the kitchen last night?"
IMMEDIATELY: "IT WASNT ME I JUST DID THE FRYERS LAST NIGHT"
me: "I DIDNT EVEN SAY ANYTHING YET"
i accidentally tripped over a gas line while trying to clean behind the stove and made a loud fear noise and the kid helping me clean the kitchen goes "dude your screams scare me. They remind me of when i accidentally step on my dog's tail"
the Real Adult in charge went to go give someone a break in another store and I'm chilling in ours for a bit and 5 mins one of the girls rushes up to me like "DID YOU KNOW WE HAVE AN ATTIC?"
I did. I have never seen the attic so I go check it out and there's already like three of them up there
me: the fuck are you guys doing???
clerk: they wanna do the grimace challenge up there
one of them has never heard of vampires
update about this one because another coworker wouldnt let it go: he insists he's Heard of them but thought they were, quote, "like, really big bats"
Clerk 1: dude don't mix that isn't it like toxic? What are the chemicals you're not supposed to mix--
me: WHAT'S IN THE SINK.
Clerk 2: We're trying to clean the sink
me: Which cleaners did you MIX
Clerk 3: All of it
me: DRAIN IT.
[one brief emergency explanation about never mixing cleaners and what mustard gas is]
Clerk 1: oh yeah didn't they use that during like world war two
Me: yeah man it's like, a war crime now. It's just such a horrible way to die that we can't use it anymore
Clerk 2: wait fr???
Clerk 3: ohh. What about opium?
Me: ...what?
Clerk 3: like the opium war.
Me:
[one brief emergency explanation about what the opium war was later]
Explained to the two boys helping me in the kitchen why we submerge our lettuce at night to help it keep. They proceed to have a conversation where one is absolutely messing with the other by trying to convince him that both lettuce and reptiles are living things that need to be soaked to survive, and are therefore related. he speaks with so much conviction and just keeps doubling down and the other one just gets increasingly angrier and I'm just trying not to crack up over the fryers
and then the exasperated kid whirls around at me and goes "IS LETTUCE REPTILES???" and I lose my fucking mind
I run this place with one other person who i Do Not Like and the kids are well aware of our stupid restaurant manager beef and love to gossip
They keep moving shit to inconvenient locations and I hate it and keep having to move shit back, then once on my day off they decided to call in help and move my Entire Fucking Kitchen around and I was real fucking pressed about it for like the rest of the week (put off opening the next morning to move all the big ass machines and fryers back my damned self to establish territory or whatever)
A week later one of the really sweet girls who helps me in the kitchen goes "hey I have a confession. me and (other kid) were there while they were moving your kitchen and we knew you'd hate it. I was going to say something"
"Oh no worries, it's not really your responsibility to go between us like that"
"no no, I was going to tell her to at least ask you about it first but then I was like 'hmmm....let's see how this plays out'. for the drama."
"...ok I guess I should probably be mad but that's actually really fucking funny"
today i turned around and saw this
reminds me of working at culvers im gonna be fr. heres a story from hell for you.
management had a policy where we were not allowed to dry our dish towels in the on unit dryer for any reason because what if fires. the only thing we were allowed to dry were the aprons.
one night in late august ive just clocked in for my closing shift. im 16, a dual enrolled college student, i slept like actual dog shit the night before, and i know i have at least 10 hrs ahead of me so i am less than pleased.
the second i walk in, all hell has broken loose. the washing machine isnt draining. like at all. its full of filthy bleach water from the last load of dish towels and they are all SOPPING wet, but i am not allowed to put them in the dryer.
in a moment of OSHA violating split second ingenuity, a friend of mine and i manage to rig up drying lines in the back room in between the metal shelves with extension cords and start hanging dish towels on them.
it gets worse. just for the record.
we decide we simply wont wash more towels tonight and will start using paper towels when we run out of towels. we do not get this luxury.
you see, when you pile wet towels on top of each other for months on end and never take out the ones on the bottom to dry, they get... interesting. i say this to say that mushrooms had grown on the remaining dishtowels.
at this point i have only been here for two hours, i have been scooping filthy water out of the washing machine into a custard bucket with a kids size soda cup, and i have just found mushrooms. all over the towels. not food grade mushrooms. fungi. infestation. in. the. towels.
i start throwing away towels and once again enlist my friend who i will call N here to put the salvageable ones into the wash immediately, double the bleach. N is fucking amazing and does so but now i have even more towels i need to put out to dry and the others are very not dry yet because they came out of a drum of gross water.
N starts rolling out the carts we use to transport large food trays around the kitchens and we start hanging towels off the edges of THOSE. im a front of house member but at this point someone has taken over my register because im the only one with a strong enough stomach to grapple with shroommaggedon.
i hand wash several to get remaining slimy shroomy bits off them, and then hand the final batch off to N for washing.
the back room is a fucking wreck. the floors are sopping and the water is all pooling towards the drains on the ground, a trash bag has managed to burst because of the sheer weight of sopping wet towels being thrown in, and now in the midst of all of this i am told someone needs to clock out early because they are sick.
great.
i am soaked in water so i just put on the least dirty apron i can find in the back and come out to help front of house once again. i enlist another friend, D, who is on friers to fill up the garbage can that has suffered explosive raw meat damage to fill it with soapy water and tell him i will handle it from there. the second its full i manage to wrangle it outside to the giant grate out back and dump it out over it.
the ice machine has now stopped working. it is 9 PM. we have 2 hours until we close. D and i start shoveling out the ice machine so our manager can get into it to try and fix it and now we are dumping trash cans of ice down the grate out back. D is a full foot taller than me and decides to fill the entire back of house trash trolley with ice so we can get it all out in one go. we manage that around 10, and now drivethru is the only thing left open.
the final hour goes... surprisingly smooth, considering the day thus far, and i only get fish batter in my hair in the last 30 minutes as im doing dishes for closing.
and THAT was my worst day working at culvers.
