Friendly advice to customers visiting fast food shops to not use condiments, napkins, or straws if possible from the dining room.
As a former fast food worker of three years, customers will try to “help” and replace any of these unused items back into these spots even though they just had an entire dinner with these things on their table. Also, some employees will just put them back themselves if unused.
And if you’re a customer who does try to replace these items, please stop. We understand you’re trying to be helpful, but if you have already handled it either throw it away or keep it. We don’t care about waste. And if your manager throws a fit over employees throwing these stuff away, then call the health inspector.
Most customers expect these items to be new and untouched and all customers have a right to clean untouched items.
And either bring your own disinfectant wipes to wipe down your table or do not dine in. Again, as a former fast food worker, employees DO NOT clean these areas properly! They use the exact same rag and sanitizer water for hours and only make sure crumbs are wiped off. These tables are NOT clean and probably haven’t been ‘cleaned’ for days, weeks, months. High chairs and booster seat are not clean and have probably never been clean! This goes double for the trays, they have probably never seen a dishwasher in their life, and I can fully attest for that.
And for the love of God, NEVER use any of the bottled condiments at your table. They are not clean at all and have been wiped down with the same dirty rag used for the tables and chairs. Not to mention all of the previous hands that have touched them.
And please, do not blame regular employees for this. They are not being lazy. Managers don’t let employees do these extra things for the sole purpose of ‘wasted’ time and will throw a fit is an employee tries to go the extra mile for customers because they’d rather make the manager’s job easier in the kitchen. Managers only care about the appearance and illusion of the store being clean. They do not always care about it actually being clean.
