Why You Should Never Be Mean to People at a Restaurant
When I was in high school I worked at a place called Chuck E’ Cheese. For kids it’s a wonderland of never-ending fun that is of course if the people you came with don’t mind spending money the entire time. It’s a very well known place for small children to have their birthday parties.
The average age of the people working there that weren’t managers was about 17 or so. They take turns wearing heavy, sweat inducing animal costumes as the one above. Usually, the kids can be pretty bad but the teens don't mind. For the most part everyone totally watched out for one another not including management, as they’d get rid of people for the smallest stuff. One kid got fired for eating a brown that cost about a dollar. They said he was stealing from the company, it wouldn’t be tolerated and he was out the door.
A friend of mine told me that the pay was terrible but said he would tell me how people were offsetting the difference another way. He’d taken me into a room full of tokens as you can use cash but there is a small discount when people trade cash for tokens. Oddly enough in this token room they had no cameras and a lack of accountability. We’d sell tokens just the same as drug dealers so in a way we were acting on the behalf of Robin Hood and his merry men.
That was just to give you an idea of the atmosphere now to the real story. I worked with a young lady there who was always a ray of sunshine and friendly to everyone. One day a couple came in and treated her as though she were subhuman. The guys in the kitchen told me after the fact what they’d done and everyone was glad they did.
The guys in the kitchen offered the couple (absolute jerks) an additional pizza but they placed an additional topping on it as well. They found a cousin of Mickey from Orlando (see photo below) and made him/her into a topping for their “sorry for the inconvenience” pizza.
I hadn’t really given it much thought prior to working there but after having done so I knew that if I had a problem at a restaurant not to be an ass or Mickey could end up on my plate.