Isabel Bustos/ The Cougar
It’s a Sunday morning at the restaurant where you host, and by 11 a.m., the after-church crowd is flooding in. By now, your only mission is to survive. You’re being yelled at by a man who swears his family has been waiting over an hour, even though the computer says 20 minutes.
You look over at the to-go server: 10 orders on their screen, the phone ringing nonstop and two DoorDash drivers are shoving their phones at their faces for an order placed three minutes ago.
You then look at the server you just triple-sat, who hasn’t greeted a table, while others demand refills and complain their eggs aren’t runny enough. The manager is no help and even blames you for being on a wait. Rinse, repeat and do it again the next day.
These types of shifts are common in the service industry. While many benefit from food service labor, few appreciate it. If more people experienced a restaurant job firsthand, it could build empathy and make restaurant jobs more enjoyable for everyone.
The reality of restaurant jobs today
In a survey of 4,700 people who currently work or in the past have worked in a food service job, 60% reported having been verbally abused by a customer. The abuse is so common that online, the name “Karen” and, less commonly, “Ken” have been used to refer to these verbally abusive customers.
As of April 2025, an estimated 12.5 million people in the U.S. work in food service jobs, such as restaurants, fast food places or bars. 60% of those employed are under 35. Additionally, in 2002, one in eight people had been employed by McDonald’s. Despite these numbers, many customers are unaware of what goes on behind the scenes in a restaurant.
They don’t know what it means when a menu item is “86” or the stress of getting an order out in under three minutes. While a person doesn’t need to experience a stressful situation to be sympathetic to others, often that’s what it takes to be kinder to restaurant employees.
Why working in a restaurant matters
Before I worked in the food industry, I was annoyed by restaurant and fast-food employees. I would never say anything to them, of course, but there was still some ignorant irritation.
Once I started working in the food industry, my annoyance turned to empathy whenever something went wrong because I finally understood how everything worked.
Growing up, my family always went to the same McDonald’s. Being the only fast-food place for miles along a busy stretch of highway, it frequently got swamped with customers. Once, my dad complained about how long the food was taking and was rude to the cashier. At the time, I thought it was reasonable. I mean, how hard could working at McDonald’s be?
Then I turned 16 and got hired at that same McDonald’s. Despite being a popular location, it often ran on a skeleton crew, especially at night: one manager, one cook and one cashier. As one-third of the crew, I took orders, made drinks, dropped fries, packed food and stocked supplies, all while racing a three-minute timer.
With that many responsibilities, mistakes are bound to happen. Yet most of the time I was yelled at, it wasn’t for a mistake, but for customers’ lack of understanding of how the system works.
One moment that always sticks with me is when a man yelled at me because the person behind him got their food first. Never mind that he ordered five combos, several made to order, while the other customer ordered a 10-piece nugget meal. No, I clearly delayed his order on purpose to starve his family.
I don’t know what kind of life that man lived, but I’d bet he had never worked in a restaurant. If he had, how differently would that interaction have gone?
Nothing can replace experience
No matter how much you preach about treating servers kindly, the only way to see behavior change is to have people experience the job firsthand. It’s a lot like learning to drive. You can read all the textbooks you want, but until you sit behind the wheel, you don’t know what driving is truly like.
Customers see restaurant workers as machines who do a job, not as people with emotions. Until empathy becomes common in restaurants, it may take putting people behind the counter to show them just how “easy” the job they take for granted really is.
opinion@thedailycougar.com
