I Get No Respect

Everyone warned me that working at McDonald's was a high stress job. But it couldn't be helped. Christmas was coming and coming fast. I laughed at the suggestion that McDonald's was high stress and I was like, "RIGHT!" I pray one of these days I will learn to shut my big mouth, open my mind, and learn to trust what others say. I have multiple physical and mental illnesses and stress is a big problem for me. Surely, I thought, I could handle the stress from this low paying job. I assumed low pay, no stress, high pay, vacations. After about two weeks while working there the stress started to slowly rear it's ugly head but I was determined to not let it get to me. It was MCDONALDS for God's sake causing my bipolar to slowly and yet determine to scratch and claw its way to the surface. Then when I fell into exhaustion and stress would take over my body and soul. I was getting so tired of this. Work a while, spend weeks in the psych ward fighting over coloring books, then unemployment once again. I would sleep all day for days on end because dealing with another failure was too much to deal with at first. About a week later I would get out of bed, so I could see the psychiatrist. God Bless her she has never given up on me. She would build me back up and this time she felt like I needed to go ask for my job back at Mickey D's. What the hell was she thinking? But I trusted her completely. She had never stirred me wrong before and I had been seeing her for many years.

My family begged me not to try working again but I felt like I had everything under control. I thought since I spent half my life in a manic state I would fit right in. You have to be fast to work in a fast food establishment, be a to do 10 things a once, have an excellent memory, and most of all patience.In my mania I could do all that and so much more. And people give me no respect.

I thought since I spent half of my life in a manic state I would fit right in with the zealous teenagers employed there. NOT! In my manic excitement they moved at a snails pace, I handed out numerous wrong orders from the drive through window with a smile and responded, "Thank you.Come back." One, two, three and the brake lights come on and this in turn causes a situation to develop when instead of coming in to the store to complain to the manager and scoring all sorts of free food for any inconvenience I caused, the customer backs their ass up almost hitting the poor soul who thought it was their turn. Damn, I think to myself. "Please someone just go a head and get the torture over with. Fire me already. " However, I continue in my plight to force a smile, fight back the tears, and ignore the disrespecting customers who receive their damn order right. They have no idea how grateful they should be if they actually get what they ordered. I get no respect.

The line slowly continues on," Hello, how are you?" I ask.

The look straight a head with a evil look upon their face. I think to myself, "Ok, you must be having a bad day. I know how that feels.

"Here is your order, sir. Would you like any salt or ketchup to go with your fries?" An eerie silence ensues. I stand there looking like an idiot once again. I'm beginning to develop yet another complex. His hand shoots straight out to the side and tries to yank the bag out of my hand and I hang onto it , shamefully, making him tug once, and then again, and finally I let him have it. The bag ripped and food went everywhere. As immature as it was it still was funny as hell. When my coworker asked why I did it and I explained, "The guy was a shithead and needed to be reminded ever so often. Plus I was hurt, physically and emotionally. I mean how damn hard is it to say hi I wonder? My feet throbbed and my back was breaking from bending over so far to hand people their food because they pulled too far away from the window as if they were scared they were going to scratch their 1970 pinto. And there are just some people you cannot please. You can hear them huffing and puffing,"Forget it! I swear I am never coming back to this place! This bun has seeds on it! I just can't eat it that way."

Suddenly squealing tires are heard and for some odd reason the manager peers in my direction about the time I semi shout, "Good, go to Burger King! They make it your way." Oops, did I say that out loud? I did not make the sandwich nor did I take the order yet I must endure the abuse doled out. I work hard but I get know respect. Part of me wonders if this may be some kind of initiation ritual.

"Ya, let's put the new, old woman on the window. She looks unstable as hell. I bet twenty dollars she will run out during lunch today crying for her momma." Someone came closed to winning their money too.

Now get this. Yes, my job is to simply make the drinks and present the food to our wonderful paying customers who are always right. Man, I cannot count how many people have ripped McDonald's off because of that when all hell is breaking loose. The manager shouts at us, with no respect, "You are over 400 second. Holy shit do you have both thumbs up your assess? Just give them whatever the hell they want and get the line moving!"

"Yes, sir!" I say, What am I really thinking? "You can bite my big, fat ass you short, little, shit. It would have been nice if you had told me that during training. Oh yes, what training?

Back to my job, which was to work the AUTOMATED drink machine, a very sophisticated piece of equipment, and then hand the customers their food and drink. Sounds simple enough doesn't it? Yeah, that is what I thought too. This machine spits out drinks for about ten orders at a time. I however can only see five orders on the computer screen at a time, only have room for three orders at a time at my station, and as far as I am concerned really do not care about car number five thousand 's drink order because I can only hand out one damn drink at a time. All the while I am suppose to be keeping up with this crack head machine by slapping caps on the cups and removing them so it can continue to make what has been ordered. If I stop to hand out food and drinks, which during a rush I pray the person making the orders has put them in the right sequence because the drink machine seems to spit the fuckers out at random. When you get behind during the lunch rush, and you will, and you have neglected to take the prepared drinks out of the machine, because you haven't had time, an extremely loud, piercing and shrill alarm goes off, people start screaming, "Turn it off!" Oh why didn't I think of that. Or the boss man yells, "Hit the kill switch,'. Oh you mean the switch you showed me in training. Why didn't I think of that? There are so many drinks on my station that there is room for nothing else. Some of the food is ready to be handed out and now you just have to figure out which drink out of the fifteen in front of you goes with the correct bag of food. Just when you think you have things under control the drink machine goes off again. My station is full of drinks and Stan, the janitor, swaggered by with his headphones on and mop in hand, and you could probably guess what happened next. Yes, he knocked about half onto the floor. In my panic-stricken state I cannot find the button that the manager keeps screaming about, and I'm ready to cry. I get no respect.