As a food service worker this is actually the number one worst aspect of my job… as in, it is worse than getting paid just slightly above minimum wage, for me. If I was getting paid more, I would still have wrecked mental health. I dislike it when people act like the one and only reason fast food people seem miserable is because of how much money we make.
I search 'emotional labor' on reddit or google and the majority of the results are about romantic relationship.. please come the fuck on.
And the thing that makes this part of the job so challenging is that we have to perform happiness for such an inconceivably fucking huge volume of people literally non-stop. Like Jesus fucking Christ.
Sometimes the way fast food is always getting hundreds of thousands of customers every day pisses me the fuck off… Obviously that amount of people is gonna lead to burn out among workers. I don't buy the bullshit excuse that everyone in America is constantly on the go and too busy to feed themselves. No, a lot of us are just addicted as fuck to consuming.
Seeing the line when I look out out the window just kills me inside. There's never not a damn line.
And oh my god, it takes SO much effort for me to pretend like this is fine. It's really hard to act. I've always disliked customer service because it feels very fake to me. I'm not even slightly being myself in customer service. I do tell employers that I prefer to do.. you know, non customer facing tasks. And I am currently taking a little break. I just wanted to get this off my chest.