Just wanted to share an experience I had on my first day at a Sonic drive-in.
I show up for training and get shuffled to the back of the restaurant to watch training videos on a computer that looks like it’s been there since 1999.
As I’m watching the videos, also probably from the 1990s, and I notice several little roaches darting across the floor, which made me uneasy, but I took note of it and finished the videos.
The manager then tried to show me how to make the shakes and blasts. When I asked her about the roaches she said, “yeah we got some critters” and left it at that. Immediately after she said that, another roach crawled across the tops of the topping containers with m&ms, Oreos, cherries, etc…some of them were open and the roach just went on it!
At this point I paused to evaluate this situation. My hand was on the top of the fountain drink machine because I was in the middle of making a slushie, and a roach ran up my arm. I screamed and flinged it across the kitchen, landing on the manager who did not even flinch about the roach, but screamed at me for acting like a “little girl” (I am female).
I walked out of the building and the manager followed after me yelling about how unprofessional and lazy I was and that this is why I didn’t deserve to wear pants!
This, of course, struck me and I needed an explanation for that last statement. “What?”
The manager reminded me about a policy she had that I was never told about. She said only managers get the privilege of wearing pants at Sonic, and that I would never earn that privilege with my attitude and poor work ethic. Looking around now I realize everyone is wearing shorts including myself but I didn’t realize this was mandatory.
I simply left.