Out to Eat

The activity I decided upon was to watch people who come and go from a fast food restaurant. I haven’t decided which to do, to sit in the dining room and watch the guests go to and from the counter, or to stay up near the front and see how the staff of the restaurant handle people. The fast food place I am choosing is Fazoli’s, where I am employed, but because I am not very well known by the guests that come in during times that I do not work, I think that this will turn out well. This certain chain of restaurants has held a certain goal since it began, and it’s all over any of the training books. “To become America’s favorite family Italian restaurant,” which was drilled into all of the trainee’s heads on their first day. Initially, I wanted to do an observation of a new associate, on their first day of either cooking or learning to do cash. I asked the boss, (who most of the associates refer to as “Boss man”) and he said that there weren’t going to be any new hires for quite a while still. What a bummer, because writing about that would have been a lot more interesting for me, it’s been a while since I was in that position. The intimidation and the fear that leaks from the newly appointed cashiers is amazing. Since I can’t do that, I have to decide on the two I listed before.

Honestly, knowing who the audience is and isn’t is a little hard to consider. Wondering who and who has not worked in food service before isn’t something that I like to do. The best way to go about that, is to assume that no one reading this has worked in this field. Fazoli’s is different than all other fast food restaurants in the sense that the employees are to be more than considerate to the guests. The people that come into any store aren’t considered “customers” either, they’re guests. Guests differ than customers, the training videos also repeated that over and over. Fazoli’s is also healthy compared to most places, and the nutrition menu is aptly available to any guest that wants it, and it’s also on their website. Often enough, people outside don’t read the menu and ask if Fazoli’s has French fries. There are no fryers of any sort in Fazoli’s, and there are actually banners hanging all over the dining room area that say “Baked or Boiled, not Fried.”

I do, admittedly, already know a lot about this. That’s why I want to be an onlooker and not a participant this time. There are times when the employees are laughing so loud that they can be heard throughout the whole store, and then there are times when something goes wrong and the guests get mad and do rash things and throw soup at the employees, (I heard that, I didn’t see it.) and then there are tears, fights, and everything in between. The “Boss Man” said that the associates can’t take things personally when the guests are mean, and sometimes it’s easily ignorable, but other times it’s not.