Burger King (SG) MisAdventures: An early (and lucky?) glimpse into Operations Difficulties

Root causes for high staff turnover and low staff proficiency

Last updated: 12 Jan 2021

This article is part of a series that begins here.

Disclaimer: This entire article is my personal opinion, and is in no way affiliated with Burger King. I am not part of the management at Burger King (SG).

Barely 2.5 weeks into my stint at a local Burger King restaurant, I ran into the same problem that plagued a good-looking colleague who had quit just 4 days after I started working there. She had been working there for only 4 weeks, if I recall correctly.

If you run a fast food F&B outlet, you will be excited to get an up-close glimpse into the root causes of high staff turnover. Granted, this may not happen at all in higher class restaurants; the standard of service in those restaurants demand a higher class of staff. Hence, you may already guess that it is bad staff that causes high staff turnover.

Bad staff causes high staff turnover, creates a dangerous disconnect with official operations process designs, and may ultimately cripple the restaurant and even management!

Setting the Stage: The Cast

• Beautiful-And-Bullied is a very young mother of possibly Jewish descent, fair skinned and tall and beautiful. She had been working at the restaurant for only a month by the time she quit, 4 days after I started working there myself. You can also earmark this participant as The Victim. She’s an accountant (bachelor’s degree) by training. This has a clear bearing on work competence; she’s competent enough from what I observed.
• Stubborn-And-Loud is a middle-aged mother, possibly of Malay descent with a physical appearance completely opposite to that of The Victim. She has 9-year-old daughter who stays at the restaurant during the mother’s work hours there, watching shows on her phone or chatting with her friends. You should, for easy reference to follow this story, earmark this participant as The Main Cause. The rest of the cast actually follows her lead. She’s unlikely to be very academically advanced, in contrast to The Victim. I doubt this has any bearing on work incompetence, though she is indeed the source of a great many lapses in operations processes.
• Manager-Wannabe is a high school student 16 years of age, who aspires to be a part-time manager at the restaurant. She tries to get close (in non-sexual way) to Abraham (the store manager), possibly hoping to get into his good books so she can secure that managerial role. You can earmark this participant as The Aspirant, who closely imitates the rude work style exhibited by The Main Cause.
• Easily-Frustrated is a young manager (looks young to me, with less hair) who violates just about every management rule set out in this article on love and compassion. He may have a very difficult and frustrating social background that is the source of his frustrations; or he may simply be quick to anger. Contrary to Abraham’s communication style, he is much less socially skilled, and is also much slower in work style. He never checks his sources of information, often receiving wrong reports from The Main Cause. Even his own observations are misinformed. It is likely he has some difficulty in academic aspects (“sweep” pronounced as “swipe”).
• Nightly-Closer is a middle-aged man who works only 8pm to 11pm nightly, and only to aid in the cleaning-at-close. All restaurants need to be thoroughly cleaned before shutting down for the night. He is the spark to this story, possibly a nightly spark as well since this is the first time I’m not cleaning the dining area and away from the kitchen nearing closing hour, so I can witness the nightly fallout in the kitchen this night. If you’re wondering why he would start cleaning the restaurant for closing at 8pm, 2 hours from closing hour, you might already have guessed that he is a key source of operations lapse. You can earmark this participant as The Spark.
• Teenage-Bystander is also a high school student 16 years of age, like The Aspirant. She is a hard worker with a large family to support. Despite her busy work schedule, she is the most academically performant member of her family. She will likely be very successful in her career(s) after her studies. Unfortunately, for now, she follows the communication style of The Aspirant, which turns out to be “loud and overbearing”, though not stubborn like The Main Cause. The likely reason for the mimicry is the coolness factor. I hope she finds her own firm grounding soon and puts solid focus on her studies and career. She is merely a witness in this story.
• Constantly-Flustered is a middle-aged mother, possibly of Malay descent. She needs the job to finance her kids’ schooling. Mild-mannered and addressing everyone as “dear” (sayang, in Malay). She is never frustrated, even as she makes mistakes in her assembling of customer orders during peak hours. I’m not sure if she is absent-minded or simply flustered into making mistakes. Like Teenage-Bystander, she is also a mere bystander in this story.

Small Cancer, Big Fallout

The problematic cast forms just a small 5% or less of total staff strength: Stubborn-And-Loud, Easily-Frustrated, and possibly border-line including Manager-Wannabe.

A huge majority of the staff are pretty normal folks, such as a young mother who quit a F&B outlet management role to take care of her young child, several retired ladies whose now-schooling grandkids gave them too much free time, and a few foreign workers who are typically docile.

From my 2 weeks of observation, almost all lapses in operational procedures can be linked to mutual condoning between Stubborn-And-Loud and all other offenders. Perhaps Stubborn-And-Loud is a hard-wearing long-time staff that the restaurant cannot afford to lose? Burger King should know that this opinion leader is severely blunting operational process designs in execution. As much as she is to be loved for her unfortunate difficulties in life (she may have health issues), she must still be diverted from her habitual damaging rampage against operational process designs.

From cold french fries (no FIFO) to unevenly fried foods (overloaded fry baskets), and extreme quantities of wastage (barking orders wrongly and confusing kitchen staff) to extremely rude customer-facing (she’s rude to everyone, always), Stubborn-And-Loud has a whole cult of a following.

Every kitchen staff I know has been flustered by Stubborn-And-Loud, and very often over-producing massively. On some days, I see discards of over 10 breakfast burgers, or over 20 beef patties, or over 15 eggs/omelettes.

Thankfully, no one seems to be following her style of customer-facing. That may be our one saving grace in this fallout. Unfortunately, the younger (teenage) staff have learned to be rude to whichever current victim she targets.

The first of her victims (that I witnessed) is Beautiful-And-Bullied.

Innocent personality disorder?

Or intentional and targeted competitive aggression? Stubborn-And-Loud does not lash out at anyone else the way she does Beautiful-And-Bullied.

Stubborn-And-Loud starts every interaction with Beautiful-And-Bullied using a strongly accusatory tone. “Why you do this task in such a wrong way?”, is how it often starts. Her utterance is loud and brash, heard throughout the entire restaurant (not just back of house).

(Stubborn-And-Loud does the same to me at the Point-Of-Sales machine as I do cashiering, but stops short 90% of the time or more as she realizes I was doing things right. I did learn the POS within 30 minutes or so, spanning 2 days of varied tasks, as quickly as the average demographic group would. Apparently, it takes most staff at Burger King “a long time” to learn the POS.)

Interestingly, Easily-Frustrated has the same tone, but more accusatory and less informative, such as “Why you just stand there doing nothing?”. (I actually was doing nothing! It’s an interesting operations lapse I’ll explain later in this article.)

I still cannot believe that Stubborn-And-Loud’s behavior is borne out of competitive aggression. I somehow sense that she is truly unaware of what she is doing wrong.

Scolding the wallet she misplaced

Or rather, scolding the staff she misplaced for being lost. She would often send Beautiful-And-Bullied off to a wide variety of tasks (many of which Beautiful-And-Bullied may not yet be officially trained for), and then loudly and brashly shout “BAB (let’s say this is her name), where are you BAB??”. A popular media reference may help to illustrate this uncannily ironic behavior.

Imagine a man who kicks a wall, which hurts his foot. He then scolds the wall for hurting his foot, not realizing he’s the actor who acted out against the wall on his own volition. (I cannot point to the actual media reference; it may be too disparaging to do so.)

I cannot believe that Stubborn-And-Loud is so mentally clouded that she does not realize she is setting Beautiful-And-Bullied up for utter distraction and confusion, setting her up to run around constantly handling a wide variety of tasks with no completion of any. In computing terms, we call this thrashing. That said, I must not be too proud to refuse the fact that Stubborn-And-Loud may truly be too mentally clouded to the realize she’s setting Beautiful-And-Bullied up for failure at work.

Within 4 of days of my starting work there, Beautiful-And-Bullied had quit the job.

And this is where the story tonight starts. Settle down with your popcorn!

Lights! Camera! Action!

Date and time: 11 Jan 2021, 1500hrs (3pm)

The restaurant in question has CCTV footage. If Burger King management is actually interested in ensuring the integrity of operational process designs, they can use the CCTV footage to act on my reports in this article.

I reached the restaurant at 1445hrs (2:45pm), noticed that a self-ordering kiosks has run out of paper, and informed Abraham. The rest of the CCTV footage will show that I hurry from task to task at work with a lively sense of urgency. My sense of duty at work sets the stage for this story, as I will later be utterly bewildered with a barrage of contradictory instructions and clearly false accusations.

A manager who cannot read people/info

That is a manager who is ill equipped to handle a team of, well, people.

At around 1600hrs (4pm), a heavily medicated man (or drunk?) riddled with bruises on his skin (more like rashes, not like injuries) came to the counter. Abraham had assigned me primarily as a cashier from day one (for polite demeanor and good communication skill; he even cheekily printed my name tag different from the rest: “I’m JON :-) Trainee”).

The man started by reprimanding me right after I started off with “Hi! Welcome to Burger King. Having here?”. He slurred badly enough to be barely intelligble, “Your service standard is so bad. Don’t ask me whether I’m having here. Of course, I’m having here. Why is your service so bad? How they train you?”

As I continued to attempt to probe as gently as I can for his order (a medium Fanta Grape beverage), he continued his reprimand. In response to my “may I take your order please?”, he replied “Fanta Grape, are you deaf? I said Fanta Grape!”. I eventually managed to punch in his order and get his payment in cash. I handed him his receipt and said “Here’s your queue number. You may sit anywhere. We’ll call your queue number. Thank you!”. To that, he said “Don’t tell me what to do! Why must you tell me what to do!”

While my colleagues (including the young mother who was a former F&B outlet manager) tell me not to bother being angry with him because “it’s not worth it”, I was wishing I could help him out if he would just tell me how to help.

Now, here’s the kicker. Easily-Frustrated came over and said, “Don’t repeat the customer’s order. Customers want the order fast, and won’t be happy if you repeat the order.”. Before you start thinking, “So this is why Burger King keeps assembling orders wrongly! Because Burger King does not allow customers to confirm their orders!”, I must let you in on Burger King’s official process design.

All cashiers are to confirm the customer’s order with the customer if ever unsure (even for short and simple orders), rather than hazard an assumption that could be wrong. There are other very valid scenarios for confirming orders, such as for long and complex orders. I have been confirming customer’s orders with customers for more than 2 weeks, and had only gotten praise from customers for doing so. Many customers heaved a sigh of relief when they found me willing to repeat their long orders! I do repeat the orders very quickly (but clearly), being very familiar with the menu items by day 3 of work. (TODO: Link to an article describing all upgrade/upsize costs, to both educate our cashiers and inform our customers.)

On the first count, Easily-Frustrated had violated Burger King’s official operations procedure at the cashier role. Even more seriously than that, he had also demonstrated that he is incapable of correctly observing and investigating events in the restaurants. Yes, I admit that it is terribly risky to have a manager who can’t read facts correctly run the restaurant and an entire roster of staff. And I’ll stop there, no smart comebacks, because I really don’t quite know why Burger King would allow managers of such caliber to train staff or to head a roster of staff. You’ll hear no excuses from me. (shrug!)

I’m truly unsure whether Easily-Frustrated actually missed the fact that the customer was heavily medicated (or drunk). He had been talking to the customer for some 5 minutes, trying to placate the customer! Did he bear a grudge against me for putting him up to the abusive reprimand dished out by the customer? If he did, that would be very childish for an adult. I took the abuse too, and dissipated the tension dutifully as a team member at Burger King.

Again, as with my unwillingness to assume that Stubborn-And-Loud had bad intentions, I must now assume that Easily-Frustrated truly was incapable of reading people correctly, and that he was genuinely (not maliciously) mistaken in reading the customer wrong.

On hindsight, it is likely Easily-Frustrated had received erroneous reports from Stubborn-And-Loud that I am slow at cashiering. That could have led Easily-Frustrated to believe that I had been repeating customer orders for confirmation at every turn.

Quick Flashback

Just a quick flashback to give you some background as to how I became the new victim of Stubborn-And-Loud.

I started out at the Fries Bagging Station, taught by Joy, another manager. For some reason, Abraham failed to communicate my role to other managers; they kept putting me away from cashiering while Abraham kept messaging me to urge me to stay in cashiering. Anyway, Abraham himself on Day 2 also taught me about the Fries Bagging Station, particularly the FIFO procedure.

Customers First!

As an eager and fresh-faced team member of Burger King, I devoured all training material available to me. FIFO at the Fries Bagging Station was starkly obvious; I always loved the french fries at McDonald’s and I’m pretty sure they’re good because of proper FIFO. I eagerly endeavored to do FIFO at the Fries Bagging Station with strict adherence.

Unfortunately, Stubborn-And-Loud is not a fan of FIFO at the Fries Bagging Station. Granted, she’s probably too short and heavy to find it easy to frequently shuffle all older fries to the holding section to make space for new fries at the salting section. However, she should not so blatantly violate Burger King procedures for FIFO at that station.

I work fast enough to handle peak hours, and I fully understand the economics of F&B restaurants; the overwhelming majority of sales happen within an hour or 2 per day. You can check the CCTV footage to see my speed and accuracy; I’m athletic, quick of mind and naturally dextrous.

FIFO and fresh french fries can and should coexist with peak hour speed of service!

Fresh and Ready, Always

Come what may, I endeavored to serve fresh french fries to customers by doing FIFO, along with strictly following procedures to avoid over-producing french fries beyond demand. How do we avoid over-producing french fries? By cooking to order. I would look at the quantity of french fries required by all orders on screen at the moment, and cook exactly what is required. On my watch, there never was any wasted (nor unfresh) french fries.

But if I cooked to order, wouldn’t customers be waiting a long time during peak hours? Notice that I cooked to all orders on screen. A single 3-minute frying session can produce enough french fries to serve 5–10 orders; and I cook a fresh batch whenever new orders come in so there’s a continual flow of french fries to orders.

Deja Vu: Scolding the wallet she lost

So what does Stubborn-And-Loud have to say about that? “Jon, you can’t wait until the fries is zero then you cook a new batch!!” You’ll notice that I never let the french fries stock drop to zero before I cook a new batch, as mentioned in the previous paragraph. So why does she find occasion to say that?

You’ll notice that I’m primarily a cashier, so you may be wondering what I’m doing at the Fries Bagging Station or even the Frying Station (to fry french fries). I actually multi-task all over the restaurant, or at the very least between the cashier, Fries Bagging Station and Frying Station during peak hours. Stubborn-And-Loud only ever needs to stay at the Expeditor station (assembling orders). Not that I blame her for not multi-tasking, I fully understand that her health condition and lumbering gait makes her more suited to stay only at the Expeditor station. (Yes, her bark is much further than her gait, indeed!)

So when does the french fries stock zero out? When I’m handling a string of customers at the cashier. Stubborn-And-Loud claims I’m slow at the cashier. She thinks she’s fast at the cashier. Dunning-Kruger effect, perhaps? I’m always sponging up whatever better techniques are demonstrated or taught by colleagues around me.

Am I slow at the cashier? Check the CCTV. Ask the customers. I confirm orders reasonably quickly. I make recommendations briskly and politely for customers unsure of what to order. Abraham himself said “good job!” on Day 2 onwards (and whenever he hears me at the cashier). You can time me by ensuring that you never need to wait for more than 2 minutes and 45 seconds in the queue.

Of course, Stubborn-And-Loud is not managerial staff, and can argue that she doesn’t need to demonstrate people management skill. She is indeed free to make wrong assumptions about and false accusations of her colleagues. Is Beautiful-And-Bullied truly slacking off elsewhere instead of being sent off on an errand that Stubborn-And-Loud forgot soon after? Stubborn-And-Loud can be judge-and-jury to proclaim Beautiful-And-Bullied’s guilt. Am I truly taking my own sweet time at the cashier or being utterly slow and incompetent? Stubborn-And-Loud can also be judge-and-jury here, simply because we accept that non-managerial staff can be devoid of people management skill.

Licensed to demoralize staff? Not!

But Stubborn-And-Loud is absolutely not licensed to reduce the productivity of staff around her, manager or not. Even rightly accusing and reprimanding a staff on the job already drastically reduces productivity, let along wrongly accusing and reprimanding staff! She should keep her erroneous judgements to herself, never speaking them out loud, so that productivity can remain high whether or not she has people management skill.

Stubborn-And-Loud constantly orders me to the cashier station whenever customers go there. And then consistently blames me for letting the french fries stock zero out. Unfortunately for customers, this is when they get expired french fries (no longer hot and crisp) because Stubborn-And-Loud cooks a huge batch of it.

But enough picking through her faults. All of us have faults. If we only hired faultless staff, we would never be able to find anyone to hire!

We finish the flashback and get back to the action!

Duty not respected, disparaging included

At 1800hrs (6pm), I had been instructed to top up the Frying Station chiller with fries and onion rings. Not that I needed instructions to do this; I often venture off to perform such stock-ups whenever I find myself with nothing to do.

The fries and onion rings had been depleted by the day’s lunch hour. This top up is in preparation for the dinner peak period.

So there I was again, multi-tasking across the entire restaurant. Sometimes, I even cover for the dining area when the staff there fails to clear the tables quickly enough for incoming customers. Rubbish bins would be overflowing, causing an snowballing avalanche of rubbish piling up on tables, turning off and turning away potential customers looking to dine at the restaurant. Yes, again, I’m that fresh-faced eager team member trying to keep sales brisk at the restaurant.

Stubborn-And-Loud would habitually exclaim that I should just stay at the cashiering station instead of helping out in the dining area. Abraham clearly said I can help out there if I’m free; he in fact praises all attempts to encourage brisk sales, particularly by keeping the dining area clear and inviting.

Teenager-Bystander followed suit, shouting at me to come back to the cashiering station, possibly mimicking the same communication and work style demonstrated by Manager-Wannabe for the past week. (The first week of my work saw Beautiful-And-Bullied as the victim. The second week of my work saw Stubborn-And-Loud, plus her cult of a following, turn on me instead.)

Note that all of us are equipped to do cashiering. So perhaps there are too many orders to assemble and they needed my help? No, the dinner hours were surprisingly quiet. From 1800hrs to 2000hrs, it seemed like the weekday evening would end without much sales at all. So quiet, in fact, that Easily-Frustrated started instructing me to stock up here and there.

I wasn’t distracted in the dining area this night. I was stocking up at the Frying Station.

Apparently, Stubborn-And-Loud made some complaint to Easily-Frustrated, saying that I was loafing (or at least terribly inefficient) at my stations (yes, “stations”, though everyone else really only has 1 station on this night).

Crescendo of abusive shouts

From 1900hrs (7pm) to 2100hrs (9pm), the chorus of abusive shouts from Teenage-Bystander and Stubborn-And-Loud had risen in a crescendo (Manager-Wannabe is off work today). Abuse can become habitual, so managers should nip it in the bud when they spot it.

Orders started trickling in as people got off work and looked for dinner.

As usual, my handling the cashiering station meant that french fries stock at the Fries Bagging Station would occasionally zero out. Stubborn-And-Loud and her cult continued the abusive crescendo. Constantly-Flustered just did her job, ably keeping up with the trickle of orders, all the while politely asking me to help at the Frying Station and Fries Bagging Station whenever she needed my help there.

By 2000hrs (8pm), the Nightly-Closer had started work, degreasing smallwares (pans, utensils, etc).

By 2100hrs (9pm), the Nightly-Closer did something possibly unthinkable to Burger King management, something he did every single night.

This is where the real action starts, with hot dangers and high (mis)adventures. You might want to stop chewing your popcorn now, and hang on to the edge of your seats!

I promise you explosive emotions, volcanic eruptions, and more. Especially hot splashing oil, life threatening hot oil!

(Yeah, life threatening hot oil. I do have to report honestly, but am also afraid that Ministry of Manpower will come in. Anyway, it’s all captured by CCTV, and I won’t ever be able to hide the facts in any way. Boss will come in and see it, one way or another. The next time this happens, someone might actually be hurt. Report this, I must. Please don’t send your kids to work here while the offending cast is still not yet rectified. I can overlook every other offense by this cast of characters, but not the intentional use of hot oil to potentially hurt humans.)

Sorry! We close 1 hour early!

Our official closing hour is 2200hrs (10pm). Our Fries Bagging Station was shut down by the Nightly-Closer by 2100hrs (9pm) because the Nightly-Closer had already finished washing the smallwares. He was on his nightly schedule, on time, always looking to finish cleaning by 2200hrs (10pm) so he can wrap up and go off by 2300hrs (11pm) (or was it earlier? not sure).

All hell broke loose when the Nightly-Closer shut down 2 frying vats (at the Frying Station), 1 for french fries and 1 for multi-purpose frying. The time was just after 2100hrs (9pm). We were still 1 hour away from closing.

All processes looked fine at that point; we usually do shut down by 2300hrs (11pm) on weekdays. Fortunately for the restaurant’s sales, business picked up sharply right at 2100hrs (9pm). Unfortunately for the restaurant’s kitchen, the multi-purpose frying vats were at half capacity and totally inadequate for this surge in sales.

Orders came pouring in. I would expect that, since Monday nights would see many workers putting in extra hours to compensate for the weekend off hours, then look for a late dinner. I have no idea why Easily-Frustrated wasn’t anticipating this surge in sales. He’s not a new manager.

Fry Faster! Fry Everything!

There were a number of severe inefficiencies once the Fries Bagging Station and 2 frying vats were shut down.

For the Fries Bagging Station, we no longer have the use of the fries bagging scoop, so bagging fries with red tongs became laboriously slow.

For the Frying Station, a single frying vat for french fries would really have been quite fine, and indeed proved able to keep up with the surge in sales. The single frying vat for multi-purpose frying, however, was way under capacity.

Onion rings are fried at the multi-purpose frying vat not in contention with french fries, so onion rings production would also have been fine were it not for other fried products! To make matters impossible (not just worse!), onion rings had to share that frying vat with everything else: fried fish patties, fried chicken patties, fried long chicken patties, fried tendercrisp patties, mexican drumlets, chicken nuggets, fried chicken, taro turnovers and chocolate pies (same as taro but with chocolate filling).

And… I believe I have listed the full cast associated with the multi-purpose frying vat, and I listed them all out just to let myself see exactly why we had such a terrible fallout this evening from 2100hrs (9pm) to 2200hrs (10pm). Yes, it’s that many items sharing the single multi-purpose frying vat. No wonder, customers were waiting more than 20 minutes for their orders (usual is 10 minutes or less). The worst thing about this situation is the potential loss in sales.

Blame Jon! Blame him faster!

Now, I was only trained to fry french fries and onion rings. I hadn’t handled the blue tongs because french fries and onion rings come pouring out of packets directly.

Constantly-Flustered and Stubborn-And-Loud were rightly instructing me to keep frying onion rings because we were obviously running very short on onion rings. The only problem we had with french fries was that we were bagging them terribly slowly with red tongs, given that the Fries Bagging Station (with fries scoop) had already been shut down.

Curiously, Stubborn-And-Loud kept pushing me to fry more french fries as well, possibly because she wasn’t seeing any bagged french fries meeting orders quickly enough. That was clearly an error. We were frying french fries quickly enough, with the single frying vat dedicated to french fries only. She didn’t realize the bottleneck was the slow bagging with red tongs.

For several minutes, I frantically rushed between bagging french fries (with red tongs) and frying onion rings, all the while avoiding the over-production of french fries as I kept the current stock in line with demand.

But onion rings ran out. And worse, nuggets, burgers (with fried patties), chicken drumlets, fried chicken, and more were all critically short on production. So what does Stubborn-And-Loud and Easily-Frustrated do?

Stubborn-And-Loud: “What are you doing? Keep frying french fries, because the orders are coming in! Fry onion rings also!”

Easily-Frustrated: “Jon!!! What are you doing just standing by the multi-purpose frying vat! I said fry taro turnovers, right?”

I was only trained to fry onion rings at the multi-purpose frying vat. Moreover, the single multi-purpose frying vat was occupied frying other products at the moment, or at all moments by this time, rather. Mexican drumlets, burger patties, fried chicken, well, ok I think you already get the list. It’s a long list heaped on a single multi-purpose frying vat.

Ok, so we have explosive emotions. Where are the volcanic eruptions and hot splashing oil, you ask?

We’re coming to that. As you know after reading my article on love and compassion, you know that I would cover up for my colleagues if the cover-up never hurt anyone. This article so far has been written primarily for Burger King to help management improve operations efficacy and efficiency. But there is a serious turn here. (There, your plot twist. Happy now? :-))

My anger shall erupt in your face!

I don’t know how to string out the tension and suspense for this section, because I don’t feel like entertaining you (the reader) at this point. I’m gravely concerned for the well-being of Easily-Frustrated because I’m afraid he might at some point in his life hurt someone seriously and damage his life irreversibly.

I want to help him straighten out for good and for the rest of his life. I want him to lead a peaceful and prosperous life. So I hope I can somehow help him avoid hurting anyone ever. He’s a good person. A moment of folly or fury, even if it turned out murderous, still does not make a good person bad.

Remember how the kitchen often over-produces massively because they are flustered and confused by Stubborn-And-Loud? The same thing happened to me at 2145hrs (9:45pm). The constant shouting to “keep frying” spurred me on to do exactly that: keep frying.

By the time the last orders rolled off, I had fried a basket of french fries (a third of a pack) and a whole pack of onion rings (half the quantity of french fries) that aren’t going to any customers.

Easily-Frustrated pulled out the frying basket of onion rings and threw it back into the frying vat, splashing oil up and out. I was scalded, but didn’t want him to know because I felt maybe I can still cover this up for him. Constantly-Flustered (and obviously the CCTV) witnessed the explosive display.

He let out a series of curses and vulgarities, and said that he would have to pay a lot for all that wastage.

Total Wastage for the night

Final tally: a third of a pack of french fries, a pack of onion rings (half portion compared to the french fries), 10 mexican drumlets, 6 chicken nuggets, 3 taro turnovers, one single-patty beef burger, one double-patty beef burger (with 2 onion rings in it), 2 fried chicken.

The mexican drumlets and burgers cost a lot. Even the taro turnovers cost much more than french fries and onion rings. The fried chicken are obviously costly too.

So what did I over-produce exactly? French fries and onion rings.

So why wasn’t there any anger from Easily-Frustrated about the wastage of premium products (not french fries nor onion rings)? I can only conjecture that “anger and violence are easily incited to dangerous levels”. Just as kindness invites kindness, violence begets violence. He and Stubborn-And-Loud had been building their aggression towards me for 9 hours by this time, and aggression can become habitual.

Stubborn-And-Loud is a dangerous cancer at the workplace at the Burger King restaurant situated in Waterway Point, Punggol, Singapore. With her issues unresolved, that restaurant will always be retaining non-ideal staff while losing more-ideal staff. Out with the good, in with the bad.

Aftermath: A post-mortem

Easily-Frustrated should have simply reopened the second multi-purpose frying vat, at least.

Sales is highest priority. So what if we all had to go home a little later because we had to re-clean the frying vats, or even the Fries Bagging Station as well?

What is the message we want to send to our customers? That we expect the customers not to come visit Burger King after 2100hrs (9pm) if they want to avoid a long queue and long wait? Do we really want to tell customers that our effective closing hour is 2100hrs (9pm), 1 hour earlier than our official closing hour at 2200hrs (10pm)?

Should I send my kids to train at Burger King?

If you have always been hesitant about letting your teenage child train work and social skills at Burger King restaurants, I would now readily agree with your preconception that fast food outlets attract the worst colleagues from the most difficult socioeconomic backgrounds.

My answer: not now, not yet.

That said, I still urge you to let your child train at Burger King restaurants, but with a caveat: first thoroughly explain unconditional love and compassion to your child, to equip your child with unwavering patience and empathetic tolerance.

Just not right now. Not until Burger King completely ensures that all managerial staff can completely handle their own emotions as well as workplace safety.

Burger King restaurants are still a great place to learn love and compassion. Working amongst abusive colleagues who themselves suffer from abusive backgrounds is a humbling human experience.