There are several reasons you may choose to work at Hungry Jack’s, though apparently “I take pride in my employment” is unlikely to be among them. The most likely reason is likely to be because you’re 15-18 years old and it’s a way to earn some cash. The downside of this is that many Hungry Jack’s experiences typically leave the customer wondering how some employees able to tie their own shoelaces without choking to death on their saliva. Today’s experience at the Campbellfield store was even more disturbing than normal.
A man and two young sons sat down at a table near us. One of the boys, about 5 years old, reached for his drink and promptly knocked it onto the floor so a large puddle of Coke was created. To the child’s credit, he immediately apologised to his father and the father told the boy to alert the staff so they could mop it up. Dutifully, the lad fronted up to the counter and told them he’d spilled his drink on the floor to which the female staff member rolled her eyes dramatically at him then called out to a nearby male staff member that a cleanup was required. That male staff member was, regrettably, too busy joking with his coworkers to do anything so he further delegated the task to an employee out in the dining area.
Who didn’t do anything…
Five minutes later, the puddle was spreading (the floor is uneven) and beginning to flow across the walking path so the father went to the counter and reminded them that they needed to come and clean up. The manager of the store was working nearby, filling drive-through orders because of the eight staff we could see, four of them were goofing around in the children’s birthday party room, two were chatting, one girl was absently staring into space whilst attending the till with no customers and the eighth was the only one staff member doing work, cooking out the back. The manager, though evidently unable to get the staff to work and fill orders, told the nearest chatter to go get a mop and clean it up.
The chatter went over to the birthday room where one staff was using a broom. As he attempted to enter the birthday room, three of the staff blocked his access by pushing against the door to prevent his entry. Undeterred, he walked through the restaurant, out into the play area and around to the other door but by the time he got there, the three staff had rushed to that door and again blocked him access. Unable to get to the broom nor convey the need to cleanup, he laughed and then walked back behind the counter to continue his chatting.
After twelve minutes the puddle had spread and was now about to flow under our booth but we were so captivated by the dire levels of cleaning that we had to stay to see how it ended. The goofing around eventually finished in the party room and one of the staff went wandering through the restaurant aimlessly. We were unable to determine what his intent was since he was walking past tables littered with empty wrappers from previous customers, so can only suppose he was avoiding walking behind the counter because that may subsequently being required to perform some duties in exchange for his payment. Suddenly he stumbled on what was now a 2-metre by 0.6-metre puddle of Coke and stopped dead. He stared in amazement at it for a full eight or nine seconds, as though he had inadvertently discovered a deceased tutu-wearing walrus before turning to us, wide-eyed and breathlessly uttered:
Employee: Whoa! I’m going on my break…
Di caustically pointed out to him that this spill should not be so surprising because they’d been told about it twice but that going on break seemed to be the appropriate response for a Hungry Jack’s staff member. Broken from his reverie, he wandered off to the back of the store where the “Great 2007 Hungry Jack’s Hunt For The Mop” commenced. The store was soon filled with the calls of employees to one another:
Employee 1: “Where’s the mop?”
Employee 2: “Dunno. Hey guys, where’s the mop?”
Employee 3: “Dunno.”
Employee 4: “The what?”
Employee 2: “Mop.”
Employee 4: “Oh. Dunno.”
Three minutes later, one of them eventually found the mop and brought it out into the dining area where he promptly leaned it against the nearest bin and started to clean up the serving trays he found where previous customers had left them. After a minute of doing rather unrequired cleanup he eventually wandered over to the puddle with, not the mop that was such a focus of the hunt, but a soft floor broom instead.
Much of the time we’d been there, one of the goofing-around employees had simultaneously been using the broom to sweep the restaurant in what could best be described as a haphazard fashion (but at least it was more work activity than several other employees were contributing). This broom was now placed into the puddle of Coke and the entire puddle swept with great vigour until an area 2.5-metres by 2-metres was covered in sticky syrup. Additionally, the broom was now soaked with Coke so it was useless for sweeping anywhere else in the restaurant until cleaned. As he swept, we watched - along with the original family and four other patrons who had since come into the restaurant - in fascinated horror at the stupidity of increasing the affected area. One of the other customers commented that it was probably his age that made him use the broom - as a male teenager he’d probably never done any cleaning up at home so didn’t know what to use.
After placing a “wet floor” sign to one side of the mess (it only took fifteen minutes to warn customers of the risk) he then wandered back to the mop, forced to walk through the large slick he’d created and teetered twice, his shoes losing traction on the slippery mess. Having created a series of wet footprints across the restaurant since he’d left the mop several metres from the original puddle he then commenced mopping the entire floor - starting in the area well away from the puddle.
Another family entered the restaurant at this time and the children immediately made for the playground door. Seeing the staff member mopping on the south side of the restaurant they raced to the north side, only to find a dirty Coke-slick spread in all directions. Since he was unable to perform two tasks simultaneously, we allowed the staff member to continue mopping and we warned the new customers to take care when walking because it was slippery. Tentatively the children and their grandmother progressed through the slick, with the grandmother slightly sliding as she walked until she got to the nearest table out of the slick and sat down.
Finally, the staff member came over and began mopping the floor where the puddle was. However, he didn’t plunge the mop into the bucket of water he’d brought out with him so he was essentially just pushing it around the floor, albeit diluting the mess more effectively than the broom had.
The puddle finally removed converted from a medium brown puddle into a large transparent puddle, we left the store only to find the employee who had spent all the time sweeping the rubbish in the store had conveniently swept it into a large pile of refuse at the front of the store so the first and last experience for patrons was a large unattended pile of rubbish on the floor between the door and the ordering counter. Obviously all the other employees were too busy avoiding work to then scoop it up and put it in the bin.
So who do we award the Stupid Person Of The Day (SPOTD) award to? There was no way to single out an individual in this saga so it’s a group award today, dedicated to the entire cretinous and apathetic staff at Hungry Jack’s, Campbellfield. The blurb surrounding employment at Hungry Jack’s states:
For many people, working at Hungry Jack’s ® is their first employment experience and they are given world class training.
All I want to know is: Which world are they talking about? It’s certainly not mine…
Categories: SPOTD
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designer did not include a HTML version for users who don’t have the latest Flash plugin is beyond me. Accessibility is obviously not an issue Hungry Jack’s… All I get is a black page with the blunt message to “Get Flash”.
