06: Fast Food Take Aways

Patrick questions whether a fast food stint can be as good a food career education as any other beginner role?

“Footlong or six inch? Toasted? With cheese? Would you like lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber on that? Onions, peppers? Gherkins, jalapeños, olives? What sauce would you like?” As you watch me, I hinge-cut the fluffy bread - baked that morning now rested and room temperature - which falls dutifully at such an angle to ensure the ideal level of stacking each side. When I began a few years ago I mutilated many ‘six inches’ (half a footlong sub) to learn this ‘hinge’ cut perfectly; it’s a particular angle with which the knife is inserted to ensure the sub lays flat and even on the board. With a pile of cold, pre-sliced meat in one hand, I use my other hand to fold slices of ham in half, back over itself, and position - as per my rigorous training in formulas and processes - uniformly six a-breast along the side of the sub furthest from me, repeating the same with turkey; ribbons of blush pink slices peaking under pale white ones. The processed cheese arrives to the store in triangular slices, and I grab four from the glass-topped chilled counter, knowing to line them up one flipped the opposite way to the other, making pairs of triangles into square shapes, then laid on top of the meat so when the toaster oven heats and melts they cover almost the entirety of the filling, edge-to-edge, cheese tasted in each bite. This is important.

I cried earlier today. Loading the red onions - never brown/white ones - which I dutifully de-jacketed, into the large metal slicer hand-cranked via a wheel attachment to get uniform slices to the millimetre, the spicy sulphuric oxide compound that’s launched into the atmosphere when onions are cut irritated my eyes - watery, pink, stingy and sore - every time I prep them. It happens every day, because we slice them fresh each morning, and sometimes again in the afternoon if we run out –– in this job you have to know how long and how far a cambro plastic gastro tub of prepped ingredients will last. Ditto tomatoes, green peppers and cucumbers. I remember things like this, now, as I’m face to face with the customer, me to one side of the sneeze guard glass top and them to the other, as I elegantly tousle a small handful of the raw red onions I prepped evenly in a line atop the chopped lettuce and six rounds of ruby red tomato and six slices of cucumber. Six  each, no more, no fewer. I’m working exclusively to the opposite side of the sub to the meat, by the way, because you don’t put cold salad on top of hot fillings. Those are the rules. Once finished with the customer’s consultation on their salad preference, I then - like clockwork - witness the inner turmoil created when a customer is offered a wide variety of sauce options. To this point the customer has only born mild anxiety choosing their order and fillings, but now - at the pointy end of the transaction - panic sets in. “I know these sauce styles,” they think to themselves, “but the names are throwing me… Sweet onion? What’s that like? Thousand Island? Is that the spicy one? Teriyaki? South what?”, they agonise. I soothe their escalating blood pressure by simply offering one or two buzz word overviews of each one, adding “and Chipotle - chip-oat-lay, not chip-ottle, as most Irish people called it - Southwest is just like a slightly spicy mayonnaise” verbatim, time and time again. The relief that their sandwich is done and imminently winging its way to their mouth, I smile as I wrap the order in a sheet of thin, branded wax paper and hand it over with a napkin or two, take their money and deliver their change, then turn on my heel, gather a fresh pair of disposable plastic gloves, and start the process again. “*smiles* What can I get for you?”

I worked at Subway for about five years, and people often laugh or mock that the official role is “sandwich artist”, but it is, and it was. I was, and I was proud to be. I took immense pride in making thousands upon thousands of subs like works of art, because there was a distinct ‘way’ to do it. A by-the-book, tried and tested, best practice process to adhere to, regimented down to the most minute detail. An art to carefully place and fill everything so each bite is uniform, nothing overtakes or dominates, and understand how every single personally-tailored order needed to be made to avoid a sloppy sandwich where the filling falls out. It felt like a fast food consultation each and every time. I consulted face-to-face with customers, who watched me eagle-eyed as I layered up their sandwich, and weren’t shy or slow in correcting me. Them, naturally, the experts –– not me, doing this hundreds of times a day with managers watching even when they weren’t looking and listening where they hadn’t ears. This is a particular phenomenon of fast food very unique to Subway, that the customer has an active role in preparation and witnesses everything going into their food, rather than being prepared in a back area and handed out to them packaged-up. 

I got so much insight into the way people operate and what makes customers tick when I worked in fast food. You don’t know this but I learned about you as a person; your order told me lots of things about your tastes and quirks. I made the sandwich come to life that you had in your mind, sometimes you asked me to toast for that-bit-longer, or scoop out the bread in the middle to make it lighter, or sneak two or even three of the sauces because that was your favourite bit of the eating. Sometimes I snuck an extra cookie into the bag. You argued with me over the prices, and I had to defend them even though I had no say in setting them. I prepped well before your arrival and I cleaned up after you’d left. Sometimes I didn’t charge you because you looked down on your luck or I skewed the till system to charge you the cheapest item possible because your order was a premium combination and you didn’t have enough coins. I looked out for you and tried to give you as delicious an experience as I could, but you looked down on me dismissively as just another fast food employee. I witnessed everything from how rude, aggressive and downright offensive customers can be to how lovely, wonderful and charming the best customers are. Those customers you cherish because they brighten your day like a blaze of sun breaking through an overcast sky. I turned up on time every day, worked through way too many breaks, which I earned and deserved but it was too busy and bodies were needed, and had so many random mystery shoppers chalk my performance down to various criteria out of ten. Every customer another performance, and you didn’t even know I had a stammer because I was so well rehearsed and good at my job, knowing every answer to every question. 

I worked in the franchise across three stores in three different towns and cities in Ireland, weaving between part and full-time whilst studying for my journalism degree. From about age 18 to 23 I spent summers, weekends, school holidays, before college, after college, often 7am starts, sometimes 4am finishes; finding my feet in the professional world and, in some ways, a real start in the food industry. I still am a sandwich artist, because I’ve never made a bad sandwich since, and it left a lasting impact on me because I’m a stickler for how other Subway employees make the subs I order ever since I got my own on-the-job experience. It taught me discipline, how food service works and delivered an understanding of how a sandwich is so much more about structure and holding back rather than stuffing to greedy satisfaction. Less is always more, even though I’m the annoying customer now who orders “all the salads”. It gave me a serious standing on food handling and professional food prep, labelling, stock rotation, health and safety for public consumption. But… I was just a fast food worker to you. I took frozen dough through a semi-laborious proving and baking regime every single day and spent each shift filling subs, slaved over trays of hot cookies in various flavours and commanded a tea and coffee station, not to mention having a calculator in my head at all times ensuring to count up correct change. I prepped endless amounts of vegetables, meats and sauces, wiped down tables, deep-cleaned floors, washed silpats, tubs and utensils, and cashed up to the cent at the end of the day, checking off totals against a two or three metre-long till receipt. I still to this day apply so much of what I learned there. I still have the scars from the TurboChef (the countertop toaster machine) burning me every so often. I still know my way around the menu and what to ask for thats off-menu but always in stock. I still know the best way to make a sandwich. I still put into use the ideal way to prep a green pepper so you lose least of the flesh and the seeds come out in one neat column. I still know the importance of proving bread and when to roll it in a topping before baking or what way to score it so it rises evenly. I still know by looking at a cookie whether it’s had too short or too long a time in the oven, and how quickly afterwards would be the perfect time to eat for gooey, warm chocolately goodness because wait too long and it turns to a dry, chalky crunch. Subway was the making of me and gave me a fine start in food. But it’s looked down upon because it’s “fast food”. 

Together, we recently wrote a book on the subject of a style of food that’s so often vilified, cheapened, demeaned and degraded, so exposing the flaw in narratives around food is something we’re in tune with and passionate about. You may not personally like fast food or what it stands for, or its place in society, but let me tell you what fast food is. Fast food as a concept is accessible to the masses, which is why it’s so omnipresent and probably will never go away. Fast food may be cheap in terms of production costs and ingredients but by being “cheap” it makes it accessible and affordable to those who don’t have much disposable income. It’s not the healthiest, but at least it’s filling. It’s sourcing can be reprehensible but cut-price raw ingredients allows cut-down end prices. Fast food is familiar, recognisable, and reliable, especially if you’re a picky eater or have certain food intolerances or just have a palate that’s not that adventurous. Fast food is also, as the name suggests, fast — an express way to get food into your stomach to keep you going, whether you’re short on time and just want to grab something quick and filling or desperately need to feed the kids. Fast food has been given a bad reputation, yet you’ll find fast food in all the World’s cities and almost every town in the western world. Fast food has gone global, streamlined in many ways, and very powerful, but aside from the food availability point, don’t forget fast food is also a major employer –– and where small towns have little going for them by way of industry or tourism, fast food will probably be there to employ people.

Being a fast food employee has been demeaned over and over, and reinforced through media tropes, particularly in entertainment –– portraying those who work in it as being “less than”, with less prospects, less talent, less skill, less opportunity for growth and “stuck” in “dead end” roles, whether flipping burgers, making coffee or frying chicken. Don’t gloss over the fact there are genuinely part-time temps who ascend the ranks up to store management, then area management, then maybe even country management with benefits and company cars and pension plans. Not viable? Not realistic? No prospects when you’re ‘stuck’ in fast food? Ignoring the fact it’s a fantastic education in food production and a serious deep dive into the fast-paced food service industry working with colleagues and customers? People work hard and - again, the name - fast in fast food. It’s a pressurised industry where skill, dexterity, efficiency and demeanour are expected, enforced, implored and demanded. Whatever your own personal thoughts on fast food, it needs to be challenged that roles like these are less than. They are not a cop-out, nor solely a fallback, they’re valid and offer value. 

Shane Ruane, a primary school teacher and avid home cook based in Co. Mayo, began his professional career in McDonalds and says it laid a strong foundation on several fronts, particularly work ethic, efficiency and interpersonal skills with both colleagues and kids and parents, all of which helped build a foundation for his current role at the top of a classroom. “McDonald’s was my first job at 16, and probably my favourite job, I worked there all the way through college” he says, adding “I definitely have a great work ethic from my time there”. 

He explains that the Michael Keaton movie The Founder (2016) really does the work in spelling out how that particular kitchen setup is designed to achieve maximum speed and efficiency. Anything else he’s taken away from his time under the Golden Arches? “I’d say being mindful of stock rotation, storage temperatures and using ingredients with shorter expiry dates before others,” Shane says, “likewise for where ingredients are stored in the freezer, but obviously on a much smaller scale at home”.

“It taught me loads about food freshness and quality,” Naomi O’Donnell from Co. Louth says of her five years spent in a deli counter job to make ends meet throughout university. Agreeing it was a great education in stock rotation and limiting food waste, O’Donnell explains: “using smaller quantities to reduce waste and the importance of labelling, as well as also learning a lot about how many people it can take to run a kitchen and the importance of delegation and different roles to keep everything safe and flowing — all of the above have stayed with me”. Working at the counter, which was part of a franchise deli operation, Naomi took forward several things to this day: separating veggies into different containers as mise en place when cooking at home, using the same minimal waste mindset and also still applies key knowledge gleamed, such as buttering one side of bread/roll only, layering things most likely to fall out at the bottom of a sandwich or roll and being more conservative with fillings –– “using slightly less than it looks like you actually need when you start to layer is key, as if you end up with too much it becomes sloppy and can ruin it altogether”.

“I already had a smart mouth before I worked in the pizzeria,” Tara Gartlan says, “but there’s only really one way to deal with people after midnight threatening you because their pizza isn’t cooking quick enough or throwing a smart comment at you, and that’s to have a smart comment back and put them back in their place”. Gartlan, an esteemed pastry chef, has gone from 8pm-4am shifts in a pizzeria-chipper to leading pastry in two-Michelin-starred kitchens. She definitely agrees that cutting your teeth working in fast food encourages the growth of a thick skin super quickly and that that assertiveness has come along with her throughout different kitchens, “because you have to be –– not least in fast food but actually especially at fine dining level, just to be able to keep going and last the course. I’m also now the most patient person when ordering a pizza in a chipper, because I know what it’s like to be on that side and running orders and keeping tabs on who paid, who hasn’t, who might give you trouble; I got to know faces and people and the way they act very quickly”.

Making a mean pizza pie is a skill Gartlan says almost unconsciously developed because of the job. “We made the dough fresh daily, and it was the first time in my life I had seen fresh yeast - we used fresh yeast as standard, never dried - so I guess, yes, unconsciously I was forming the foundation of that skill at 19 in my part-time job on the weekend whilst studying Languages in university during the week. I now just understand that structure and how to work it and stuff, and I still do make an unreal pizza — even at staff meal every so often I’ve done pizzas and the other chefs laugh like “how is this person who’s coeliac making such amazing pizza?”, and I make great bread, too, to be fair”. Where most fast food ingredients are bought-in, readily-prepped and just cooked, packaged up and sold, Gartlan remembers this particular place making their dough as well as their garlic mayo from scratch daily.

Amy Ward Whelan, a UCD graduate in Food Science now working as a consultant in the field of agrifood, says processing orders in a structured, methodical way was the biggest takeaway. “I still use this now, it’s thinking about the order that food should be made in steps. Logically, efficiently, what’s the best way I can do this so it makes sure that the food is as hot and as fresh as possible. If the chips are not on yet, well I could start the drinks, and those small steps to adapt to know what order goes when, and that’s something I still take into account to this day even when I’m cooking at home –– for example, maybe start making the sauce first so that you’re getting everything ready as close together as possible and at their hottest.” 

Though Amy worked more on customer service at the till point and in the McCafe side rather than food production, she says “as I was studying food science it was definitely helpful on the health and safety side of things, especially how certain things worked, at scale, in a fast food operation which was really great to see, and naturally it was top notch”. Amy, like others, commends the general work ethic and what her experience in fast food instilled in her - as well as how to properly clean stainless steel! - but she also remarks on the more human side. “It might be a bit cliché to say,” she starts, “but especially at the age that I was (working through an undergraduate degree in college) it felt you were in what a lot of people would probably see as ‘not a good job’ or a job that people looked down on. But food, whatever the form, has a real power,” she states. 

“Like, there was a woman who would come in every single day and just get coffee, or an older gentleman who just always came in for chicken nuggets; you had your regulars who would come in a lot and often it might be the case that there wasn’t many people they would have talked to in a day so you might have been their sole interaction. It was important to make sure they had a good, memorable experience and that they felt like a valued customer. Even someone down on their luck or not having a good day, they would come in for a reason and you had the power to make their day a little bit special,” she adds. “Food itself not only nourishes but the eating experiences and experiences around food are important,” Amy concludes, adding “even if you’re working in something that may seem unimportant at the time it can still have the opportunity to make a big impact on others, food brings us all together.”

I speak to Mia who is floor staff in one of Cork’s top restaurants and whose career started in McDonalds on the city’s south side. Mia, like the others I’ve spoken to, agrees that the work ethic is the biggest thing instilled in her professionally but also a respect for managers, which was paramountly important. “I worked on nearly every station in McDonalds, between the kitchen counters and service areas,” Mia explains, “and it taught me to have complete respect for managers, which I obviously would have had anyway but it was enforced in such a way I really carried it forward with me. On the subject of the work ethic, too, a previous manager told me they were aware of high end restaurants in London who only hired former fast food workers, specifically because of the reliable work ethic that was a common thread in that type of applicant.”

Fast food experience helped Mia break through into a more conventional restaurant role, and in ways the fast food job was far tougher than neighbourhood restaurants — opening and closing, more antisocial hours and tougher shift times, more extensive health and safety measures and the necessity to jump on different stations. But there’s a stigma about starting your career in McDonalds, Mia discloses. “For sure I’ve received both positive and negative feedback from colleagues about working there — for example, recently i was told “look how far I’d come”, which felt so demeaning but I had to remind myself that those people have never worked in fast food and don’t understand how hard the work is; they are conditioned by society to think that working in fast food is easy and only for ‘failures’ or lazy people, which is obviously not true, they have no idea of the reality.” 

Mia also adds: “I’ve probably been treated worse by customers - with notions - in restaurants than by customers when I worked at McDonalds, which really surprised me… staff in fast food are often treated with such little respect because people assume you’re lower class or poor, but then I found a similar experience - sometimes worse - as waiting staff in restaurants.”

It may appear lowly and you as a customer may abhor the sourcing of materials or “big business” at play, but a fast food education can set you up for a variety of different career paths, not necessarily dismissing fast food as being an valid career path of its own. I put a call out for comment and quote for this article, and though just five are listed here, everyone who responded was complementary about the industry, which I had a feeling would come up but didn’t expect to the extent it did. The people I spoke to loved their time in fast food and the skills it sharpened, they all found a greater ethic in it than they had before, but they also almost all reported being perceived ‘less than’ because of those roles. 

Dismissing the valid, valuable, on-the-job experience that fast food can afford is a disservice and narrow-minded in a bigger picture. The food industry is full of flaws from one extreme of the sector to the other, but fast food is in no way full of flawed people.