Whataburger What A Mess

Whataburger is a regional chain. There are a lot of them in Texas. You may have heard Hank Hill or Bobby mention Whataburger on King of the Hill. I have never been in or had a Whataburger. The restaurants look real tacky with their striped roofs and odd building shapes and garish signs. I assumed Whataburgers were likely not a good thing. Wikipedia seems neutral on the issue.

And then a couple days ago I got one of my favorite emailer's periodic email newsletters, in which she described her "working" experience at Whataburger. After reading that I know I'll never visit a Whataburger.

I share my friend's experience with you as a cautionary tale....

"I was able to escape my captors at Whataburger. I've been working/slaving at Whataburger for a coupla months now. I hate it. They work you like a dog. Without any training, teaching or explanation, Frank, the GM, started me on the grill.

For breakfast that means I was responsible for the tortillas, the bob eggs, scrambled eggs, the sausage/egg taquito mix, sausage patties, any meat patties, and bacon. You have to anticipate the volume of food to cook. We'd get busloads of people. If you run out of any of the above items, it means the cook has to hold up production. They are rude when that happens.

You must scrape the grill when the grease and meat get cooked/caked on. They were working me 10 hours a day. I couldn't feel my toes when I'd get home and my back ached for every year of my age. It's a young person's job, for sure. My face looked like I suffered from rosacea. All red and pink from the heat of the grill. Occasionally, my grip would slip and my knuckles or fingers would scrap the 350 degree grill.

If the cook ran out of anythng like large or small cheese, lettuce, buns, tomatos, onions, pickles, I'd have to run into the cooler and fill up their pan. If I'd take a step back to take a drink of water, the manager was on my like white on rice and would command me to sweep and mop the kitchen floor, take the trash out, clean the grill, make more gravy or whatever he felt like.

Again, they worked me for 10 hours a day. Did I mention I hated it? And while they were no rocket scientists and while they provided me with no training - they just threw me on the grill and I was just supposed to know the lingo and how to do the job.

Next time you go to Whataburger, peek at the trash can you just emptied your tray into. I had to empty those trash cans and lift those bags full of food and drinks.

That was just the grill gig...They put me on the board to make sandwiches and again, with minimal explanation, wanted me to be fast at making all the sandwiches. I apparently wasn't fast enuf.

The next thing they put me on was produce in the back. I had to carry the boxes full of lettuce or tomatos and chop about 30 or more heads of lettuce into hamburger size pieces. I routinely had to core and slice enuf tomatos to fill 8 6x12 and about 6 inch deep pans. I got a hole in my right index finger that is just know healing from the core-er thingee. That was just from it rubbing my finger. It dug a hole in it.

The tomato slicer was scary. One bad move and I'd cut my guitar playing fingers. It never happened, but I wasn't swift at that either.

Part of that job was washing all the dishes. At 11am, when breakfast was over, they'd start bringing all the pans from breakfast that held greasy bacon, all the scambled eggs which by now were cooked on the pans pretty good. They'd bring for me to wash the metal spatulas they used to cook the eggs, the cooked on gravy dishes, the bob eggs rings, the pancake ring (oh yea...I had to make tons of pancakes), and everything had a layer of grease.

Next they put me on the front register. Easier in a way, but their register was a trick to learn. It was not logical and as they showed you stuff (only after you made a mistake), they would punch the keys so fast (almost like they were pathetically showing off) that I couldn't tell what the hell they were doing.

I had to refill all the drink cups -soda and coffee. I had to maintain coffee in the lobby caraffs, clean the soda station, refill all the cream, sugar, salt, pepper, forks, knives, spoons, napkins, sweet and low, stir sticks, and make sure there was always sweetened and unsweeten tea.

The customers were asses if I made a mistake and held them up. I had to sweep and mop the lobby and let me tell you - I hate people. They would just throw food and paper on the floor like it was a middle ages castle.

I had to make fries, onion rings, chicken strips, fish patties for their fish sandwich, and enuf fried pies. After a day of making fries, my eyes felt like there were boulders under my one remaining contact lens. They hurt.

As the food was made, I had to make sure the order was complete on a tray and go into the lobby and call out their order number. Did I mention they would work me 10 or more hours a day for $7.50 an hour. They really got their money's worth. And after all this, if I went anywhere in my Whataburger uniform, people would laugh at me and treat me like I was a moron.

My feet always hurt and I couldn't feel my toes.

I had no life left when I got home. I had no energy to do a gig and canceled a few of them out of pure exhaustion. And my hands were ugly. My nails always had meat or something under them and they looked awful. This is not a good job. You could not wear earrings. Your hair had to be completely under your cap or you had to wear a hair-net. The uniform was dark blut pants and their t-shirt. I was forced to buy some ugly non-skid shoes before the would let me start work and they hassled me everyday because I didn't have a belt until Kenneth brought me one from home that he gave to me. I got hassled if I forgot my stupid name tag.

We had had a few scary busy rushes the last week and so they brought in some outside workers to help us. Two of those helpers were the Area Managers kids - Andy and Briana. Nice enuf kids, I guess.

So, the last straw for me was last Sunday when I was working the grill. I had a great sense of accomplishment because I hadn't run out of anything during the breakfast rush and was keeping up with the demand of the job. When breakfast ended - the new GM, - Mark was trying to score points with the Area Manager and he asked Briana "what do you want to work today" Right in front of me the little princess sez - "the grill". So, Mark simply told me to go into the back and do produce and wash dishes. Needless to say, this pissed me off pretty good. Because it had been busy, there were lots of dishes to wash and I had to chop and slice even more produce than usual. I release my frustrations by banging the dishes pretty good. I asked him what I had done wrong and he tried to bullshit me and say I was the only one he could count on to do a good job. Yea... right. Then he said he didn't know if the others knew how to do that job. Yea...right...It's rocket science."

Well, that about ends the Whataburger part of the newsletter. The happy news that follows is that Whataburger was told to take their job and shove it. Because a new, much better, opportunity opened up for the former Whataburger slave.

Below is a Whataburger TV ad, for those of you have never been to the South or Southwest....