Personally I found food service to be much worse.
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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The customers can be so rude in fast food.
My wife did both in a Californian suburb and this is accurate in that retail will make you lose faith in humanity while waiting tables is actually kinda fun but very tiring.
In her case, it wasn't the Karens but rather the amount of terrible parenting she would witness. One kid shamelessly stole thousands of dollars of Pokemon cards, get caught, and the mother took his side and blamed the store (?!). Plus, so many kids just left there like it's a fucking daycare, too. Touching and messing up stuff. My wife was working alone most of the time, too!
Not to mention, no chair, no real breaks, minimum pay, and so on. At least with food service, good places have tips and you get to bring home food. If you sell alcohol, it's extremely lucrative in states that don't dock your pay. An occasional jump scare is worth making more than an average college grad, and one of her friends opened a sushi place and gives us a discount. Food service is cool.
Depends on what you’re selling, I guess
Yeah this is what I was thinking too. I worked for a mom and pop hobbyist store, and Starbucks. Obviously Starbucks was worse. But would it be worse than, say, a mall clothing store or Target or Walmart? Not sure.
And whether or not it's corporate
I'd rather do heavy labor. As long as I don't have to work in shifts.
For me retail was terrible, fast food was a special type of hell. But working as a busser was far and away the worst and strangest work experience I've ever had
What was strange about it?
Everything those other fellows mentioned, plus great stuff like: the manager making me shave my facial hair off before allowing me to work; getting put on 12-hr shifts back to back even though they knew I was a student and had classes; staff expecting me to know everything about the table numbers and layout on my first day and getting pissed when I didn't; also the amazing capitalist culture of Trying Super Hard So I'll Be A Line Chef/Mgr One Day and all that comes with it.
I quit after two days and never looked back.
Nasty customers leaving messy tables. Host/server breathing down your neck to bus their section yesterday. Dishwasher disappeared so they need you to pitch in at the dish sink. The bin behind the bar is overflowing.
Where were you?!
Hosts flat seat -> server workflow gets frontloaded -> servers spend all their time greeting and grabbing drinks/setups instead of prebussing -> bussers have to do more work to get a table guest ready -> hosts start to panic as the lobby fills up -> hosts yell at bussers to teleport around the restaurant as soon as a guest so much as thinks about the check -> repeat
All of this just barely works until someone drops a glass in the ice, or we get behind on a starter, or a piece of equipment breaks, or literally anything goes wrong. And that's just front of house, when you factor in the drama that can happen back of house when we're understaffed and FOH demands too much too quickly it's a miracle that there aren't mass walkouts.
I live in the death spiral. I have a different seat but we're all on the same damn ride.
Can confirm, also partially explains my taste in art
Walmart gave me constant illness and depression, fast food has just given me grey hairs and chest pain
I'd rather work in customer service.
That's just the Indian in you bro.
That's racist!!!
Anyway, I thinking how I won't have to deal with people who are not physically there.
My partner thought this. Turns out, people feel more comfortable causing a scene over the phone than in person.
Of cour -click
I'm Indian too, so think of it as our n-word.
The cs-word if you will.
I wasn't serious, weren't three exclamation marks not enough???