The Stress Is Palpable

Darrin Atkins
3 min readOct 17, 2024

People need to seriously calm down or else I think maybe a long vacation is required

Photo credit: Darrin Atkins

Yesterday I was at a fast food restaurant and it was an eye-opening experience. It wasn’t what I expected to see.

For starters, every menu item seemed more expensive than it remembered, and the prices were hard to see and understand. The affordable low-priced items were hidden in more ways than one.

Next, there were hardly any employees. Each worker seemed to be doing the tasks of what three people used to do, and that meant there was often nobody to talk to customers at the counter.

Lastly, I could see that those customers waiting for their paid orders were losing their patience, like me and I hadn’t realized the situation yet.

I could feel the tension in the air. It was a sense of unexpected frustration. One adult male got upset about something and moved to another table. The family across from me had had enough waiting and the eldest family member stood up to, presumably, check on their order status. Luckily, an employee was on the way with their large order, so that customer sat down again.

All in all, I decided not to go back to this location in the future. I get the sense that staffing has been reduced too much and I felt empathy for the remaining overworked employees.

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Darrin Atkins
Darrin Atkins

Written by Darrin Atkins

Friend of Medium FOM. Medium writer and content producer. Tips and ideas for writing success. Suggestions for you to make more money this year. Get inspired!

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