I deal with terrible and snarky teenagers every day and honestly I think their parents need to do better

Photo byAngel BalashevonUnsplash

I work in a high school cafeteria, which keeps me busy with prepping, cooking, serving, and cleaning. It's not as fast-paced or as high-pressure as a restaurant, but it still requires a lot of hard work. Shout out to all the professional kitchen staff out there!

This year, a group of boys came in who obviously don't understand how things work in the real world. They seem to think that since we work in customer service, we are their servants or something. Let's call the ringleader Mr. Buzz, since he has a goofy hairstyle under his hat. Mr. Buzz seems to have made it his personal mission to terrorize me. He's always examining my food and claiming it's undercooked, which has resulted in a scolding from my boss and one day where I had to recook all my fries. It turned out that someone had left me a bag of fries that needed to be coated in oil before cooking to ensure they cooked properly, but no one had informed me we had this type of fries. They tend to look like my regular coated white fries. He's also complained once that our chicken burgers were undercooked, but a quick temperature check saved me there.

Recently, Mr. Buzz has taken up the hobby of walking by our cafeteria doors and making inappropriate, loud, aggressive noises. It used to scare us, and that's not good when working in a kitchen. I'm sure other kitchen staff can understand why. Unfortunately, we've since gotten used to it.

Yesterday, I finally reached my boiling point and told them to leave. I haven't heard anything from my manager, so I think I'm in the clear, but I'll be letting someone else serve them from now on. We have a small shelf above the hot station where we keep examples of our fry sizes with the prices written on them. These boys started grabbing them and comparing them. I asked three times for them to put them back, but they ignored me and put them back when they wanted to. Mr. Buzz started mocking me with unintelligent words, and I think his brain shorted out for a bit. I told the rest of the group to leave but served the nicer ones. I'm so over them, but I know I'll get in trouble if I refuse service.

Also, before this, we had two fire alarm incidents. One was someone setting toilet paper on fire in the upstairs washroom, and the other was someone yanking it. Can you guess who? This is not to mention the issue of parents taking no precautions with sick kids.