Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser [49]
The restaurant industry has continued to fight not only guidelines on workplace violence, but any enforcement of OSHA regulations. At a 1997 restaurant industry “summit” on violence, executives representing the major chains argued that OSHA guidelines could be used by plaintiffs in lawsuits stemming from a crime, that guidelines were completely unnecessary, and that there was no need to supply the government with “potentially damaging” robbery statistics. The group concluded that OSHA should become just an information clearinghouse without the authority to impose fines or compel security measures. For years, one of OSHA’s most severe critics in Congress has been Jay Dickey, an Arkansas Republican who once owned two Taco Bells. In January of 1999 the National Council of Chain Restaurants helped to form a new organization to lobby against OSHA regulations. The name of the industry group is the “Alliance for Workplace Safety.”
The leading fast food chains have tried to reduce violent crime by spending millions on new security measures — video cameras, panic buttons, drop-safes, burglar alarms, additional lighting. But even the most heavily guarded fast food restaurants remain vulnerable. In April of 2000 a Burger King on the grounds of Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska was robbed by two men in ski masks carrying shotguns. They were wearing purple Burger King shirts and got away with more than $7,000. Joseph A. Kinney, the president of the National Safe Workplace Institute, argues that the fast food industry needs to make fundamental changes in its labor relations. Raising wages and making a real commitment to workers will do more to cut crime than investing in hidden cameras. “No other American industry,” Kinney notes, “is robbed so frequently by its own employees.”
Few of the young fast food workers I met in Colorado Springs were aware that working early in the morning or late at night placed them in some danger. Jose, on the other hand, had no illusions. He was a nineteen-year-old assistant manager with a sly, mischievous look. Before going to work at McDonald’s, Jose had been a drug courier and a drug dealer in another state. He’d witnessed the murder of close friends. Many of his relatives were in prison for drug-related and violent crimes. Jose had left all that behind; his job at McDonald’s was part of a new life; and he liked being an assistant manager because the work didn’t seem hard. He was not, however, going to rely on McDonald’s for his personal safety. He said that video cameras weren’t installed at his restaurant until the Teeny Beanie Babies arrived. “Man, people really want to rip those things off,” he said. “You’ve got to keep your eye on them.” Jose often counts the money and closes the restaurant late at night. He always brings an illegal handgun to work, and a couple of his employees carry handguns, too. He’s not afraid of what might happen if an armed robber walks in the door one night. “Ain’t nothing that he could do to me,” Jose said, matter-of-factly, “that I couldn’t do to him.”
The May 2000 murder of five Wendy’s employees during a robbery in Queens, New York, received a great deal of media attention. The killings were gruesome, one of the murderers had previously worked at the restaurant, and the case unfolded in the media capital of the nation. But crime and fast food have become so ubiquitous in American society that their frequent combination usually goes unnoticed. Just a few weeks before the Wendy’s massacre in Queens, two former Wendy’s employees in South Bend, Indiana, received prison terms for murdering a pair of coworkers during a robbery that netted $1,400. Earlier in the year two former Wendy’s employees in Anchorage, Alaska, were charged with the murder of their night manager during a robbery. Hundreds of fast food restaurants are robbed every week. The FBI does not compile nationwide statistics on restaurant robberies, and the restaurant industry will not