What's it really like to work for Chick-fil-A?
Current and former Chick-fil-A employees from all different levels in the organization have
plenty to say when it comes to employment with the company behind our favorite fried
chicken sandwich.
If you've been to Chick-fil-A more than once, you've likely picked up on the fact that they
don't say you're welcome when dealing with customers.
Instead, they say,
“My pleasure.”
It's kind of their trademark.
While definitely a trait that sets them apart from other fast food employees, people who
have spent time in the chicken trenches seem to agree that the phrase quickly becomes part
of your vocab.
One former Chick-fil-A manager who claims to have spent six years with the company revealed
on Reddit that even three years after leaving, they still found themselves saying the statement.
Lexi Stroud, another former chicken-slinger who spent two years with the business wrote
about her experience on Odyssey.
She said she, quote, "hated" having to use the phrase, before adding just how much it
wormed its way into her brain.
She said,
"Then it turned into the only way I would respond to the phrase 'thank you' whether
or not I was at work or just having a conversation with friends.
It took months to stop saying my pleasure after I stopped working at Chick-fil-A.”
Cell phones are firmly planted in modern society and unfortunately, they've become an outlet
for customer rudeness at restaurants.
You've probably witnessed patrons allowing a phone or text conversation to take precedence
over interacting with a restaurant employee who's trying to take a food order.
You may even have been guilty of it yourself.
It's become such a problem that even in 2006, some restaurants were putting up signs asking
customers to refrain from phone use.
By 2018, it was a common rule at many restaurants.
Chick-fil-A hasn't resorted to that measure yet, but some of their employees sure wish
they would.
“Brad, seven seconds, I’m grabbing you by the collar, your face is in the deep fryer.”
One employee confessed to Cosmopolitan:
"That's one of my biggest pet peeves when I'm working [...] They're on their phone talking,
and I'm like, 'We can serve you down here!'
And … nothing.
It's like, 'Hello?
…Ma'am, we can serve you down here,' but then they'll still be talking on their phone
while I'm taking their order."
Perhaps we should all take note of this.
If we want to continue to get hot nuggets and friendly customer service, the least we
could do is offer hardworking CFA employees our undivided and full attention.
“Mr. Zuckerberg, do I have your full attention?”
“No.”
In 2012, Chick-fil-A found itself under a national media spotlight, not for its chicken,
but because of interviews in which company president Dan Cathy discussed his views on
marriage.
“I personally express a view of support of the biblical definition of marriage.”
The interviews followed on the heels of a 2011 report that the company had given money
to organizations considered anti-gay by various watchdog groups.
Caught in the middle of it all were thousands of store employees.
Some workers were even harassed by angry customers.
“I don’t believe corporations should be giving me to…”
“I’m uncomfortable that you’re videotaping me right now.”
“Totally understandable.”
The entire controversy and its blowback put employees in an uncomfortable position when
all they wanted to do was serve up some waffle fries.
One employee said:
"It was awkward [...] I knew about what was going on, but I didn't know any details…"
“This must be awkward for all of you.”
Chick-fil-A's conservative and religious foundation is basically common knowledge at this point.
When your restaurant is closed every Sunday and is entangled in a national debate over
same-sex marriage, people tend to stereotype employees.
Is that fair?
Or course not, but hey, that's human nature for ya.
There are multiple threads on Reddit's Ask Me Anything section with former Chick-fil-A
employees and almost all of them have somebody asking if everyone who works there is super
religious or dislikes gay people.
Those assumptions couldn't be further from the truth.
One former manager said,
"Personally I am pro-LGBT, and I've never seen any instances of discrimination or anti-LGBT
actions in my time at CFA."
Another former manager said nobody they worked with, quote, "seemed like they were homophobic,"
before adding:
"Some employees we knew were openly gay."
Numerous other employees and former employees on Reddit also said they had co-workers who
were not religious.
One employee even described themselves as an atheist.
So, while some CFA employees consider themselves religious, that's most certainly not the case
for all CFA employees, and there's nothing that says it has to be.
Sorry to burst your bubble, potential future Chick-fil-A employees, but the job isn't a
free pass to a never-ending buffet of free chicken and waffle fries.
Many employees do seem to get a discount or free meal on their shift, but the discount
level seems to vary from store to store.
It's not just food-service employees that don't have access to unlimited chicken, the
same goes for employees who work at the restaurant's Atlanta headquarters.
Adrissha Wimberly, a Financial Return Consultant with the company said in an interview:
"I can't walk into any Chick-fil-A restaurant, flash my badge, and they'll just toss a chicken
sandwich across that counter."
This doesn’t mean employees don't have friends and family trying to constantly snag some
free food, though.
On the contrary, that seems to be a regular thing.
Development and Construction manager, Patrick Davis said,
"If you get a chance to work here, be prepared to have your family members ask for Chick-fil-A
coupons.”
Hey, can you really blame a person for trying to score a some free nuggets every now and
then when they have an inside connection?
We sure would!
Chick-fil-A’s Polynesian sauce is one of the establishment's most popular condiments.
Unfortunately, ordering the popular sauce seems to be a point of challenge for many
Chick-fil-A loyalists.
Maybe it's a lack of Pacific islanders in middle America, but the word is throwing people
off, much to the amusement of CFA employees.
The list of substitute names seems to run rather lengthy, according to former employee
Lexi Stroud.
She told Odyssey she recalled hearing customers call it, quote, "paradise sauce" and, quote,
"pol-ip-pone-sian."
People overall enjoy having a built-in day off from work every week to do whatever tickles
their fancy.
CFA founder S. Truett Cathy was a devout Southern Baptist and implemented the closed on Sundays
policy that follows his Christian principles from day one.
The purpose was to give employees a day off to worship or merely do whatever they wanted
with the day.
“I’m ready to party with the best of them.”
The only time the company seems to ever deviate from this is when the community is in times
of need.
CFA employees have volunteered to feed first responders and volunteers following natural
disasters and tragedies.
They've also been known to fill hungry bellies when natural disasters hit — and Mother
Nature definitely doesn't take off on Sundays.
Employees are all for having the Sundays off and what they do with that time seems to be
a popular question.
One employee on Reddit said sometimes they'll occasionally have team outings where the staff
will hangout or management will buy them lunch.
So even though we all go through chicken withdrawals when Sunday morning rolls around, CFA stands
by its reason to remain closed one day per week.
The company’s president, Dan Cathy, even revealed that the rule will probably never
change.
“My brother and sister and I have signed a covenant and agreement that our generation
will continue to be closed on Sunday.”
People love Chick-fil-A’s breakfast offerings, and one employee told Cosmopolitan that the
rest of the day isn't exactly slow either.
"Lunchtime gets really busy.
From about 1 to 4, there's a big rush.
Then it picks up again from around 7 to 8."
Basically, you might get a few hours in the dead of the afternoon where there isn't a
drive-thru line around the block — though there probably is still a line, maybe just
a shorter one.
Standing on your feet, making milkshakes by hand, and constantly taking orders isn't just
exhausting.
One former manager said it was, quote, "the most stressful job" they ever had and putting
in 60-hour work weeks was needed to keep up with store demands.
If you're still not convinced of just how grueling the job can be, journalist Kathleen
Elkins should set those doubts to rest.
She spent one day shadowing the manager at the chain's Manhattan location.
She said she didn’t expect the work day to be easy, but she didn’t expect it to
be as tiring and exhausting as it was.
"By 10:30 a.m., after rolling biscuit dough, frying chicken and assembling sandwiches,
I was starting to peter out — and the lunch rush hadn't even started."
If you're curious about just how busy the employees at any Chick-fil-A restaurant are,
consider this fact.
The company makes more money per restaurant than Starbucks, Subway, and the granddaddy
of fast food, McDonald's — combined!
When you factor in that each restaurant hand-breads every piece of fried chicken, has hand-spun
milkshakes, and freshly prepares the lemonade, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that
employees must be ready to juggle multiple duties.
In an interview with Cosmopolitan, one employee said that multitasking was the most difficult
thing to get down, but it was definitely a vital skill.
"…now I have the hang of it and I'm just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom."
Former employee, Cameron Ford, spent her high school years at the restaurant and reiterated
this point saying,
"if you aren't good at multitasking, you will quickly learn how to be better."
Taking orders and serving customers all while trying to communicate with your fellow coworkers
can certainly be both mentally and physically demanding — or as Ford described it as,
quote, “utter chaos.”
“But you, you got hooked on disaster!”
Just because not even Chick-fil-A's corporate employees have a special key to a secret vault
of unlimited free chicken, that doesn't mean it's all work without reward.
If you happen to work at the restaurant chain's posh Atlanta headquarters, you will have access
to some pretty nice office perks.
You may not get your run at anything on the menu, but employee Adrissha Wimberly said
that lunch is provided daily.
"Though chicken sandwiches are typically a part of the daily menu selection, it is not
always a Chick-fil-A centered lunch.
It could be many different types of cuisine."
The company seems to realize that it can't just be feeding employees chicken sandwiches
all the time without some sort of balance — no matter how good they are.
To offset the fried chicken lunches and delicious milkshakes, employees have access to an on-site
gym and other healthy lifestyle utilities.
Wimberly added,
"You can have a full body composition analysis or get a personal trainer [...] There is a
nutritionist on site as well."
Protests, phone-obsessed customers, and crazy lunch rushes aside, most Chick-fil-A employees
at all levels seem to be happy with their time spent at the company.
Andrea Liu told The Tab,
"I enjoyed my time working there because my co-workers were fun people to be around and
the customers were generally very friendly.”
Liu started working there after her freshman year of high school and said she enjoyed trying
new food combinations with team members.
She also said she could always count on her coworkers to cheer her up if she had a bad
customer interaction.
Employees on the corporate side seem to back up the company's high-job satisfaction rate
on websites like Glassdoor.com, where it has nearly four out of five stars.
Michael Lage, who has an MBA from Harvard, left his job as a brand strategist at Facebook
to join the company.
Lage told Forbes that people asked why he would leave Silicon Valley to, quote, "sell
chicken" and he said it was all about the company culture.
"There is such a strong culture built on relationships and valuing one another [...] [It brings]
out best in people, fulfilling leadership potential, and great business performance."
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