"I'm sorry"

There's a woman (not pictured at left), I'm guessing in her 50s or 60s, who works at a McDonalds in a smaller city outside of Calgary. McDonalds (and they're definitely not the only ones) seems to have a habit of hiring people who are kind, capable people but just aren't as quick and efficient as people in their teens or 20s.

Since drive thru orders always take priority in fast food outlets, she serves counter, not drive thru. But she serves counter alone. At least, she's alone when I visit, which is usually around 6:30am. As I said before, this is neither the only outlet that does this nor the only fast food chain.

Anyway, whenever I am there getting some food, this woman struggles to keep up. If she tries to rush, she gets frustrated and sometimes gets the order wrong. She is always apologizing. I hear the words "I'm sorry" from her at least twice every time I go to this store. I think about this and I wonder how many times she has to say "I'm sorry" during the course of her shift. Every shift. Every week. Every month of every year that she has worked there. How many more times will she have to say it?

I can't imagine having to work in an environment where I'm struggling so much to keep up that I have to apologize to everyone I meet. I can only imagine that this job is slowly eating away at her soul. And the company that hired her will probably never know. And yet they earned $21 billion in revenue (about $10 billion net)  in 2018. Partly because they refuse to hire enough staff to be able to do the job without having to constantly apologize.