Inside jobs

THE INJURY RATE OF teenage workers in the United States is about twice as high as that of adult workers. Teenagers are far more likely to be untrained, and every year, about 200,000 are injured on the job. The most common workplace injuries at fast food restaurants are slips, falls, strains, and burns. The fast food industry’s expansion, however, coincided with a rising incidence of workplace violence in the United States. Roughly four or five fast food workers are now murdered on the job every month, usually during the course of a robbery. Although most fast food robberies end without bloodshed, the level of violent crime in the industry is surprisingly high. In 1998, more restaurant workers were murdered on the job in the United States than police officers.

America’s fast food restaurants are now more attractive to armed robbers than convenience stores, gas stations, or banks. Other retail businesses increasingly rely upon credit card transactions, but fast food restaurants still do almost all of their business in cash. While convenience store chains have worked hard to reduce the amount of money in the till (at 7‑Eleven stores the average robbery results in a loss of about thirty‑seven dollars), fast food restaurants often have thousands of dollars on the premises. Gas stations and banks now routinely shield employees behind bullet‑resistant barriers, a security measure that would be impractical at most fast food restaurants. And the same features that make these restaurants so convenient – their location near intersections and highway off‑ramps, even their drive‑through windows – facilitate a speedy getaway.

A fast food robbery is most likely to occur when only a few crew members are present: early in the morning before customers arrive or late at night near closing time. A couple of sixteen‑year‑old crew members and a twenty‑year‑old assistant manager are often the only people locking up a restaurant, long after midnight. When a robbery takes place, the crew members are frequently herded into the basement freezer. The robbers empty the cash registers and the safe, then hit the road.

The same demographic groups widely employed at fast food restaurants – the young and the poor – are also responsible for much of the nation’s violent crime. According to industry studies, about two‑thirds of the robberies at fast food restaurants involve current or former employees. The combination of low pay, high turnover, and ample cash in the restaurant often leads to crime. A 1999 survey by the National Food Service Security Council, a group funded by the large chains, found that about half of all restaurant workers engaged in some form of cash or property theft – not including the theft of food. The typical employee stole about $218 a year; new employees stole almost $100 more. Studies conducted by Jerald Greenberg, a professor of management at the University of Ohio and an expert on workplace crime, have found that when people are treated with dignity and respect, they’re less likely to steal from their employer. “It may be common sense,” Greenberg says, “but it’s obviously not common practice.” The same anger that causes most petty theft, the same desire to strike back at an employer perceived as unfair, can escalate to armed robbery. Restaurant managers are usually, but not always, the victims of fast food crimes. Not long ago, the day manager of a McDonald’s in Moorpark, California, recognized the masked gunman emptying the safe. It was the night manager.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) attempted in the mid‑1990s to issue guidelines for preventing violence at restaurants and stores that do business at night. OSHA was prompted, among other things, by the fact that homicide had become the leading cause of workplace fatalities among women. The proposed guidelines were entirely voluntary and seemed innocuous. OSHA recommended, for example, that late‑night retailers improve visibility within their stores and make sure their parking lots were well lit. The National Restaurant Association, along with other industry groups, responded by enlisting more than one hundred congressmen to oppose any OSHA guidelines on retail violence. An investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that many of the congressmen had recently accepted donations from the NRA and the National Association of Convenience Stores. “Who would oppose putting out guidelines on saving women’s lives in the workplace?” Joseph Dear, a former head of OSHA, said to a Times reporter. “The companies that employ those women.”

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 disclose them. Local newspaper accounts, however, give a sense of these crimes.

In recent years: Armed robbers struck nineteen McDonald’s and Burger King restaurants along Interstate 85 in Virginia and North Carolina. A former cook at a Shoney’s in Nashville, Tennessee, became a fast food serial killer, murdering two workers at a Captain D’s, three workers at a McDonald’s, and a pair of Baskin Robbins workers whose bodies were later found in a state park. A dean at Texas Southern University was shot and killed during a carjacking in the drive‑through lane of a KFC in Houston. The manager of a Wal‑Mart McDonald’s in Durham, North Carolina, was shot during a robbery by two masked assailants. A nine‑year‑old girl was killed during a shootout between a robber and an off‑duty police officer waiting in line at a McDonald’s in Barstow, California. A twenty‑year‑old manager was killed during an armed robbery at a Sacramento, California, McDonald’s; the manager had recognized one of the armed robbers, a former McDonald’s employee; it was the manager’s first day in the job. A former employee at a McDonald’s in Vallejo, California, shot three women who worked at the restaurant after being rejected for a new job; one of the women was killed, and the murderer left the restaurant laughing. And in Colorado Springs, a jury convicted a former employee of first degree murder for the execution‑style slayings of three teenage workers and a female manager at a Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant. The killings took place in Aurora, Colorado, at closing time, and police later arrived to find a macabre scene. The bodies lay in an empty restaurant as burglar alarms rang, game lights flashed, a vacuum cleaner ran, and Chuck E. Cheese mechanical animals continued to perform children’s songs.