Burger Fool

You can practically see his soul being crushed.

I have a theory about McDonald's, that is, everything they make is all one thing, and in the back they have this big vat full of this stuff, these little molds combining, like SPLURT 'Hamburger!' SPLURT 'Malt!' SPLURT 'Paper box!' SPLURT 'Here's your change, thank you!'

—Steve Martin

The fictional fast-food restaurant is a unique establishment. It's the most common first job for a TV teen, and will usually teach them a lesson about money, responsibility, or life, mere moments before they quit or are fired for odd reasons. Usually, they are spurred to employment by a specific financial need, and a failure of "The Bank of Mom and Dad" to pony up.

But the fast-food joint seems to deliberately go out of its way to torture the unfortunate teenagers (and/or unlucky adults) who work there. Which includes the ridiculous outfit they are required to wear on the job—a silly hat, featuring a cartoonish version of what they serve, is almost a given, along with Happiness Is Mandatory, and this is usually enforced by a store manager who fits the Stupid Boss stereotype to a Q. Thus the fast food restaurant has the image of a Fate Worse Than Death.

The standard foil is for the show's underdog to thrive in this environment to the total befuddlement of the "cool" characters who have been successful at everything else except this; ironically, this can have the reverse effect: after all, who would be proud of working at a fast-food joint?

The Other Wiki refers to these as "McJobs". In reality, these jobs can be Truth in Television, but there's an equal chance of them being better (or worse) than depicted, because it depends on an individual store's quality of management and workers. The ridiculous headgear, fortunately, is universally less common than it is in fiction (a simple baseball cap, visor, or hairnet is more common).

And yes, the trope title is a medieval-appropriate riff on "Burger King."

See also Suck E. Cheese's.

Examples of Burger Fool include:

Advertising

  • A TV ad visible here for a company selling credit report monitoring tells how a guy is reduced to wearing a pirate outfit, working in a fast-food place every night singing how he is "selling chowder and iced tea" because "some hacker stole my identity." The ad tries to get people to sign up for its service "so you don't end up selling fish to tourists in T-shirts."


Anime and Manga

  • In the Manga version of Azumanga Daioh, Chiyo-chan and Osaka take up summer jobs at the local Magnetron Burger (a deliberate parody of McDonald's.) Osaka gets the job without any second thoughts; however, when child-prodigy Chiyo-chan claims to be in high-school, the manager assumes her family needs money, and gives her the job out of pity.
    • Actually it appears more similar to Mos Burger, a Japanese Classy Burger chain.
    • Doubly funny because Chiyo's family is actually loaded.
    • The manager even gives Chiyo all the raises, much to Osaka's chagrin, as she doesn't get any.
  • In the first volume of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, Yugi and Jounouchi want to go out for lunch at Burger World, but Anzu tries to steer them away from it, saying that it's a terrible place to eat. Why? She works there, and doesn't want Jounouchi to blab about it to the school, because kids at Domino High School (like at some real-life Japanese high schools) aren't allowed to hold jobs. Of course, working at such a place is arguably much better than what they thought she was doing. (Note: In the English dub of the anime, the reason for her not wanting them to talk was changed from "High school students can't hold jobs" to "I'm not old enough to work here.")
  • A surprisingly sympathetic example occurs in Scrapped Princess, where Pacifica and crew stop at an inn and have to sell "Soopy Buns" to earn their tab. Part of the job entails dressing up as a green Barney-like mascot named "Soopy-kun" and peddling the innkeeper's wares to customers. The innkeeper is actually nice to them, and Raquel enjoys doing the work, while Pacifica tries donning the costume and winds up scaring a little boy away when the jaw of the costume falls off. Leo takes the "Soopy-kun" job for a while when Pacifica leaves, but he gets to keep it with him when he returns to the city with Winia in a later episode.
  • In K-On!, Mugi is so enthralled with the local fast food restaurant that she starts working part-time behind its counter herself later on—even though she is rich and doesn't really need the money.
  • Busou Renkin has an unnamed McDonald's clone which the heroes and villains meet in. The staff seem fairly happy with their situation until the characters show up... in full costume.
    • It's called Loteri-ya. After Bravo and Papillon start eating there, it is dubbed Freak Burger.
  • In Lucky Star, Konata tells Kagami and Tsukasa she got a summer job, but doesn't tell them what it is until they ask the next day. A worker at a fast food restaurant is one of the jobs they imagine, but can't imagine her doing well at. At least, the "dealing with people" aspect.

Burger Fool Konata: Got a problem with my smile?

  • The Devil is a Part Timer! was a humor-oriented anime where the Devil's Evil Plan messes up royally and he ends up in Japan working at a "MgRonalds". Seriously, nowhere would the Devil be more a loser than here. Sadly, this hilarious anime only lasted one season.

Comic Books

  • After accidentally running up a crushing debt, Gina and Brittany from Gold Digger are forced to work at one of these places for a day before The Rival will agree to loan them the money they need. By Finagle's Law, exactly the old acquaintances they don't want to be seen by show up that day.
  • In an issue of Ambush Bug, Irwin apparently runs into Darkseid serving burgers at the local fast-food place (it turned out to be a blow-up mannequin).
    • In another Kieth Giffen story, the Super Buddies are forced to work in a Big Belly Burger in Hell for all eternity.
  • In Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, Mary Jane has to work at a hippo themed McDonald's place, which was just one in a string of cruddy jobs.
  • In Foolkiller, after Kurt Gerhardt was laid off from the bank, he had to work in a fast food restaurant.
  • In Invincible, Mark initially worked at a place like this before his superhero duties happily forced him to quit.
  • The "Fat Boy" restaurant chain in Give Me Liberty, which wages war using giant mascot mecha for farmland to raise cattle.
  • At one point, Wonder Woman worked at a "Taco Whiz." She took it very seriously.

Feeding people is a just and dignified occupation. I don't know why you are always... dishing it.

  • The fast food chain "O'Shaughnessy's" has made multiple appearances across various DC Comics. It's been stated to be a major rival to Big Belly Burgers.


Film

  • The 1980s teen movie Better Off Dead put John Cusack in a humiliating job at a pork-burger restaurant that required him to wear a chef's hat with attached ears and snout, even though he works in the kitchen.
  • In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Brad works at two fast food restaurants. At the first one, he is fired after being forced into an argument by an overly demanding customer; at the second one, he quits in the midst of a delivery ... which he was required to make while wearing a pirate uniform.
  • In Clerks II (and at other points in Kevin Smith's verse) the fast food chain Mooby's fills this role admirably.
  • Alien vs. Predator 2 gives Dallas' younger brother a job as a delivery boy for a pizza parlor. The characters go to great lengths to point out how demeaning and humiliating they believe this is.
  • Coming to America features African prince Akeem and his manservant Semmi getting jobs at "MacDowell's" as part of an attempt to blend in. Akeem actually enjoys the work, but Semmi can't stand it.
  • Not really a fast food restaurant, but Sarah Connor's waitressing job in The Terminator sure had the "hellish" aspect down pat.
  • Scotland, PA starts off with our heroes, the McBeths, doing soul-crushing work at Duncan's Cafe. When they eventually take over the restaurant, it's shown in one brief scene that Pat McBeth really enjoys lording it over her new underlings.
  • West Bank Story, the 2007 Academy Award winner for Best Short Film, involves what amounts to Dueling Falafel Fools—the Kosher King and the Hummus Hut—and has the young, beautiful Hummus Hut employee (the owner's sister) fall in love with an Israeli soldier, making for a pretty little musical parable about Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Yes. Did we mention that it's a parody/reworking of West Side Story?
  • In Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, the title characters go to a location formerly a White Castle, to find that it has been turned into a rival chain. They ask the drive-thru attendant (Anthony Andersen) where a White Castle is, and he becomes so impressed by their determination that he flips out and trashes the restaurant.
  • Inverted in American Beauty. The protagonist quits his white collar job as an editor so that he can work a burger counter and have the least possible amount of responsibility. It has the added benefit of pissing off his success-driven wife even more than being unemployed.
  • In the original Bedazzled, Dudley Moore's character is despondent over his miserable life. 28 years old, no girlfriend, lives in a dreary little basement apartment. And yes, fry cook at Wimpy's.
  • The 1997 comedy film, Good Burger, which was based on the recurring sketch Nickelodeon's All That. Featuring loveable idiot Ed who loves his job as much as his brain can allow, and his snarky sidekick, Dexter, The Good Burger is the epitome of Burger Fool. As far as fast food jobs go, the employees weren't treated badly and they all seemed to like each other and Good Burger. Their rival Mondo Burger, on the other hand, treated their employees as slaves and had a hellish boss.
  • Musical horror comedy, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead - When a Ku Klux Klan funded military-themed fried chicken chain, The Chicken Bunker, builds a restaurant build over an ancient Indian burial ground, the chickens killed take their revenge by taking "possession" of the customers and turning them into "fowl" zombies. The restaurant is meant to be the ultimate example of Burger Fool (despite being a chicken fast-food restaurant). Includes necrophiliac chicken humping, shit-stained restrooms, skirt wearing senior male employees, masturbation in chicken grinders, delicious vats of chicken beaks and claws, cash register humping (lot of sex in here isn't there?), chicken buckets slathered with human waste and excrement, vomiting, ravenous drumsticks, acid nuggets, and the aforementioned zombie chickens.

General Lee Roy: "The general has provided AMPLE accommodations for your displaced Indian dead. They have gone to a better place."
[cuts to employee dumping skeletal human corpses in a common dumpster]

  • The main character of Sex Drive works at a bizarre, Mexican-themed donut kiosk in the mall. Part of the job included a huge, slightly racist mascot costume. His close friends didn't hold it against him, but the punk kids at the mall would take advantage of his limited vision in the suit to stick a dildo onto the front of his costume as he wandered around.
  • In Recess: School's Out, TJ's sister works at a burger joint. Their parents are just as proud of her getting promoted to "Assistant Fry Chef" as they are of TJ saving the world.
  • In UHF, George and Bob are fired from "Big Edna's Burger World" after a distracted George squirts ketchup and mustard onto customers, among other screwups.
  • Demi Lovato's character in the Princess Protection Program is given a job at a Frozen Yoghurt place by the Alpha Bitch specifically to humiliate her and is sabotaged by said Alpha Bitch, but she quite rightly points out that the only person who can feel humiliation is yourself, proceeds to give the girl a speech and walk out with her head high.
  • Married to the Mob has two of these; the fried chicken joint where Angela applies for a job, and the boss turns out to be a total pervert, and the clown-themed burger place where the attempt on Tony's life takes place.
  • In Big Daddy, Sonny Koufax (Adam Sandler) has venomous contempt for the restaurant chain Hooters and the people (especially the women) who work there. His friend, Kevin Gerrity (Jon Stewart), is similarly humiliated when his fiancee is forced to admit in court that her first job was as a Hooters waitress. At the end of the film, Sonny is taken to Hooters for his birthday dinner and jokes to his pals that "I'm gonna sue you assholes for making me come here." The whole thing wraps up with a Brick Joke as we see that Sonny's smug, buttoned-up ex-girlfriend is now forced to waitress there in the chain's iconic tank top and short-shorts after making an unethical career move earlier in the movie.
  • In Bill and Teds Bogus Journey, the boys get into the Battle of the Bands when the woman in charge takes pity on them for working at Pretzels 'N Cheese (but she puts them on last, at midnight, when everyone will probably have left by then).
  • Since it focuses on a fictional fast food chain called Hella-Burger, the slasher film Drive-Thru features a lot of these, including one played by the director of Super Size Me.


Literature

  • In Audrey Wait, the main character's day job is at an ice cream shoppe called Scooper Dooper. The character introduces the uniform (bright pink hat and T-shirt) and slogan (also "Scooper Dooper!") with all the affection people might give a used piece of toilet paper.
  • The main character of Michael J. Nelson's novel Death Rat! is at one point forced to work at "Medieval Burger," whose uniform includes a hat adorned with miniature battlements. The protagonist, like everyone else, is unable to figure out exactly how this helps the restaurant sell food. This mirrors his own experience. Its the job he had to pay the bills between stand-up shows before he was hired on to Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  • Eric Schlosser expounds on the plight of fast food employees in Fast Food Nation, noting that McDonald's entire plan is to make the job so simple and brainless that they can teach a new employee in 15 minutes, making any given employee totally expendable.
  • In Good Omens, Famine opens a chain of fast food restaurants named "Burger Lord." Its employees are perky, in a soulless sort of way, except for that one guy.... Of note is the food it sells. It's a reformulation of MEALS, Famine's line of microwave health dinners, called CHOW. Like MEALS, CHOW contains slightly fewer nutrients than the packaging they sell it in, causing the satisfied customer to die of malnutrition very rapidly, but the evil food scientists working for Famine have found a way to load CHOW with all manner of fat and sugar without increasing other nutritional content, meaning that customers essentially starve to death while growing morbidly obese. Famine finds this endlessly amusing.
  • In Going Bovine, Cameron works at the Buddha Burger.


Live-Action TV

  • Lauren takes this job in The Catherine Tate Show and is forced to wear a squirrel mask. She gets ridiculed by her friends for working there, but naturally, she ain't bovvered.
  • Buffy Summers once held a job at "the Double-Meat Palace," a fast-food chain specializing in combined beef and chicken sandwiches. Her uniform, absolutely ridiculous, is topped off by the hilarious half-cow/half-chicken ball cap. At one point a vampire refuses to fight her because she smells like the restaurant's food; she stakes him out of spite. The Double-Meat Palace also subverted the usual Buffy tradition of having evil forces being behind everything bad; it turns out that the "beef-chicken sandwiches" were actually made from a cheap plant cellulose extract that's been artificially flavored to taste like real meat, rather than human flesh as Buffy thought it was. This was toned down in later episodes as several fast food chains threatened to withdraw advertisements from the show.
    • There's more. Snyder thinks this will be Buffy's future when he's being more than a Jerkass, and when she runs away from Sunnydale she works as a waitress in a diner, a job she returns to in the comics. In the first instance she clearly doesn't like it, though truckers groping her wouldn't help. In the latter she struggles through a combination of guilt over her actions and being Brought Down to Normal.
  • Nickelodeon's puppet-sitcom Mr. Meaty revolves around the hijinks of two teenaged employees of the eponymous fast-food franchise.
  • Dave Lister of Red Dwarf dreams of starting his own fast food restaurant, even going so far as to design the silly hat. The dream falls by the wayside long before there's the remotest chance of the restaurant itself becoming a reality, but not before an episode in which a race of super-evolved housecats build their religion around it.
  • In Black Books, Bernard is locked out for the night without any money and takes a job in a burger bar to keep warm and dry. He gives people the wrong burgers and throws fries at them with his hands, before resigning an hour later when it stops raining.
  • On The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Maddy works at a fast food restaurant to supplement her income from the Tipton candy counter in one episode. London briefly joins her as an employee, then buys the chain in order to get back at the overbearing manager.
  • Chuck features the impossibly attractive female CIA agent working undercover at a Der Wienerschnitzel-type hot dog establishment in impossibly revealing Germanic attire.
  • On News Radio Lisa once went undercover at a burger joint to expose health violations. She ends up becoming manager and seriously considered quitting journalism, only to lose the job when she is accused of the very thing she was trying to uncover in the first place.
  • Lost: before Hurley won the lottery, he worked at Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack. He was notably incompetent as well.
  • In the Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode "Sabrina the Sandman", Sabrina takes a job at Pork on a Pole, where she not only has to wear an embarrassing uniform, but she also has to buy it.
  • Ren of Even Stevens worked at a toast store and successfully lobbied for better working conditions.
  • The Canadian series Fries With That? was set in a fast food restaurant. Only the assistant manager really enjoyed his job.
  • In one episode of Doogie Howser, M.D., Doogie tries to prove to Vinnie that he can survive working in a "degrading, dead-end" fast food job (“Burger Baby”), just like any “normal teenager” his own age. As a genius doctor, it should be undoubtedly easy for him, right?...Wrong! In fact, it’s a lot more difficult than he realizes.
  • Desperate Housewives:

Lynette: Dave lost his job at the plant, and he is now handing out flyers at a chicken restaurant, and--prepare to wince--there is a chicken suit involved.

  • In season 2 of How I Met Your Mother, Lily takes a job as a waitress in a Hawaïan restaurant; she has to wear a local costume and welcome customers (among whom are her friends) with "Aloha".
  • Fatso Burger, Eric's temporary job in season 1 of That '70s Show fits this trope to a T. The place itself is mediocre, he has a silly outfit, and his boss is embarrassing. He's afraid to quit because his hardass father Red wants him to learn responsibility and all that stuff, even though his girlfriend and mother both try hard to get him to quit. Eventually he does quit, and Red doesn't mind.
  • McDonald's/Wac Arnold's inspirational ad skit on Chappelle's Show.
  • Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Ashley works at Hot Dog on A Stick and wears a ridiculous red and yellow outfit complete with silly hat.
  • Eddie on Family Matters works at Mighty Weenie and he wears a hat that has a hot dog on top.
  • The entire premise of the short-lived comedy Life On A Stick. (Okay, more like the framing, but still...)
  • iCarly:
    • Sam gets a job at Chilly My Bowl, to pay $500 back to Carly and Freddie.
    • Carly gets a job at the Groovy Smoothie in another episode.
  • In one episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Dick quits his job at the university for a trivial reason and winds up working at a burger joint (Rusty's) because he has too much pride to apologize for his behavior. It all works itself out at the end, of course.
  • Breaking Bad naturally twists this in the darkest way possible with "Los Pollos Hermanos." Gustavo Fring owns a number of Los Pollos Hermanos locations (which make Mexican-style fried and roast chicken), but his real source of income is hiding bags of Walter White's high-quality, industrially-produced meth in the buckets of batter he sends out to his franchises.
  • In an episode of My Name Is Earl, the title character works at a local fast food restaurant where the boss is a huge jerk and treats his employees like crap.
  • As if his first job wasn't humiliating enough, Al Bundy (then Peg, after Al finds out that Peg's make-up selling job is costing her more money than she's making) was forced to take a second job as a cook at Burger Trek in one episode of Married... with Children. The burgers are made out of kangaroo, the special sauce is mixed in a plastic trash can from a noxious powder made from something that washes out the color on tomatoes, and Al is constantly berated by an obnoxious manager half his age (played by Pauly Shore) for forgetting to say "Woosh" when he drops the burger down the chute.
  • PJ has his job at Kwikky Chikky in Good Luck Charlie.
  • Roseanne does a stint at a chicken joint as one of her many odd jobs over the series to keep her family afloat. It's not too bad, but her barely legal boss has a superiority complex and can't understand how her family comes before her responsibility to him. The family actually makes more fun of her when she gets a job sweeping hair at a salon.
  • Hang Time features Julie and Mary-Beth selling corn dogs in outfits that are surprisingly much more Fan Service-y than dorky. They look more like cheerleader costumes than your typical fast food outfit depicted on a sitcom might. However, Mary Beth lampshaded this trope by threatening to beat up anyone who laughed at her outfit (not that they would have anyway).


Music


New Media

  • Played for not-laughs in the podstory "It's Easy to Make a Sandwich." The protagonist's repetitive and depersonalizing job slowly drives him insane.


Newspaper Comics

  • The comic Lucky Cow, which is set in the eponymous burger joint, revolves around this trope.


Professional Wrestling


Tabletop Games

  • The Old World of Darkness RPG Werewolf: The Apocalypse has the burger chain O'Tolleys as a subsidiary to the big bad corp Pentex. While many of its restaurants are relatively normal, there are also some which slip evil spirits or the other white meat in the burgers, and transform their employees into spiritually possessed freaks. All of them, however, conform to the standards laid out by this page. As the splatbooks says: In most part-time jobs, teenagers learn vital business skills, decision making and other abilities that will help them in life. While working for O'Tolleys, they learn to make burgers. Period.
  • In the d20 Modern Urban Arcana setting, one of the organizations is a children's fast food restaurant called the Prancing Pony (the same name as a tavern located in Shadowdale in the Forgotten Realms setting, for some unexplained reason) which notes that GMs should not have its players join it (as it would offer a McJob and nothing more).
  • Deconstructed in Unknown Armies, where the co-conspirators of Mak Attax (who to a one work at "The Scotsman") are actually part of an organization dedicated to bringing about a "magical renaissance" by unleashing small doses of magickal energy into people's food, then watching the results (and occasionally helping the victims if the results go bad). They're probably the largest, probably the least competent, and probably the most benign secret conspiracy within the setting. Despite this seeming aversion of the dullness of Burger Fool work, the game is pretty clear that not only do you still have to contend with that soul-crushing banality (which costs them conspirators) but also that the conspiracy stuff itself isn't as much fun as it sounds.
    • On the other hand, despite the monotony and the skepticism they get from the rest of the Occult Underground, they managed to use "the Scotsman" to pull off one of the most successful magical rituals of recent memory by aligning the "chakra points" of the American consciousness.

Video Games

  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has multiple ridiculous fast food restaurants. Burger Shot and Cluckin' Bell in particular both equip their employees with ridiculous headgear; this seems to have had a particularly harrowing effect on Cluckin' Bell's employees ("Cluckety fuck. Place your order.") Minor character OG Loc is assigned to Burger Shot by his parole agreement as a "hygiene technician", and one of the game's very first missions involves getting caught in a drive-by at a local fast food restaurant's drive-thru (a drive-by in which Big Smoke refuses to participate, because he's too busy eating).
  • In Grand Theft Auto IV, we learn that Cluckin' Bell's chicken-suited mascot has a name: Cluck Norris! Apparently, he's also a martial-arts master...
  • In No More Heroes, there's a fast food joint just outside of Travis' hotel named "Burger Suplex", which also keeps the flow of naming many landmarks after pro wrestling moves.
  • Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 managed a reference to both Burger King and McDonald's by having a fast-food restaurant called "McBurger Kong". With a giant ape on the roof, and bananas forming a shape reminiscent of the McDonald's M.
  • Saints Row has Freckle Bitch's, featuring radio commercials with a chain-smoking, raspy-voiced, middle-aged broad hawking its greasy wares. The special New Zealand/Australia only collectors edition of Saints Row 2 is a large white box with Freckle Bitch herself in a suggestive position on the top. Oh yeah, just try and carry that out of the video game shop without getting noticed.
  • The Sims 2 has the Culinary career, which starts you off in one of these and has you work your way up the ladder to Celebrity Chef status.
    • The University expansion has the Philosophy major's final semester. "Senior Thesis: Preparing for the Fast-Food Industry". Amusingly, Philosophy is the major indicated to be best for the aforementioned Culinary career.
  • The "Mmm, Bison!" restaurant chain in Dead State was presumably one of these before the Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Snuckey's in Sam and Max Hit The Road is a Burger Fool whose employment policies cater to the sort of poor slob who actually aspires to Burger Fooldom. In each of the three locations you can visit is a curiously identical relative of Bernard Bernoulli who will have the same conversation with you. He's a graduate of the bachelor program at Snuckey University and is thus qualified to jerk soda, cook burgers, and open difficult jars, but if he wants to make manager he'll have to enroll in their postgraduate program.


Web Animation

  • On Homestar Runner, the fast-food restaurant "Blubb-O's", which may just consist of a non-sequitur-spouting drive-thru speaker box ("Sever your leg, please, it's the greatest day.") in the middle of nowhere. Coach Z wears a whale costume at one point, and mangles the speaker box's creepy catch phrase to make it creepier ("I'll chop off your legs!") The chain is evidently endorsed by a hip-hop artist who promotes their "Thick n' Nasty" burger. (EEEEEEEEUNGH!) Strong Bad also wears a hot-dog-shaped "sad clown" mascot costume (the "Crying Clown-Dog") at one point to advertise Bubs' Concession Stand.

Strong Bad: Okay, then I quit.
Bubs: Fine! But don't even think about swiping that costume!
Strong Bad: Uh, you made me buy this costume.
Bubs: Oh! Pleasure doing business with you, then.


Webcomics

  • One of the early comics in Bob and George (a hand-drawn one) had George working at McBoogers. The author actually stated that everyone should work in fast food at least once to see things from the other side of the counter.
  • This HOUSD strip one explains itself.
  • Loserz features "Mc-Hamchunks" and "Cock in the Box". Hilarity Ensues.
  • Half of the strip Phil Likes Tacos is about gaming and the way people treat gamers. The other half is about this trope, though the emphasis on the hell that is customers, coworkers, and the clueless decisions of corporate management makes it pretty clear that the author has actually 'been there' instead of just working off stereotypes seen on TV.
  • In Questionable Content, Pizza Girl's outfit may be a part of this, or she may just be a Superhero who delivers pizzas.
  • In Sluggy Freelance Gwynn had to work at Burger Meister before getting her job at the zombie themed restaurant, and the snooty waiter also had to work there when the expensive restaurant burns down. Despite the low pay and ridiculous uniform, he's still as unbelievably insulting to the customers as ever.
  • After losing his job at the comic shop and being denied unemployment insurance, Mike of Something*Positive picks up a job at a local frog-themed burger chain. The usual problems of stupid customers and paradoxical corporate bureaucracy ("the bathrooms must be sparkling clean, but we'll charge you for using cleaning supplies more than once a month") set in quickly. The fact that he accepts this fate stoically and almost cheerfully indicates some very impressive character development, though.
    • Mike later finds employment at a different fast-food joint, and is surprised (and a little disturbed) to find that it's an aversion of this. The manager specifically tells Mike that being an employee there doesn't mean he has to take crap from anyone, customer or not.
  • In Sinfest, Lil' Evil's job at McDebbil's.


Web Original


Western Animation

  • The Trope Namer is from Static Shock, and is a thin parody of "Burger King". The uniform includes a motley hat with bells. Virgil Hawkins is forced to work there by his father, who is unaware of the significant commitment Virgil has to his "charity work".
  • On Kim Possible, the pseudo-Mexican eatery "Bueno Nacho" figures heavily in the series, but the second episode has Kim and Ron move behind the counter. Kim, usually the best at everything, fails, while Ron invents a hybrid foodstuff called the "Naco" (nacho + taco) that becomes a running gag in the series, and earns a promotion to manager. The Naco sets up another episode plot, when the BN Inc. management send Ron a royalty check for $99 million. Which was doubly hilarious in Mexico, considering what Naco means here... Accidental Bilingual Bonus, anyone?
  • The main characters of Beavis and Butthead work at Burger World, which is a fairly realistic amalgamation of the McDonald's and Burger King fast food franchises. The usual humiliation aspect is absent, as the store is just another place for the boys to take their roughhousing and Toilet Humor such as frying up worms and throwing meat patties around. The job is still horrible and their manager treats them terribly, but they're just too stupid to notice. Oddly, they never get fired, even when their pranks once caused the health inspectors to close the store.
  • Invader Zim put the title alien in a fast-food restaurant three times. Each of which portray fast food chains as horrible and disgusting to an absurd, terrifying degree:
    • In "Career Day", he winds up at McMeaties, and thinks that he'll eventually be promoted to ruler of Earth.
    • In "The Frycook What Came From All That Space", he is kidnapped and sent to the dreaded Foodcourtia, a Planet of Hats that serves the sole function of feeding aliens from elsewhere. He has to escape before the dreaded "Foodening", when a flood of customers makes it impossible to leave for twenty years due to the gravity pull (a time warp thing is involved too or something).
    • In "Germs", Zim's germophobic antics lead him to McMeaties again, where he discovers that the meat is germ-free. After asking an employee he discovers that the meat was NASA-developed SPAAAAAAACE MEEEEEEAT! But since they couldn't actually afford SPAAAAAAACE MEEEEEEAT, they made them out of NAPKINS.
    • In "Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain," GIR goes on a rampage to order food at Crazy Taco.
  • Rocko's Modern Life had a restaurant called Chokey Chicken (later Ret Conned to "Chewy Chicken" due to the censors finally catching the name on the radar), which specifically parodied the omnipresent nature of places like McDonald's. One great example is the episode where Rocko brings Heffer to France and tries to get him to try some new cuisine. They just end up eating at a Chokey Chicken that has been built into the Eiffel Tower.
  • The Simpsons,
    • First and foremost, Krusty Burger, complete with pimple-faced geeky teens working there (and, in one case, an elderly man [Grampa Simpson]). The "secret sauce" is actually mayonnaise that's been left out in the sun all day. And as one character points out, the name "Krusty Burger" itself isn't all that appetizing; Krusty himself nearly gets sick from eating it in an advertising spot. The boondocks outside Springfield are apparently home to even less savory chains, with names like "Burger Place", "Skobo's", and "Dimwillie's".
    • In the Flashback episode "I Married Marge", Homer worked at a place called Gulp N Blow which was just as bad. They wouldn't even tell him what was in their secret sauce.
    • The "Future-Drama" episode has Lisa starting Hot Dog on a Stick management camp.
  • In The Powerpuff Girls episode "Not So Awesome Blossom", Blossom starts working at a rather low-grade hot-dog place after suffering a Heroic B.S.O.D.. When Mojo calls to make his demands, he actually rubs her nose in it by telling her to bring him two hot dogs. ("And don't forget the ketchup!" he adds.)
  • Danny Phantom had Nasty Burger which is frequently referenced, including a special where a ghost was threatening to kill all of Danny's loved ones by overheating the special nasty sauce (no, "overheating the special nasty sauce" is not an Unusual Euphemism) to kill them. The main character doesn't take a job there to learn any form of An Aesop or some such. Nope, it's just his Local Hangout.

"Nasty Burger, it's just one letter away from tasty!"

    • There is one character who takes a job there, but it's done to show how bad off her family is financially
  • In an episode of Jimmy Neutron, Jimmy, Sheen, and Carl start working at McSpanky's. Ironically, Skeet, the Employee of the Month, considers Jimmy to be the idiot of the group, and forces him to stand outside the restaurant wearing a hamburger suit, repeating the phrase: "If you want cheap food with taste, put McSpanky's in your face."
  • Daria had to work at "It's a Nutty, Nutty World", and announce her enthusiasm about nuts to every customer. Squirrels started to attack her because she smelled like nuts as well. On the episode where several characters find themselves in a Sam's Club-style superstore one weekend afternoon, Daria and Jane find the uber-Goth, Andrea, working in a wholesale club in full uniform and is deathly afraid of them mocking her for having that kind of job, as she is aware that Daria and Jane are the school's queens of snark. However, she is pleasantly surprised to see the girls reassure her that they understand her position and promise not to tell anyone.
  • Doug had the Honker Burger, which was a hangout but also managed to have a small bit of satire here and there. In one episode, Doug learns that the giant burger mascot everyone torments is his neighbor Mr. Dink. He spends some time in the suit, seeing how cruel the teasing can be, and ultimately wins peoples' respect by using the suit's buoyancy to save somebody from drowning.
  • King of the Hill played this to the hilt with Bobby's first job, selling food at racing events. When he complained to his dad, he was told to suck it up and enjoy it for the sake of enjoying it, which he did... until Hank found out his boss (who was a mentally-retarded sociopath) really was as bad as Bobby had said and was endangering Bobby's life.
  • Carl Squared had the pirate-themed Buccaneer Burger, complete with humiliating costumes. Unsurprisingly, C2 thought it was great place to work.
  • 6teen: Burger Mc Flipster's, The restaurant itself appears to be a combination parody of McDonald's & Burger King.
  • Teen Titans, "Employee Of the Month", Beast Boy goes to work at "Mega Meaty Meat", a restaurant wherein everything from shakes to fries is apparently made of meat. A staunch vegetarian ("I've been most of those animals!"), Beast Boy sticks with it (in the hopes of winning the moped being offered as prize for "Employee of the Month"), and discovers that the eatery is actually a front for a sentient tofu monster from space. No, really!
  • On Metalocalypse, Nathan has a nightmare that his bandmates are all killed during a show, and he ends up working at a burger joint due to his never finishing high school - and he's bad at that job.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants works at such a restaurant, but he loves the job. Squidward, on the other hand, hates it with a passion.
  • An episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force revolved around Frylock and Shake getting a job at "Slurp-a-Lunch", a restaurant which serves smoothies made from pureed meat.
  • The waitresses in the resort restuarant in Stoked! have to dress in pirate wench costumes.
  • An episode of Tiny Toon Adventures had Buster and Babs working at Weenie Burger (the series' fast food parody), complete with the overbearing boss and Montana Max deciding to be the customer from Hell.

"Weenie Burgers are so much fun to eat! If you look real hard you might even find the meat!"

  • Jeremy from Phineas and Ferb works at Slushy Dawg, where their motto is "Slushy Dawg will never get any better", unless he's working at Slushy Burger, whose motto is "Pickles so green and meat so brown, Lunchtime's fun with Slushy the Clown!" Despite all this, they're both pretty nice places and Jeremy seems happy working there.
  • In a flashback sequence in G.I. Joe: Renegades, we learn that Duke briefly worked the drive-through of a fast food joint between high-school and the Army. Flint rubs it in when he isn't bragging about the tackle he'd landed on Duke at a football game that won his school a state championship. Subverted at the end of the scene when Flint sees Duke leaving for home on crutches; knowing the injury is his fault, he realizes he's being cruel and offers Duke a ride.
  • Despite the kids being too young to get a job at local place Slausen's on Hey Arnold!, it doesn't mean that the joint is free of squeaky-voiced teens (voiced by Dan Castellaneta, of course).
  • Burgerphile in Dan Vs.. In Dan Vs Burgerphile, we learn that about 70% of Dan's diet consists of Burgerphile food. Despite the title, Dan's grudge is only limited to the Married to the Job manager who refuses to admit that he got Dan's order wrong. Notably, Dan actually likes Hortense the register girl who likes him back.
  • The Toy Story short "Small Fry" takes place inside a fast food restaurant called Poultry Palace, which features Buzz Lightyear of Star Command Fun Meal toys (including an imposter Buzz Lightyear who was the main focus of the short and a mini Zurg toy), as with several discarded Fun Meal toys who secretly form an organization (who "accept" the real Buzz as one of their members) inside the restaurant's storage room.

Real Life

  • Truth in Television: These companies have been documented to have industry conferences seeking ways to minimize training for their employees.
    • Makes sense, since fast food was based on the Assembly Line method of manufacturing—not everyone can learn to make a car, but almost anyone can be trained to do step 7B and 11C. All businesses try to minimize training requirements, fast food is just very familiar to a large number of people and was based on the assembly line method.
  • Comedian Dane Cook has a stand-up routine about the horrors of working the drive-thru at Burger King.
  • One of Brad Pitt's first jobs was to wear a big chicken outfit and stand in front of an American fast-food joint called El Pollo Loco.
  • The multitudes of bored temp workers who are forced to stand on the roadside holding cardboard advertisements for pizza or subs on a hot summer day can attest to this trope.
  • The Hot Dog On a Stick franchise, seen in many malls, has long had a pretty cheesy uniform for its employees (notice the girls get stuck with the dorkier hat). Even stranger, Hot Dog on a Stick is an employee-owned company, meaning that the employee-owners have collectively agreed to wear this garb.
    • Parodied in a Mad TV skit called Stick Chicks, where the employees are actually secret agents in the vein of Charlie's Angels (a pretty one, a smart one, and a lovable goof).
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