“You chose to work in the consumer service profession, and I’m a consumer. Service me.”
Customer service industry jobs are brutal. The cheery synthetic fluorescent lighting betrays the uncomfortable truth behind the scenes. Workers are so beaten down they’re almost robotic, while the weirdly controlling manager on a massive power trip seems to think people actually want to be there. Customers make things worse, using the minimum wage workers as their personal punching bags.
The hit show Buffy the Vampire Slayer viscerally illustrates the horrors of customer service jobs, highlighting why they are so miserable. Although season six, episode 12, Doublemeat Palace, exposes the worst aspects of the customer service industry, themes of work life, service, and earning a living appear throughout the series.
Amid the horror background, the show doesn’t deny that these jobs are awful even without the monsters.
*Warning—There are spoilers ahead for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it on Hulu and then come back!
Examples of Service Industry Jobs
A service industry job is any position primarily focused on servicing customers needing assistance while patronizing a business.
Examples include:
- Retail
- Restaurants
- Theme parks/movie theaters
- Call centers
- Delivery
In all of these industries, a worker’s primary responsibility is assisting customers in finding what they need, making their purchases, and resolving problems. Service industry workers generally don’t earn commissions but can earn tips for good service.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Take on Service Industry Jobs
You might dismiss Buffy as a run-of-the-mill teenage drama, but it’s far more than that.
It’s about growing up and finding your place in the world. The genius of the show is in the metaphors that showcase real-life situations that everyone must navigate, not just as a teenager but as a young adult and often beyond.
Making money and finding a career are among the real-life situations Buffy explores. Getting your first job is often a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood while starting a stable career showcases your growth.
Floating from One Bad Job To Another
In season four, Buffy the Vampire Slayer heavily explores this rite of passage through Xander, one of the show’s main characters.
As his friends all go off to college, Xander works a number of terrible, low-wage jobs. He delivers pizzas, drives an ice cream truck, and tends bar. None of the jobs work out, and he jumps from one to another in a desperate attempt to earn an income and find his place in the world.
Xander’s floundering is relatable. Many of us bounced from horrible job to horrible job, unsure of what we wanted or our direction. And many of us are still doing it.
Retail Work
Buffy the Vampire Slayer explores retail work in season six’s “Life Serial”.
In this episode, Buffy is looking for a way to pay the massive pile of bills that built up while she was indisposed after season five. Giles, the group’s mentor, offers her a part-time position at his store, The Magic Box.
Unfortunately for Buffy, a trio of wannabe big bads make it their mission to make her life miserable. They create a time loop, trapping her in the same 20 minutes of retail misery for hours.
Buffy’s short stint at the Magic Box does an excellent job of illustrating the drudgery that is life in retail. As Buffy herself puts it
“I was bored to tears even before the hour that wouldn’t end.”
Retail work is often boring, tedious, and unappreciated.
Restaurants as the Epitome of Service Industry Jobs
No sector better highlights customer service workers’ horrors than the restaurant industry.
Restaurants account for a huge portion of service industry jobs, bringing us to the episode that best showcases the real horrors of working in this environment: Doublemeat Palace.
The Double Meat Palace is a fast-food restaurant in the Buffyverse. Because of Buffy’s extracurricular activities, her career opportunities are greatly limited. She needs money, so she takes a job in the only place she can: the food industry.
Buffy embraces her new role. She wants to work and earn money. However, something peculiar is happening at the restaurant. Employees act like they have something to hide, never fully explaining how the burgers are actually made. Some of Buffy’s coworkers miss their shifts, never to be heard of again.
The creepy manager focuses on extreme productivity but is strangely secretive about certain areas. He gets weird when Buffy asks about the walk-in freezer, and he keeps the dehydrated pickle stash locked.
The entire atmosphere of the Double Meat Palace simultaneously evokes real-life fast-food restaurants and horror movie vibes. The lighting and soundtrack enhance this phenomenon, and the viewer is left wondering if the manager is a demon preying on hapless employees or if Buffy is just learning how awful service jobs are.
It could easily be either, or both.
Seeing Demons Where There Is Just Life
Buffy’s coworkers add plausibility to the idea that something nefarious is afoot at the Doublemeat Palace. They’re weirdly scared of joking around, taking breaks, or doing anything that doesn’t support the company. In addition, they’re withdrawn, downtrodden, and shocked that such a lively girl returned for a second shift.
When she broaches the subject with her friends, Xander, who has experience in the service industry, stands as the voice of reason. He knows how it is.
His reassurance that nothing is amiss reminds us all that what she’s experiencing is the reality for most of these positions:
“It’s fast food. I have swum in these murky waters, my friend. There is assorted creepiness, there’s staring, there’s the enthusiastic not showing up at all. I think you’re seeing demons where there’s just life.”
Xander is right.
We’ve all experienced similar things while working in the service industry. These everyday horrors aren’t evidence of monsters; the job itself is the real monster.
But There’s A Monster
Buffy is a horror show, so of course, there is going to be an actual monster. But it’s not what you’d expect.
The monster wasn’t the manager, as Buffy first thought. He was just your typical low-level manager on a tiny power trip. Poor Manny wasn’t even the worst manager; he just wasn’t a good one. Unfortunately, he met his untimely demise at the hands of the real monster, a Doublemeat Palace customer.
This demon preyed on Double Meat Palace employees because they “slid right down” after working all day in a grease pit and because these low-wage employees are renowned for just not showing up. Ghosting is rampant in these fields, no one would suspect that they were murdered, they’d just assume they quit.
Making the demon a customer is part of the genius of the show. As most service industry workers can attest – the customers are often the worst part of the job. They’re rude, condescending, and mean-spirited. They make employee’s lives miserable simply because they can. And it’s always the ones you least expect: the sweet, innocent-looking old lady that turns the meanest when the opportunity strikes.
The Job Is Still Horrible
At the end of the episode, Buffy slays the demon and keeps her job at the Doublemeat Palace.
An interesting point about this episode is that killing the bad guy didn’t resolve the initial problem. The job is still miserable. It’s boring; the employees are the same, and Buffy still comes home smelling like cooked grease.
The new manager seems a little less creepy, but she still thinks employees want to work long hours and are happy toiling away in fast food. Her final words to Buffy remind us of the often-pervasive attitude managers have about this type of low-wage work.
“I don’t like short-timers. I like people who want to be here. Maybe you didn’t take this job seriously before, but I want you to be shooting for this from here on out,” she says, pointing to her 10-year badge.
Who realistically wants to work in fast food for ten years? Why do managers think anyone is shooting for that?
Service Industry Jobs Are Horrible
No job is perfect. However, jobs in the service sector are cursed with a special type of horror.
People in these positions are underpaid and underappreciated. They have to deal with unruly customers and managers who don’t care about them in the slightest. In illustrating these positions, Buffy was true to life, even before the demon.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult for normal people to escape. The majority of jobs available, especially to those with no college education, are in these industries. Some geographic areas only have these types of job openings available, making service work the only viable option for job seekers.
We can all help make the jobs less horrible. We can be respectful of the employees working these menial jobs. We can stop judging them based on their job and start treating them like human beings.
Service positions suck, but we can all do a tiny bit to make them a little better.
While a lot of entry level jobs, service industry or not, are low wage and less than inspiring, there is usually a way to move up. I have one friend, no college degree, who worked his way up into managing a Walmart superstore. He made six figures pretty early in his career and retired early with real wealth. He had great talent and stuck with it and was rewarded. The way up is almost always by becoming part of management and working your way up in the company. But I agree service industry is a hard place to get ahead and has a lot of icky aspects. Its why I picked engineering, I was competing with a smaller group because most people weren’t attracted to math, chemistry and physics.
Yeah, some folks can move up while working in service industry, and some of us get it as our first “real job” and decide to do something different. But not everyone can do that, and I appreciated the way this show illustrated the atmosphere. Really this was just an excuse to write more about my favorite show, but thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!
That last paragraph is so, so important. It’s been a while since I’ve worked in the service industry but I can tell you, my like, seven years working in the grocery store (high school and university) definitely had an impact on how I treat people I interact with in the industry today. I remember how miserable the job could be at times; treating those who are doing the job I didn’t necessarily enjoy with respect is literally the least I can do.
I think part of the reason that service jobs are so awful is that some customers are entitled jerks. It’s been awhile since I’ve worked in that industry as well, but I don’t see the bad behavior decreasing unfortunately. I treat people in any position kindly as well, a person’s worth isn’t based on the job that they perform.