Antics with Ashley | Graphic by Monica Brutto | The Wright State Guardian
Long before I worked for Kings Island and longer before I worked for the Guardian, I worked for McDonalds. I started fresh out of high school, and it was my first job. There is nothing I remember more about my time there than the day the brawl happened.
Exposition
It was sometime in April 2020. We were in the throngs of the pandemic, and McDonalds was considered an essential business for some reason. I was due at 6 a.m. for my morning shift. I did not normally work mornings, but it was Saturday, and we were understaffed. My favorite manager was working that day, so I figured it was going to be a good shift.
I was early because my dad went fishing and he usually left long before the sun came up, meaning I was dropped off early.
I was on headset and drink-making that day. My job was to hand out drinks and take orders at the front. It sounded easy and simple… except the person at the window was an hour late, then called off entirely.
Now I had to work the window, headset and drinks. That was fine; we did not get busy usually until 8 a.m., then someone would be coming in to take the window.
At about 7:30 a.m., I took an order for a large black coffee and sausage biscuit. The person on the other end emphasized that the coffee had to be black and fresh, so I made sure it was.
About five minutes later, I was joking with the manager on duty and we were having a good time until the car I just served veered into the drive-thru again. I opened the window and the person proceeded to chuck their freshly brewed coffee in my face. After that, they threw their sandwich at me.
The next 10 minutes were of me in pain. I was berated because she had accidentally received a McMuffin instead of a biscuit, and she demanded her food and drink to be remade, as well as a refund. She called me every name in the book in the process. Once that was all said and done, she spit on me and drove off. The manager I was just joking with did nothing.
Due to me being the only service person working, I had to stay and work. I took that for what it was and continued my work. It hit 8 a.m., and we started to get really busy, and there was not another employee in sight.
So it was me and the manager. We had kept the dining room closed because of COVID and staffing, but someone broke in and decided they were going to get served. We served them with the condition that they had to leave after, but they decided to sit down at a table and eat anyway. After that, a bunch of people followed suit. So we were literally breaking the law, which was fun.
Finally, another employee comes in. My manager tries to force them into the window for my break, but they throw a temper tantrum because of the weather. So they meander, doing a mix of hashbrowns and taking care of the people who broke in.
Tempers were increasing throughout the day between the entitled people in the lobby and the people who honestly were waiting forever in line. No one was in a good mood. It was the perfect storm for what ended up being an all out brawl.
The brawl
I remember the brawl happening around the beginning of the lunch rush. Tensions were really high; staff were all mad at each other and every customer was mad at us. Then the truck came.
Our truck would come every Friday, but they were late due to shipping errors that they said were COVID-related. According to the manager, they said the truck was coming Monday, but in the end, it showed up in the middle of one of the busiest times of the day.
Our drive-thru was set up in a way where they had to block one of the lanes so the truck could be unloaded. Meaning, in this chaos, the manager had to leave to unload the truck and close the lane, leaving us in a worse state.
That is what made the brawl happen. Someone had got the idea that if they could get to the speaker, they were free to order, so they skipped from the back of the line, went around the truck and tried to back up in the closed lane. While doing this, they ended up hitting three cars, the truck and the order box.
The people whose cars got hit were not happy. It led to an argument. That argument turned into a fist fight, and that fist fight turned into a brawl. In five short minutes, almost everyone in line was fighting.
My manager and the truck driver tried to stop it, but the crowd started to attack the manager, and the truck driver joined the fight after someone kicked him in the head.
Naturally, as one does, I called the cops.
The police and ambulance arrived 10 minutes after the fighting started. There were several people who were bloody and bruised that needed ambulances or a hospital.
As this was going on, another person had the idea of trying to get in the closed lane (not seeing the car already there) and rammed into the back of one of the cars with some of the only people who did not join the brawl. The car had a family of five in it and the kids got hurt, meaning even more ambulances were called.
By now, the whole event became a spectacle, and people began to show up to report on the scene.
Aftermath
There were several people who ended up in the hospital that day. We were also on every crime site and newspaper that Springfield had to offer. By the time everything was all said and done, we were somehow at fault because we were being slow, and if we were not slow, a brawl would never have happened.
We were told to close until the scene was all cleared, but with our limited staff, we closed for the rest of the day. We could not even go home; instead, we had to deep clean the entire store. Even the manager that was sucked into the brawl had to help.
From that day on, not only did I never take a shift again, but I also put in my two weeks.
The cherry on top? The person that was supposed to take the window originally never showed up to work and was not even written up for it.
