Workers Reveal What It's Really Like To Work At Waffle House

There are plenty of diners dotted across the American landscape, but few roadside eateries are as iconic as Waffle House. The restaurant with its yellow sign and brown brick building is about as no-frills as you get, and while you can instantly smell grease in the air, you won't get a whiff of pretentiousness. Since its humble Georgia beginnings in 1955, Waffle House has been about serving its customers good, simple food and providing honest work for those who cook and serve that food.

Working at Waffle House is by no means a glamorous job. Managers often do many of the same menial tasks as first-day employees fresh on the job. "It's hard to get an inflated opinion of yourself when you're washing dishes every day," the company's president Walt Ehmer said (though how often Mr. Ehmer pulls dish duty is unknown).

Food service can often be a tiring job with low pay and long hours, and in that regard, Waffle House is comparable to working at Wendy's or Taco Bell. Yet, there are also key differences to this 24/7 dining establishment. Straight from the employees themselves, this is what it's like to work at Waffle House.

Quite possibly the trickiest aspect of learning the ropes of Waffle House employment is learning the Waffle House order language. The menu at Waffle House isn't exactly complex, but since servers and grill cooks do things old school and don't use any sort of computer to file customer orders, keeping track of it all can be complicated. In order to ensure that those scattered, smothered, and covered hash browns come out just as the customer ordered, the staff use a shorthand code (via The Wall Street Journal).

As waitresses read out the orders to cooks, the grill operators arrange the plates in certain ways to let them know what each order entails. For example, a face-up mustard packet signifies a pork chop, and face down is country ham. Jelly cups in certain plate positions indicate how to cook the eggs. There are tons of other complex condiment positions that tell staff just how you want everything on your order.

Not surprisingly, this can be pretty confusing for newbies. A grill cook on Reddit said they were new on the job and found the entire thing to be tough to get used to. Waffle House manager Katie Pearson told the Associated Press that it took her a few weeks before all that grill code made sense. She's now a pro and said she'll be fluent in the code forever.

Perhaps you consider yourself a regular Waffle House customer, but are you really a regular if the grill cooks don't start prepping your hash browns just the way you like before you even sit down? That's a debate for another time, but one thing is for sure: If you work at Waffle House, you'll most certainly get to know the regulars.

Katie Pearson, a Waffle House manager in South Carolina, said that many of her customers order the same thing every time they visit. She's so familiar with some regulars that she starts buttering their toast just the way they like when they pull into the parking lot. "You become familiar with it," she said. "You kind of get to know everybody." Some regulars Pearson sees every day, and she considers them almost like family.

Getting to know those customers and developing regulars is essential for the chain's business. Waffle House manager Randy Coleman told The Wall Street Journal that he won't hire somebody if they aren't friendly and conversational. It doesn't take him long to detect if somebody isn't cut out for the job, either. "You will not be able to fake it," Coleman said, further explaining: "It won't be hard to figure out how you really feel about people."

Working at a job like Waffle House, which can be slammed with hungry patrons in a matter of mere seconds, can be incredibly tiring. A slow shift at the Waffle House typically means low tips, so while staying busy with hungry customers is certainly a good thing, it can understandably take a toll.

In a piece on working at the famed late-night dining establishment, The Wall Street Journal noted an especially revealing Glassdoor review from a worker who had survived the Waffle House trenches. "You will find grits in everything you wear," they said. Former waffle slinger Yehong Zhu noted in an essay for Slate that she was typically exhausted at the end of her shifts, which included duties besides simply taking orders and serving customers. "Sometimes I scrubbed plates. Sometimes I scrubbed toilets," said Zhu. That's right, Waffle House employees do it all.

Bon Appétit writer Andrew Knowlton spent an entire 24 hours working at a Waffle House (an exercise in stamina for sure). The experience left him not surprisingly exhausted and greasy. Simply put, working at a Waffle House isn't for slackers. As Knowlton put it, "Being a short-order cook is the hardest job on the planet."

If you've ever been to Waffle House at 2 a.m. on a weekend, then you know the crowd can be a bit livelier than the customers who fill up the weekday morning barstools. Every employee in the service industry is going to run into rude customers occasionally, and Waffle House is no different. Only at Waffle House, drunk customers are 100% a given.

A Waffle House waitress on Reddit said that a customer getting sick and throwing up was a weekly occurrence. "Courteous customers make it into the toilets or in the grass," she said. You can probably guess the sort of mess that the less courteous customers leave. While intoxicated customers getting sick is one thing, some can be downright unruly. 

Waffle House fights don't often make headlines — unless Kid Rock is involved — but they do occasionally happen. A Waffle House manager on Reddit said they've "seen plenty of fights over the years," including a drunk who had his dinner plate broken over his head.

It's logical to believe, however, that some locations are just going to attract more customer outbursts than others. Another Waffle House employee on Reddit said they never saw any fights. "The closest we got was a customer who refused to leave after being asked." The Waffle House manager said it's only then that the police are called to escort any rude customers out.

Most chain restaurants have some sort of uniform or dress code that employees must adhere to. The only difference is just how strictly those dress codes are enforced. Take a look around the next time you're inside a Waffle House, and you'll probably notice that most of the men working are clean-shaven. As writer Andrew Knowlton found out when starting a 24-hour shift at the Waffle House, the chain is pretty serious about this policy.

"She'd [Knowlton's manager Donna] told me during my brief training session the previous day that I'd either need to shave or wear something called a beard net," wrote Knowlton. The Waffle House newcomer ignored this advice and had to shave in the bathroom before starting his shift.

According to another Waffle House employee on Reddit, most piercings are also a bit iffy. "All cooks must shave daily, and no piercings are allowed at all (which sucks, I have to take out my eyebrow ring and earrings constantly, though my tongue ring I have gotten away with)," they said. It's worth noting, though, that these were the rules in 2012, and numerous employees on Indeed have said Waffle House is a bit more lax about piercings now — provided an employee's face doesn't look like a human pin cushion.

Between refills of coffee and slinging plates, working at Waffle House is a whirlwind of activity. Because so many people pour through its doors on a daily basis, it's normal for the restaurant to run out of some pretty essential ingredients. According to a Waffle House grill operator on Reddit, "I once ran out of waffle iron spray which meant I had to go a whole 10 hours telling people I wasn't able to serve them waffles of all things."

It probably seems strange that a 24-hour diner like Waffle House wouldn't be prepared for food shortages in advance. On the contrary, the all-hours service makes the occurrence inevitable because, well, it's open all the time. But the Reddit commenter offers another explanation: Essentially, the restaurant doesn't replenish ingredients frequently, often waiting until the beginning of a new shift to restock whatever's low. In other words, employees might have to make do or improvise with whatever's on hand in the kitchen. 

Running out of tomatoes, lettuce, or even American cheese would be frustrating, but not a crisis. They're mainly toppers, so it wouldn't necessarily affect the meal. But running out of eggs or potatoes? Over half the menu would be out of order, meaning no omelets, no breakfast platters, and definitely no batter to make waffles, one of the core reasons people go to Waffle House in the first place. 

A great perk of working a fast food gig is the employee discount, and Waffle House's policy is extremely generous. One worker even called it the "best in the restaurant business" (via Reddit). What exactly are we talking about here? Free food, that's what. At Waffle House, workers can enjoy a wide array of menu items free of charge during their shifts. A small selection doesn't meet the restaurant's conditions, but honestly, it's hard to complain since the menu prices are already so low to begin with (per Fast Food Menu Prices).

Freebies pretty much cover most of the breakfast menu, according to the Reddit poster. But workers don't have to limit themselves to only bacon and grits for a complimentary meal. Plenty of lunch and dinner items count as well, and the options are equally appealing — think salads, sandwiches, and even cheeseburgers. The only things employees have to pay for are special items such as desserts and meats (chicken, steak, etc.), which Waffle House has compiled in a pricing guide should workers need to know the cost.

Former employee Yehong Zhu puts the notion of free up for debate, as they allege the restaurant lowered employee wages to cover expenses for meals (via Slate). But getting to smother and cover to your heart's desire — and all on the restaurant's dime — still isn't too shabby when it comes to the service industry perks out there. 

It's common knowledge Waffle House workers forge close ties with the friendly faces who regularly occupy the booths. That welcoming attitude doesn't just make Waffle House a great place to dine out; for employees, this also makes it a great place to work. Take it from this waitress who did an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit. She described her work cohorts as more like family than her own blood relatives, a common sentiment many Waffle House employees express no matter where they fall in the employment hierarchy. 

Bonding with the people you work side-by-side with is part and parcel of any job, but food service can inspire particularly tight-knit relationships. It makes sense that in a bustling kitchen environment, team members have to communicate and collaborate with each other in order to do their jobs in the first place. Each task is crucial to this, whether it's marking the plates, firing up the grills, or washing dirty dishes to make way for the clean ones. It encourages mutual trust, and that trust builds strong connections. 

As a superior, manager Katie Pearson takes this all-in-the-family approach seriously by ensuring her team has everything they need to do a good job. "My goal is to make sure they are making money, they are happy when they come to work, they are getting out of this what they need to get out of it, and they are making their customers happy" (per AP News).