The Land of Fast Food & Slow Shifts

Store #2031, Boone, NC.

It’s just after 9 p.m. and Donna Walker has just begun third shift at Waffle House on Blowing Rock Road. She will not finish work until 7 a.m.. 

Donna’s hair is clipped up; the bleached blonde tones fail to hide the fact that underneath the artificial colour she has already gone grey. Under her apron there is not a sky-blue shirt, nor a black Waffle House branded cap on her head. Instead she wears black sports clothes, flashes of neon pink down her sides. 

As soon as one of the booths or one of the spinning tall bar seats becomes free Donna shouts out not to sit down. She’s very particular about this—the table has to be clear before it can be taken again. 

“Hey y’all,” Donna says to every new customer; they all get the same treatment. 

Audrey Kelly, a junior at App State, says that Donna is very attentive, if not a little stressed. 

“She reminds me of the typical southern woman,” says Mitzy Rodriguez Ruiz, a friend of Audrey and another junior at App. 

Though there are around twenty people in the store, the noise is overwhelming. The chatter of customers and the shouts of staff calling out orders is joined by the scraping of silverware, the loading of the dishwasher, and the occasional song blaring out from the jukebox.

Half of the restaurant is without customers and roped off; the plates and silverware of the people who last sat in the area are still littering the tables of the empty red-cushioned booths. 

Donna is the only server working an overnight shift that before the pandemic would have been staffed by at least two other servers. The restaurant is already full and a queue of people stretches from the register as customers wait for take-out food or a place to sit, filling the seating area. A waiting customer asks if the empty side of the Waffle House is going to open up again.

The famous black and yellow sign of Waffle House

“Not unless another server falls out of the sky,” Donna replies. She says this without the hint of a smile, a heavy dose of her arid sense of humor breaking through. 

Aly Hogan, a former shift supervisor, says it is common for supervisors to work seventeen hours in a twenty-four hour period; sometimes having to do this twice a week. When there are staff shortages it is left to those in managerial positions to pick up the extra hours, Aly says. 

In one four day period, six staff members left the store either because they were quit or had been fired, leaving the restaurant with only 48 percent of the staff they should have had. 

Aly left Waffle House in part because of the way she felt she was being treated, Hannah Tidyman, a current employee says. 

“You have to have good people or you’re not going to make it,” Lauren Sabetta, a former employee, says. Lauren worked at Boone’s Waffle House for three years but once the pandemic began in early 2020 she left to do other work. 

Third shift sees college kids finishing off a night of drinking; overflowing from a four-person booth as the group cram around a table to find just enough space for a plate. Other customers pay for their food with the dollar bills they have collected in tips from the shift they have worked that evening at one of the other restaurants in Boone. 

My chocolate-chip blueberry waffle.

Outside Waffle House’s fish-tank windows, away from the frosted-globe ceiling lights, black block-lettering on a yellow sign, and the artificially struck-open eyes of people drinking coffee much too late into the night, there are very few other places to eat after 9 p.m..

Audrey says that the ability to see the staff at Waffle House from the moment your order is taken to when it is finished makes you appreciate their work a lot more. “They definitely look stressed,” she adds.

“You see the little toast sitting there,” Audrey says pointing behind the bar to two slices of toast peeking out from the top of a four-slotted toaster. “It’s been there for ages.”

Plastered on the inside of Store #2031 glass door is a sign. In bold black lettering, on a green and yellow background, the notice reads that “because of unprecedented staffing and supply chain challenges” there may be a need to reduce hours, or limit seating; something that Lauren says would have been a “huge no-no” before March of 2020. 

The disclaimer on the door has also regularly been joined by a piece of paper, the word “closed” written on it in quick, untidy Sharpie. This is despite Aly saying Waffle House is always trying to stay open “at all costs.”

Inside, the sweet smell of waffle batter being closed shut in a hot waffle iron can still be smelled, and the sound of shredded potato sizzling on the grill, dancing in liquid butter, can   still be heard. 

If staffing allows, customers are still treated to the good food and cozy atmosphere that Mitzy and Audrey say they come to Waffle House for. 

Between these four walls, two decorated with grease-stained tiles and faded sepia photos of workers and two looking out at the world through single-pane windows, the land of fast food and slow shifts exists.

This article was updated on December 12th, 2021.