A group that helps workers unionize says that protection is among the demands in 13,000 petitions delivered to Waffle House management
Published 11/17/23 Patrick Cooley
Cindy Smith had just started her 6 a.m. shift at the Waffle House in Conyers, Georgia 12 years ago when a man pulled out a gun, pointed it at her head and demanded she empty the register.
Her terrified son — then 7 years old — sat just feet away.
“And that's not the only time I've been robbed,” Smith said.
To Smith, the viral videos of belligerent customers throwing plates and chairs at Waffle House workers are a terrifying reminder of the dangers she has often faced when she served food and filled coffee mugs — especially on the graveyard shift.
When Smith and hundreds of her fellow employees at the breakfast and late-night dining chain delivered a list of demands to the company’s corporate headquarters in Norcross, Georgia last week, round-the-clock security was one of their top requests.
The company hires security guards at select stores on nights and weekends, but workers say that limited protection is not enough.
A Waffle House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Smith now works the breakfast shift, starting work around the time most people are rolling out of bed. But she says threats persist.
When Smith was robbed at gunpoint a dozen years ago, the veteran server was also asked to finish her shift that day, which she said compounded her trauma.
“I didn't get off that day and I was scared to death,” Smith said. “Nobody should have to go through that.”
In videos posted to social media by Raise Up The South, an advocacy group that helps Southern service workers organize, Waffle House cooks and servers echoed her concerns and called on the chain to provide better protection.
Workers have gone on short strikes to draw attention to their demands.
The fights between angry — and sometimes intoxicated — customers and threats and violence against staff aren't an exaggeration, employees say. The often viral videos pepper social media feeds on TikTok and Instagram.
Some of the videos — including a short clip of a Waffle House worker angrily deflecting a spiraling metal chair hurled by an unseen assailant — made national headlines.
Waffle Houses are open 24/7, even on holidays. It closes so rarely, only in emergencies, that the closures have become an informal measure of emergency disaster conditions. The Federal Emergency Management Agency informally looks at the Waffle House Index to help gauge local disaster impact.
That means the late shift draws often raucous and intoxicated customers after the bars and other establishments close. Quarrelsome guests confronting weary servers and cooks is par for the course, Smith said.
She started waiting tables at a Georgia Waffle House in 1995, working from sundown until the early morning, often witnessing hostile customers aggressively confronting her co-workers.
“People have started fighting in the stores, picking up dishes and throwing them (at workers),” she said. “It happened then, it just wasn't on video.”
However, some workers said the attention paid to Waffle House clips seeping through the social media ecosystem made their jobs more difficult.
“I’ve seen people come to Waffle House ready to start a fight just so they could get a viral video,” said Gerald Green, a cook for a Waffle House in Atlanta.
Workers delivered a petition with 13,000 signatures to the company’s corporate headquarters in Norcross, Georgia last week with three main demands. Workers want at least $25 per hour, they want Waffle House to stop deducting money from their paychecks for food they don't eat and they are asking for round-the-clock security.
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