Wendy's vs Wareham

A leaked customer service complaint blows up in the face of a Wareham fast food franchise.

Birds have an expression, which translates into human pretty much as "Never sh*t where you nest." I don't know who runs the Wendy's in this district, but he certainly isn't a bird.

A Wareham resident had a bad visit with the Wendy's franchise on the Cranberry Highway in East Wareham. Rather than go over the counter to maul someone, he chose the more reasonable path of writing to the district manager.

The district manager immediately shouldered the blame, sent the guy a stack of free Son Of Baconator coupons and the problem was solved with no social media backlash.

Just kidding. The manager instead said that Wareham was full of junkies.

I'm not making this up.

“Not an excuse but the town of Wareham has little to no talent pool to hire from. This is an ongoing issue in that area.

“We are constantly interviewing and hiring any and all qualified candidates. Unfortunately, those candidates are hard to come by, as most are recovering addicts, and we cannot hire them.”

That, my friends, is a declaration of war.

Wareham had a philosophical social media reaction, as long as you count "rage" among the philosophies.

As the story leaked onto Facebook and then WCVB and WBSM, the recoil hit. Wendy's suspended the district manager, but that wasn't enough.

As you can see below, the parking lot was empty after 7 PM.

McDonald's, KFC and even Burger King were busy when the shot was taken.

They say that Colonel Sanders used to drive across the country, visit random Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets and have dinner.

If the dinner was poor, Sanders jumped up in a hell of a rage. He'd haul the entire staff into the kitchen, where they would get a cooking lesson from Mister 11 Herbs And Spices himself.

Does that sound like the kind of man who would answer a customer service complaint by saying, "Ah, ya know, this town is full of junkies."

Dave Thomas and his hot daughter also seem to be cut from that cloth.

Even the ever-complaining Where's The Beef lady never blamed Oxycontin for the shabby burger that she got.

There are four factors at play here.

1) Fast Food is a low prestige occupation.

Their workers are usually at the front line of any Fifteen Or Fight rally, the pace is breakneck, the rate of injury is astounding (just the teenage section of the fast food workplace sent 28000 kids to the ER in 2017, while the Afghanistan war has produced 22000 wounded Americans in 18 years... 44000 teens were injured if you count all restaurants) and only the lowliest masochist wants to be seen frying up some McChickens by someone they went to high school with.

There's a reason those jobs are hard to fill... and the reason is that they suck. They tend to hire exclusively from a pool of kids, Mom hourlies and adults with no other option. I doubt that Mitt Romney wasted much time choosing between "Taco Bell cook" and "Senator."

2) Wareham has a drug problem. So does every other town in America.

We wouldn't have to go too far back in the archives to show you a Dead Kennedy getting pulled out of the ritzy Hyannis Port Compound with painkillers in her autopsy. Robert Downey, Jimmy Page, Kurt Cobain, Rush Limbaugh and many other millionaires played the fool to opiods at one time or another.

Painting Wareham as a unique den of sin is disingenuous at best.

3) As we said before, you never sh*t where you nest. You end up with bloggers shooting rush-hour pics of your empty restaurant and parking lot.

Wareham is voting with their purses. AIDS-burger was probably busier last night.

You do not want to insult the entire town that your fast food business is in, especially if McDonald's, Burger King, KFC/Taco Bell, Papa Ginos, D'Angelo's, Subway, Chili's, Charlie's, Rice Bowl and Pizza Boy are within 200 yards of you.

You especially don't want to do so in a response to a complaining Wareham resident who might share the letter on social media.

The no-longer-open Sagamore Beach BBQ showed us how social media storms can wipe out a business. Nobody is rooting for Wendy's to be shuttered.

Speaking of which...

4) How does Wendy's get out of this jam?

I have some ideas.

- For the rest of the year, you get free fries with every purchase if you flash a Wareham ID.

- Wendy's pays for the Onset fireworks in 2020.

- Wendy's sponsors and supplies a Beach Day in Onset with free food.

- Double down. Hire a punk rock grrl, name her Wendy O. Wendy and have her sing commercial jingles about junkie cooks and one dollar baked potatoes. Her showstopper could be her "Brockton By The Sea" ballad.

- Sponsor every rec league team in Wareham. I want to go to any little league game in town and see the Wendy's Yankees taking on the Wendy's Reds.

- Dis-inter Dave Thomas, and re-inter him in East Wareham somewhere, perhaps at Wendy's.

**********************

This column goofs on Wareham from time to time, but we do it because we love Wareham. If you take a left outta my house, you end up in Wareham. If you take a right, you hit a rotary where two of the exits will send you back to Wareham eventually.

I've dated Wareham girls, I shop there and even buy my legal weed there. My last ER trip was Tobey Hospital. I even run the Onset Facebook page.

Wendy's has a week to adopt (or top) at least one of those ideas I listed. Otherwise, we'll be back, and we'll be talking Boycott.