"Just like any customer service job, dealing with people who are simply angry at the world is never fun," one Panera Bread employee told Business Insider. "I don't feel like I've done my job if you don't leave my café feeling satisfied and it's hard to accomplish that when someone doesn't want to leave feeling satisfied."
A total of seven employees said that negative interactions with customers were the worst part of the gig.
"If I never work in the food industry again, it'll be too soon," one employee said.
A different employee added, "People can be really hurtful. You just have to cry it out in the bathroom and move on."
One employee questioned the restaurant's adherence to the mantra "the customer is always right."
"Nine out of ten customers I served at Panera were fantastic and either caused no problems or were very nice and pleasant to us," the employee said. "One out of 10, however, were quite nasty and rude, and were only rewarded by their behavior from management."
The employee explained that these diners would often take advantage of the restaurant by making minor or false complaints to management. They described an encounter with one drive-thru customer who demanded both a refund and a free new meal after making a "trivial complaint" about their $90 order.
"This caused us to have 30-minute ticket times for some people behind this person — who refused to move," the employee said. "Instead of our managers telling them to buzz off, we ended up causing lots of our good customers to wait extreme amounts of time."