At my store Food Ave does get very stressful. Especially when you are by yourself on a weekend or around lunch or dinner time. It's impossible to take care of guests, pan breadsticks, primos, get pizzas out of the oven, a grilled cheese out of the turbo, stop the pot sink from overfilling, washing dishes, and get more pizzas into the oven and in the hot hold at the same time. There's a lot that needs to be done at Foodave and with being so cut off from the rest of the store. We are usually forgotten about. I believe food service should be higher pay than cashiering although I'm not quite sure what goes on at service desk I can probably guess that that should be higher pay lol. But seriously, food ave is something else & most food service workers in other areas get payed an average of 10$. Not $8.75..
I think Food Ave sounds about on par with Service Desk, both have a lot more tasks to juggle than cashier and often simply won't have enough time to do them all in the ideal order without generating a long line of angry guests. I very rarely work food ave, I started as a cashier, was trained service desk (which I prefer, less monotony, more actual problem solving involved), and then after that trained food ave, but predominantly only work food ave when someone calls in, or to cover their breaks/lunches.
As far as at the service desk if you're busy you don't have time to sort every return, and put the defective/clearance/price stickers on them, tape up rewraps and print repackage stickers, bag "special treatment" items, void duplicate defective labels, gathering and sorting reshop from each checklane, etc. between each guest, so yo usually wind up with a large heap of defectives and rewraps to keep you busy during all of the slower periods of the day. Not to mention that when working service desk I usually function as a secondary GSTL of sorts as well when capable. ie. Two lanes have their light flashing, GSTL is already helping one and I don't have a guest in line for the service desk I'll go to the other and see what they need, and take care of it if able (which most times I am since I have a walkie and pda, it's usually just if they need a supervisor override or change request that I'm not).
Very rarely do I go home without having finished catching up, but that's only because the last 2-3 hours are usually slower so I have time to catch back up and manage the heap of work to do between the somewhat sporadic guests. Luckily the first hour or two are like the last 2-3 hours, slow enough that if the closer didn't finish everything they were supposed to do you usually have time to do it for them.
The only time service desk really becomes easily manageable while also being super busy are the rare times when there's 4 people at it, 3 at a register, and one solely dedicated to doing all the defects/rewraps and collecting reshop from the checklanes.
