This story is being co-published in partnership with El Tímpano, a Spanish-language reporting lab serving Oakland’s Latino and Mayan immigrant communities.
Not long after arriving at work, Alondra Hernandez saw a tall man with watery eyes enter the restaurant. It was the summer of 2022, only a few months into her job as a Burger King cashier in Oakland.
The man, visibly upset, Hernandez said, headed over to the restaurant’s manager to complain about his order. He hit the COVID-19 plexiglass barrier that separated employees from customers with his fist. The acrylic partition shattered and bits of it struck the manager’s forehead. Afraid that she would be attacked next, Hernandez considered running. Instead, she rushed to her bleeding coworker, a task never discussed during her training. At the end of her shift, Hernandez returned to her apartment in East Oakland, but couldn’t sleep. When she closed her eyes, she saw the attacker.
Violence wasn’t what she expected to experience after leaving her native Mexico City in 2018. When the then 24-year-old arrived in Oakland, Hernandez applied for a job at Burger King knowing that a flexible work schedule would allow her to continue her international business studies. Little did she know about the working conditions she would witness as a fast food industry employee, Hernandez said to El Tímpano.
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