The One 'Rule' Fast-Food Employees Don't Mind Breaking

It's obvious that in the world of business, be it retail, production, or restaurant, you want that profit to go to one place and one place only: your business. Imagine if you owned a Burger King and found that a good chunk of your daily profit when straight into the hands of the clown at McDonald's. What if you managed a Pizza Hut and you learned one of your employees was blabbing on the phone to someone at Domino's about how Pizza Hut makes their breadsticks?

Sure, these may all sound silly out of context, but some companies are very serious about keeping their secrets — and their profits — out of their competitor's hands. Back in 2003, Coca-Cola allegedly fired an employee for drinking Pepsi on the job, per CNN — and in 1985, fired another employee for the "crime" of marrying a PepsiCo employee, AP News reported at the time. There's no real "rule" in place, to be fair, but any upper management employee will tell you that they'd rather keep their money in their business, instead of flowing into the bank accounts of their rivals.

But do all fast food employees really follow such rules? Are Burger King employees trained to resist the temptation of the Golden Arches? Are Popeyes employees resistant to the charms of Colonel Sanders' southern charms? Or maybe, just maybe, the world of fast food is a bit friendlier to each other than what Twitter accounts would like you to believe.

On the subreddit r/Chipotle, a user and apparent Chipotle employee posted a picture of a Starbucks take-out order composed of lattes and the "Green Drink" (which, according to Spoon University, is iced black tea, coconut milk, and green matcha powder). The caption "This is your sign to give your next door Starbucks a bowl for some coffee" hinted that employees of both businesses exchange food from each other's restaurants. This seemed to cause some controversy, at least among commenters.

"Watch, corporate will make some rule about trading food with other restaurants now. Just wait." One user stated, though their response was met with the reveal that "food swaps" are already prohibited and, if anything, management will simply crack down on the practice more. Surprisingly, other users admitted to "food swapping" at their workplaces in the past.

"Sometimes we trade with five guys" said another user. " "They'll make us milkshakes and fries and we give them onlines that don't get picked up." One Redditor even revealed, "The smoothie king right next door's manager got [mad] at us for all the trading going on." And while there's no real law that says employees can't do it, it's clear to see why employers would prefer they didn't "trade" food with employees from other restaurants. It basically gives them a free meal rather than them paying for it. But in the words of one netizen: "Food trading makes food service fun."