Stress and Strategy: An Investigation into Stressors and Coping Mechanisms among Quick Service Restaurant Employees in Cavite

The study is to investigate potential factors that contribute to job stress among demographic profiles of quick-service restaurant employees, the stressors prevalent within the QSR employees in terms of environment, work-related interaction, and the coping mechanisms used by QSR employees to overcome stress in terms of emotional coping, behavioral coping, and cognitive coping, as perceived by the selected QSR employees in Dasmariñas City, Cavite. The study utilized a descriptive mixed-method research design to attain its objectives and employed 100 respondents. A survey questionnaire was used to gather the needed data, which contained a series of questions vital in testing the validity and reliability of the results. The statistical methods used in this study were frequency distribution, percentage and proportions, mean, median and standard deviation, cross-tabulation, and chi-square, which were used to analyze the findings. The results indicate that most of the employees in the QSR experienced stress during their work schedule; findings highlight key environmental stressors, such as the sudden malfunction of equipment during peak hours, which creates pressure and contributes to employees' stress, while work-related stressors, managing workload to meet customer expectations, were found to be significant sources of stress. In terms of coping mechanisms, it shows that cognitive coping has a strong result that employees must focus more on the solutions than the problem to overcome the situation; emotional coping results in trying to empathize with customers and consistently trying to remain calm so it will not be influenced by the customer's emotions, and in behavioral, it strongly agrees to have a deep breath to stay calm and polite even when customers are sometimes rude or demanding. However, motivation drives employees to work in the QSR business, as it is their source of income, and they value their professional growth. Quick-service restaurants are one of the most hectic industries. It is recommended that various programs related to employees' work-life balance be developed, as well as a framework to empower each employee to cope with stress better and improve the conditions of employees to be more effective and efficient in the industry.