by Jason Kelley<\/p>\n
McDonald’s is the dominant player in the fast food industry; with thousands of locations all over the world, its business just keeps growing.\u00a0 While part of this success is because the corporation is dedicated to speed and quality service, the unique family-like nature of each of its stores plays a large role.<\/p>\n
To be sure, one must do his or her job quickly and efficiently.\u00a0 No amount of training will make this happen, it’s an individual effort.\u00a0 Newer people are given as much slack as possible, but the nature of fast food means people must learn quickly.\u00a0 It’s sink or swim.\u00a0 As in everything else, failure to learn has its consequences.\u00a0 An unspoken rule is that slower people get their hours cut, usually until they quit.\u00a0 It’s not as bad as it sounds, though; in my experience every effort is made to prevent that from happening.<\/p>\n
So what is it really like to work there? Is it as easy or as bad as it seems? To understand those questions a bit of a crash course is needed.<\/p>\n
Alphabet Soup<\/strong><\/p>\n Nearly every metric used to measure performance in a store has an abbreviation attached to it.\u00a0 The time it takes you to get your food is broken down into two stats: T.T.Ls and C.T.P.\u00a0 I still cant tell you what the first stands for, all I know is that it is how quickly the drive through is moving on average.\u00a0 The second is how long a customer spends between the first and second window.\u00a0 Even though each store has its own goals for these numbers, 110 and 35 seconds, respectively, are the most common.\u00a0 The grill team’s performance is measured as well, with another inscrutable combination of letters called K.V.S.\u00a0 Again, the goal is around 35 seconds per order on average.\u00a0 The only stat that isn’t abbreviated is labor.\u00a0 Labor in simple terms is the amount of money it takes to pay the people working on the floor each hour.\u00a0 Represented by a percentage, most stores try to keep it below 20.\u00a0 Labor is the thing that determines how a store runs.\u00a0 Keeping it too low, say around 12-15 percent, means that your people are working too hard, thus delivering poor service.\u00a0 Too high, and you are wasting money–never a good thing in McDonald’s land.\u00a0 Managing your labor percentage is probably the most difficult part of running a shift.\u00a0 All of these things can be found on a report called a Daily Activity.\u00a0 If McDonald’s has an artifact, this is it.<\/p>\n An Ivory Tower<\/strong><\/p>\n Working for McDonald’s, you learn that there is a rule or ritual for nearly everything.\u00a0 From the way a floor is swept to taking off a pair of gloves, procedure is king.\u00a0 Having said that, corporate McDonald’s idea of how people should act and how they actually act is vastly different. For example, when mopping a floor, a distance of five feet from each customer must be kept.\u00a0 Or, when assembling a double cheeseburger, the pickles are not allowed to touch.\u00a0 By far my favorite: the amount of lettuce on a McChicken has to weigh an ounce.\u00a0 These things just do not happen in real life, and all but the most zealous of managers just do not care.<\/p>\n These are just small things, though, what about the larger, more important rules?\u00a0 Without fault when it comes to things that do with safety, the rules are absolute.\u00a0 Sweep a floor wrong and no one really cares; risk making a customer sick and hell will reign down on you.\u00a0 While that’s a dramatic way way of saying it, the Corporate idea of safety and the rules it makes are always clear, and if you want to keep your job you follow and enforce them.<\/p>\n Between the silly and mandatory is where a store’s culture comes from.\u00a0 It’s my impression that Corporate would rather employ robots with empty smiles and perfect speed.\u00a0 Sometimes I can see the merit in that.\u00a0 Friendly, easygoing people love to talk to customers, but they usually don’t focus on actually working much.\u00a0 The opposite is true of people focused on working: they tend to view customer services as an impediment to getting things done.\u00a0 Finding, hiring and training the right mix of people is the key to running a good store.<\/p>\n Shadow of the Leader<\/strong><\/p>\n Store managers do more than run a store, they mentor and guide employees.\u00a0 To help them, most stores have six to eight swing managers to help run shifts, order product and train new people.\u00a0 In turn, swings have twelve to sixteen crew-trainers to assist in training and enforcing procedure.\u00a0 While these people provide training each step of the way, they also provide someone to emulate and look up to.<\/p>\n The leadership style of these people trickles down to each employee.\u00a0 If a manager is always harsh and cold, his or her employees will become quiet and fearful.\u00a0 The same is true with open and friendly management.\u00a0 The trick is to avoid each extreme.\u00a0 People don’t listen to a boss they think of as a friend and will only work so hard for someone they hate.<\/p>\n Grades for Everyone<\/strong><\/p>\n Once a year, each store goes through a full operations review, or F.O.R.\u00a0 The review, or grade, is administered by a corporate McDonald’s employee called a field consultant.\u00a0 These people are responsible for a large number of stores and are, in essence, the only people a store’s owner has to listen to.\u00a0 Even though the date of the review is known months in advance, the day is still hugely stressful.\u00a0 This is because failing the review can mean losing your job, and each mistake is meticulously recorded.\u00a0 Every aspect of the store is measured and broken down into three categories: cleanliness, service and food safety.\u00a0 Each employee’s knowledge and ability to follow procedure is observed and recorded.\u00a0 These scores along with hourly operational scores form most of the food safety and service scores.\u00a0 The remainder is composed of how clean the store is and how well each piece of equipment functions.\u00a0 While all three categories are important, cleanliness and food safety are easy to pass with proper preparation and training.\u00a0 Each store starts the day with a perfect 100% score and points are deducted for each mistake made.\u00a0 A passing score is 85%.<\/p>\n Being a McPerson<\/strong><\/p>\n This year will be my sixth review day.\u00a0 While they all have been difficult, two stick out in my mind.\u00a0 During my second year working at the Brimfield store, our review day fell in the middle of summer.\u00a0 As I was promoted to swing manager roughly six days prior, I had no real idea of what I was doing.\u00a0 Sadly, neither did anyone else.\u00a0 In the month leading up to the review our store manager was…relaxed.\u00a0 I didn’t know this at the time, but the store just wasn’t ready.\u00a0 Remember that 85 needed to pass?\u00a0 We got an 85.3.<\/p>\n My job, as usual, was to take orders up front.\u00a0 Front booth order takers usually stand four feet away from the window, between the person handing out orders and the person bagging them.\u00a0 In front of me, there is a cart with various condiments and plastic utensils on it.\u00a0 This cart is also where the person bagging the order places the food so the person in the window can hand them out.\u00a0 Beyond taking orders the other half of my job is to know what is in each bag so they go out in the right order.<\/p>\n This would have been simple, bu the two other people I was working with had never worked in the middle of the day before.\u00a0 Instead of spending my time doing my job, I had to try and covertly teach them how to do theirs.\u00a0 They are good workers and tried hard, but the three of us had never been a team before and it showed.\u00a0 Teamwork while moving quickly requires efficient communication–skills we didn’t have yet.\u00a0 The same was true of the other people on the floor: individually good at their jobs, but lacking in teamwork.\u00a0 Because of this, many small stupid mistakes were made and everything felt tense.<\/p>\n Beyond teamwork, experience was also a factor.\u00a0 Learning how heavy a full large Coke should feel takes time, but when you need to move a hundred cars an hour it makes a difference.\u00a0 The same can be said of how old coffee or oil smells.\u00a0 So while it’s a simple job in theory, if you want to do it well, learn to pay attention to everything you can.<\/p>\n The second review day stands out as completely the opposite.\u00a0 While working at the Streetsboro store, we spent three weeks preparing.\u00a0 The day before was especially key in my eyes.\u00a0 Every single person worked the position they would for the review, allowing us to become relaxed and develop a flow.\u00a0 Other than small mistakes, the day went very smoothly with a score of 93%.<\/p>\n Post-Shift<\/strong><\/p>\n When people talk about how much they hate or love a store, whether they work their or not they are in truth talking about the people.\u00a0 People give what is otherwise a cold efficient machine character and culture.\u00a0 Personally, I find this to be especially true.\u00a0 The chemistry between me and the people I work with is paramount to my success.\u00a0 I truly wish this was a priority in each store as well as something we could communicate to our customers.<\/p>\n I’ve had many jobs during my working life, but McDonald’s is honestly the only one that has stuck.\u00a0 While I understand that I will not make my career out of working there, I understand why people do.\u00a0 Over the past six years, I’ve formed countless relationships, and many friendships–even found a wife–all because of the people I’ve met while working.\u00a0 It is these ties that allow McDonald’s to transcend feeling like a job to fell like a big family.<\/p>\n Works Cited<\/p>\n Reno, Krystal. 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