Mc the Life

Last month, after a total of eight years, I left my job at McDonald's to be a writer full time. Having never intended to have been there that long, I can confirm it did leave a bit of an M-shaped hole in my life. I might not miss much of it right now, but I think I will in time. Meanwhile, I'm going to try and put into words the life and times of my tenure there.

I started Maccies when I was 17/18. It was a part-time job whilst I was at uni. Until then all I'd ever had was a paper round, so I quickly had a lot to learn about the nature of work. In fact, the first life lesson I had was handing my "notice" in at the paper shop, which was much more difficult than I expected due to the amount of "overtime" I'd been putting in.

Anyhow, away I was thrown into the furnace of a Maccies kitchen. I was informed straight away that I was being trained on the grill and I would definitely build up a collection of burns ("kitchen tattoos" as they're known). It was a busy weekend and I had to learn fast, but by the end of the day I could make four Quarter Pounders in a minute. I was very pleased with this, although it was nothing in comparison to my later-learnt skill of making six Big Macs in forty seconds, but this was not all I was to learn during my eight year sentence. I've tried to break down the main things I've taken away from this job. So sit in or takeaway - sorry - sit back and enjoy.

I might as well start with the obvious - terrible customers. People view fast food workers with a ludicrous level of contempt. The amount of times I got told "no wonder you work here" because of an issue totally out of my control is insane. The slightest inconvenience (not enough sauce, had to wait four minutes instead of two, we aren't as cheap as the one in town) causes people to melt down, shout, scream and swear and I just have no idea where it comes from. You do realise you're talking to a human being? Not a machine. I've been yelled at, spat at, had sauce thrown off me, received death threats, been punched (thank God for the Covid screen that the bloke smashed his hand into instead of my face) and countless else just for being the nearest person when something hasn't gone according to plan. It's taught me to have a great deal of respect when I am a customer in other places, and don't worry, in a job like that, there is absolutely no way the customer is always right. When I was a manager, if a customer swore at any of my staff or spoke to them in such a manner, I would refund them instead of giving them their food and tell them where to go. No need for it. Learn some manners.

However, I'm going to say something that might be unpopular with some readers but it's true, working in McDonald's taught me to be a more respectful customer, but it also taught me to expect good customer service. I would always do my best to make sure people had a great experience, but I think there was often an equally bad attitude on the other side of the counter too. Far too many people I worked with just decided in their minds that all customers are bad people (the audacity of ordering food from a restaurant honestly ...), and would often treat them as such, and I see this when I go elsewhere now and I don't appreciate it. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't blame people for there being an issue that's out of their control. In fact, I don't really blame people when there's an issue that's within their control. Shit happens. I get it. And I get that sometimes people are just having a bad day. So I give them the benefit of the doubt. One thing I could never stand was jobsworths, though. And I worked with so many. People who take great pleasure in declining a voucher, or not serving somebody one minute before the store closed, or shouting at people to put their masks over their nose during Covid. Not time for it. Grow up. I think there's a standard of customer service that you should give if you want that level of respect back. Respect's a two-way thing.

That said, McDonald's is also a place where you will meet friends for life, and from the maddest backgrounds. I love and cherish the fact that many of my best friends are people I probably never would have spoken to if not for the job. But it's an interesting melting pot, because you have kids who are part time (this category makes up the majority of the staff now but more on that later), students, people who have never worked anywhere else but worked their way up to management, people who've never worked anywhere else and wipe tables and will never do anything else and are quite happy with that; I've worked with ex-soldiers, prostitutes, PhD students, published authors, retirees etc. One guy I used to work with dropped out of nursing training to flip burgers at Maccies and is now a commercial pilot! On the flip side I've also worked with my fair share of wrong un's: rapists, child abusers, thieves, ex-cons.

Like I say ... quite the melting pot. You could amost call the place a microcosm for society. It's certainly changed the way I view and interact with people in life. The nature of the job means you're always able to crack on with your mates on shift, and when you're on a shift with people you really love it can actually be a great day. And, hey, if it isn't a great day, meeting those mates in the pub afterwards so you can all bitch about that manager you hate or those awful customers is equally as enjoyable an activity.

But it's true, working in Maccies isn't easy. This is something that annoys me. Yes, you don't need any qualifications to work in McDonald's. Yes, plenty of the staff they employ probably are stereotypically "stupid" (you think that but you'd be surprised how many law students I met that couldn't grasp making a Big Mac) but the same goes for any menial job. For some reason, Maccies has been dumped with the stereotype of the absolute worst. People who worked in a bar would look down on you for working there. And I'll hold my hands up and say I probably would have too if I didn't work there. I remember being on a bus once and listening to some little chav (US readers - google it) going on about how "work is so hard man like I've got to like serve on till and also grab fries and get the food out to the cars and like me queues were building up and that" and I remember thinking to myself, If I didn't have the same experience and know that it actually can be really hard, I probably would have been laughing at this kid. And it can be hard. Now, of course, you get used to it. You get used to any job. And it isn't difficult in principle, but when things go wrong and you're really busy and really understaffed and you're running out of everything and you feel the pressure mount and there's customers screaming at you and your manager is screaming at you, it is tough. It's not something that should be taken so seriously, but as I've explained, people do, so it can become a very toxic environment. And that is especially true now. I think may adults are waking up to the fact that they don't want to work for a company like McDonald's. Staff have entered the news as they protest wages, ill treatment, lack of protection, lack of guaranteed hours or having to work ridiculous shifts. I have varied opinions on this. I think some of their points are valid, but other times I just think - it's McDonald's - what did you expect? But then I'd never worked anywhere else. Two weeks into my new job and I know what a company that really looks after its staff looks like. And McDonald's is a huge £multi-billion operation. Whatever the ins and outs, the long and the short of it is that fewer and fewer adults are applying, so there are loads and loads of kids. When I left, the store I worked in employed abut 120 people and 8 of them were full time. Insane. There is also the issue of deliveries. I'm not sure about other countries but these are fairly new in the UK. And the industry quite simply cannot cope. The restaurants are too small, the food doesn't suit delivery, and the customers in the restaurant end up having to wait for their orders behind massive delivery orders. It's a disaster. I got out while I could. I did have to navigate McCovid, however, which was a nightmare. Trying to adapt a place like that for Covid was never going to work in practice, even if it did in principle. And I don't even want to talk about the procedure of handing out one drink in a two-drink cup holder in order to reduce contact. Terrible customers and jobsworth staff both had a field day with that one!

There is, like many workplaces, an obsession with targets, but this often ends up being at the expense of genuinely decent customer service. Often, when you're parked up in a McDonald's Drive-Thru, it isn't because your food isn't ready, it's because as soon as the car has left the window, it registers as having been served and so the computer thinks the Drive-Thru is really fast. Drilling targets into crew members means they will end up doing things like this, resulting in customers waiting longer for their food in reality just so the Drive-Thru looks faster on paper. But I suppose one thing this kind of job teaches you, and especially when you're management, is that's often a dog-eat-dog world this life. I got sick to my back teeth of being thrown under the bus by colleagues when I would never do the same to them. I didn't appreciate being scapegoated the way I was. Maybe I was just unlucky, but maybe it's a cultural McManagement thing, because many of these people are never going to get a chance to rise up through the ranks anywhere else, so if they have to treat others so disrespectfully in order to do so there, I guess they will. It's a fact of life that power goes to people's heads. No matter how much. Sorry but that's not me and that's not a work environment I want to be in. Yes, it's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm thankful I know that now, but that doesn't mean you can't step up in life and be the bigger person. That's what I will choose to take away from that aspect of the job.

But, ultimately, I'm grateful in many ways to that kind of negative treatment because it genuinely was the main catalyst for me getting a move on and getting myself out quicker than I had planned. On a serious note, though, I am grateful to that job. I've made great friends; I met my girlfriend there. I've developed confidence and a thick skin: two things I lacked significantly when I was 17. And I've met so many weird and wonderful people that I just feel more qualified to navigate life. Even though, at the age of 25, this is the first time I've ever had a "real" job.

Do you want fries with that?