What I learned working at McDonalds for 4 years | Hacker News Reader

What I learned working at McDonalds for 4 years

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44 pointsstillsut15 comments

I worked a lot of crappy jobs to fund my studies - working places that treated their employees like cheap fodder, only caring they showed up on time and moved A to B as fast as possible. You'd show up for summer shift one year to return the next to find your co-workers who'd been doing the exact same thing every day while you'd been gone with no suggestion of training or boosting their skills. McDonalds was the one place that I actually saw investing in their staff - training and promoting and pushing those they saw capable of going on the management track - even if they didn't have any qualifications that would put them on that path elsewhere. One guy I know from those days now has his own home and car and lives quite comfortably, having taken that training and transitioned into another business organisation. Certainly not something that would have happened if he'd taken the same minimum wage job down the road at the fancy restaurant.

When I was going to college I worked at McDonald's part time. I lasted maybe a few months and they hired me for the Christmas season and promised they'd keep me on after it, but let me go anyway.

I worked at McDonald's for Christmas and Thanksgiving, I worked for breakfast and lunch. I worked all of the stations for cooking food as I waited for coworkers to be woken up by an assistant manager who drove to their addresses and rang their doorbells because maybe didn't show up for work.

I tried to show up early for work, used a bus, lived in an apartment with two friends from high school. Along the way there was a children's hospital and one day a helicopter landed in the street and delayed the bus 15 minutes and I was late and got chewed out that I should have planned for the helicopter and gotten out 15 minutes earlier to catch an earlier bus.

I was studying Calc II and Chemistry at the time and kept my backpack with me with a change of shirt so I could take the bus to my classes after my shift was over. I was picked on for being in college by other coworkers and management. But I did my job, even cleaning rest rooms and the parking lot.

I feel empathy for people who work at McDonald's I got an Aunt who works for them and can't find a job elsewhere, and most of what she does is clean the tables after someone is finished eating.

I'm the sort of type of employee that they use temporarily because I am qualified for other work due to my college degrees. I hoped I'd have a job for four years, but it didn't work out that way. It would have paid the 1/3rd of the rent and kept me in college. But I lost the job at McDonald's and Captain D's as well, and after not finding a job moved back with my parents and attended a community college near their house.

I see fast food as a service industry, and people who work it serve the community. My own son taught me that, so we must never look down on them. McDonald's hires a lot of diverse people as well and other companies need to learn from that.

McDonalds provides value. They provide clean, safe, consistent food that I can rely on if I'm hungry and don't have other options I prefer anywhere in the world.

I think people also underestimate the quality and precision of McD cooking. They are not aiming for high quality like a fine restaurant, but they precisely hit the quality that they're aiming for. A well run McD probably has more consistency than a Michelin star restaurant. McD fresh ingredients tend to be fresher than other restaurants - for example, if I pick up one of their salads, they have among the freshest lettuce of anywhere. And it's always in good condition. From what I understand, even flash frozen ingredients like their beef are typically 2-3 weeks from farm to store.

Other restaurants, even ones that are nominally more "authentic" and "local" etc. etc., screw this up and give me wilted lettuce. Maybe McD is using some kind of industrial food science to achieve this, but that doesn't matter to me - what matters to me is that I get to eat perfect fresh lettuce and vegetables. When I'm in a hurry and just feel like having some extra basic foliage or a bit of filling protein, McD delivers.

I think you are having a bit of a misconception on the quality of McDonalds food. McDonalds and other major fastfood brands take shortcuts regarding the food production. It may seem to be "fresh" food to you, but you are eating food with a lot of additions regarding taste enhancers, preservatives, ... . What i could agree on is the consistency on how a meal is prepared within macdonalds, these are very strictly regulated processes.

Not as bad as you seem to think..

>We don’t add any monosodium glutamate (MSG) to any of our menu items.

http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/your_questions/our_food/is-th...

>In the UK we do not use any artificial flavour enhancers similar to MSG in any of our products.

http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/whatmakesmcdonalds/questio...

>McDonald's UK has a fast turnover of food, and restaurants receive three to five deliveries a week. Food arrives, frozen, chilled or ambient. Our aim is to use as few additives as possible to preserve our food. The majority of the food is preserved by freezing. Other food like sauces are pasteurised and specially packed to reduce the need for preservatives. Breads arrive at the restaurant either frozen or fresh but contain a preservative to prevent mould formation. Cheeses also contain preservatives for this reason. All our beef patties are made from 100% pure beef with no additives, fillers, binders, preservatives or flavour enhancers; just pure forequarter and flank beef. They are individually quick frozen by our suppliers to ensure they arrive at the restaurants in perfect condition.

http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/whatmakesmcdonalds/questio...

>McDonald's can assure you that there no additives in any of our salad products which act as preservatives. Our salad is simply made from 100% fresh vegetables. During some periods of the year when the lettuce has taken a long time to grow, a food grade nitrogen is added to the bags on sealing to slow the respiration and maintain quality, however this is referred to a modified atmosphere rather than an ingredient.

http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/whatmakesmcdonalds/questio...

>We use fruit that's been cut and frozen. At our restaurants, we add it to our low-fat vanilla yogurt and serve it with granola.

http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/your_questions/our_food/how-f...

>We use a freshly cracked, Grade A egg for our famous Egg McMuffin sandwich. It gets its iconic round shape when we cook it on the grill with an ‘egg ring.’

http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/your_questions/our_food/do-yo...

Exactly - what shortcuts are they alleged to take?

To start off: Using McDonalds' facts sheet as data regarding the content of their products is not really a valiable source of information, as this is heavily biased towards their product (ref. http://news.yale.edu/2010/11/08/fast-food-restaurants-dish-u...).

Regarding the additives (regardless of the site's name, it does present a proper list): http://foodbabe.com/2015/03/27/everyone-still-eats-mcdonalds...

You have to balance the value (which I think to be honest you overstate - how hard is it really to find somewhere with safe and clean food that you like) with the costs. On the latter, I am mostly thinking of the health effects of their food.

> how hard is it really to find somewhere with safe and clean food that you like

In India, Egypt, or Thailand? Where bacterial flora and local food are so different from what Europeans and Americans are used to that you end up sitting on toilet for first three weeks of stay?

Big chain stores are a HUGE upgrade in cleanliness and food preparation practices (as well as exterior cleanliness) compared to "home-grown" restaurants and food stalls. There are no health inspectors - the companies policies are sometimes the best chance to ensure you're getting uncontaminated food.

The heath of their food varies by what type of food you eat.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-lose-weight-eating-onl...

There was a teacher who had his students pick what food he ate from a McDonald's and count the calories and other stuff and he lost weight as a result of eating at McDonald's.

Sometimes eating less food is more. You really don't need a double quarter pounder and stuff like that. You can get buy with a McDouble or Filet O'Fish instead.

This. Especially consistency because it leads to that "trust" you allude to, that I can walk into any Mcz (what we call McDonald's here in Australia) and expect the BigMac to taste, look and even feel a certain way.

And speed. More often than not, as soon as I finish paying for the food and pick up some straws/napkins, my number is called. Given all the mentioned attributes, it's an amazing feat and I'm ever more impressed with innovations that Mcz come up with. Part of this speed comes from when they switched to keeping ingredients of a burger in temperature controlled trays ready for assembly. This also had a bonus side effect: the food is always at a consumable temperature when served, never too hot or too cold. Compare this with your run of the mill restaurant where you have wait an extra 10 minutes after the food is served, so it doesn't burn your tongue off.

Also, since Mcz is always under spotlight given its enormity as a company, they have nutritional information for every product. Now tell me, how do I know how much saturated fat I'm being fed in one of those fancy restaurants. Ask them? I did a few times. They didn't know it themselves.

Yeah I figured out the McDouble was healthier than a Double Cheeseburger because it has one less slice of cheese. It is also cheaper at $1.39 and small fries are the same price $1.39 and the large soda is $1 so for like $4 I can get a meal with all of that.

In January McDonalds is going to bundle items to save money so the McDouble and Small Fries will be $2 for a combo and then $1 for the large soda and my meal will be $3 then.

I learned to lose weight by eating less food and calories. I don't eat at McDonalds very often, but I try the McDouble meal when I can to save money and calories.

All done with an army of generally inexperienced teenagers operating within a strong system.

The most important takeaway from the article is this

I stopped equating dislike for big shitty companies with dislike for their foot soldiers.

I wish more people felt the same. Developers have more job options in general than people in other fields, but they also end up working for unsavory companies sometimes because of circumstances. It must be much harder for people in retail, fast food, warehouses etc :(

A little empathy goes a long way.

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