My Time Under The Arches

[Pedersen]

Well, it's been 20 years since I worked under those golden arches, back when they still listed how many billions had been served. To give people an idea of just how long ago that was, here's some small factoids:

I worked there when they introduced Chicken McNuggets.
The slogan at the time was "You deserve a break today".
I worked the very first Monopoly game they ever did. Ever.
Drive thru time was expected to be less than 120 seconds from the time the car arrived until it was pulling away.
When I started, they still hired people who had their primary duty as keeping the dining area clean, and scheduled people for just such shifts. I know, as I was one of them.

So, here's the stories that I can remember, all condensed into one post:

If I Wanted Hot Water, I'd Order F'ing Hot Water!

Early morning rush, I think it was a Sunday morning. I was only 16 at the time. Three or four registers open, lines 5 and 6 people deep. First I notice of this SC is that he is screaming "If I wanted hot water, I'd order f'ing hot water. I ordered hot tea, now where's my g'd'mn tea bag!"

Turns out he'd gone through the drive thru, ordered hot tea, and they forgot to give him a tea bag. Simple mistake, easily correctable, but he had to correct it at the top of his lungs. A manager gave him the bag, and he was gone.

The Disappearing Employee

A coworker went on break. While there were still customers in line. And didn't tell anybody she was doing it. I didn't notice, as we were busy, until one of the customers at the front of what was her line asked me what happened. I found out she went on break. So, I did the only thing I could think to do: Took their order and my customer's order at the same time. Both were understanding that I was trying to make things right, so we got that fixed fairly quickly.

The Time To Serve Contest

So, the shift managers had a great idea: for the next hour, run a contest for the cashiers. Whoever has the lowest time to serve gets a free sundae and a short paid break (I think it was 15 minutes). I worked my ass off for that hour to try and make it happen. When it was done, the managers declared the winner to be the slowest moving person up front. And I don't mean just that I was bitter. The person who supposedly won was the slowest cashier. Everybody else would handle 3 customers to her 1.

Why the managers decided to mark her the winner, I don't think I will ever know.

The Wrong Promotion

This section might belong under Morons in Management, but it's a quick one, and caps off my time there. This job was my first ever job, and I was there for nearly three years. I was working for a franchise owner who owned four stores. Some time after I started, another woman started who attended the same high school I did. For reasons I've never known, she hated me with a passion. She got promoted to manager.

I found this out one night while working the back drive thru window. Per policy, I charged someone for an extra packet of McNugget sauce (yes, they did charge when you got extra, something like 50 cents or 10 cents, I forget which). She promptly chewed me out. That's when I found out she was promoted, just didn't have the uniform/title yet.

I turned in my two weeks that night, since I knew I could either be fired or quit. The supervisor of the stores (second only to the franchise owner) had a meeting with me to ask why I was quitting. I told him the truth.

She quit a few months later. From what I understand, it was due to not being given the authority that comes with being a manager, and not being allowed to do the things managers are supposed to do. I like to think I helped make that happen

[Imogene]

As to the people hired just to maintenance the lobby, there was one at the store when I worked there. She didn't work every day, however.

I'm not entirely sure of this, but the managers sending the slow one on break may have been a ruse to get her off the registers, so someone speedier could take over for her?

[Pedersen]

Never thought of that

First: I was one of about 4 people who was hired to maintain the dining area. There was always someone on the clock whose job it was to clean the dining room. Well, at least during any of the three daily rushes, there was. Sometimes, there were multiples of us. That particular McD's would do $1200 lunch hours at a time when a single hamburger was 69 cents. They were busy.

As to the putting a slow person on break: I had never before considered that as a possibility. I honestly do not remember if someone covered a register while she was off or not. Ah well, it's so long gone that I would be absolutely in shock if anybody who works that store now worked there then. So, it's not like I could even ask anybody and get a truthful answer

[sarahj]

I work under what is considered to be the busiest golden arches in my city. We have a full-time guy cleaning during the week, and a lady on the weekends, plus managers always sending people out for half an hour at a time to help out.

Out of all of us, 100+ employees, there's one who is disliked by everyone and maybe 5 who just aren't the best to work with. As the OP said, it gets super busy, and if you can't work as a team then it gets hard.

Regarding the nuggets sauce - ours is 50 cents per extra tub. Some places (the quieter ones that have plenty of 'regular' customers, and the tables are sparkly clean, and the bathrooms smell lemon fresh, and customers' orders are brought out to the tables /RANT) don't charge extra. We do. Otherwise everyone would want a handful of tubs, and we'd be out 5 boxes a day (about 120 tubs per box, please correct me if this is wrong).

People bitching about paying for sauce is a pet peeve of mine. Thanks for letting me rant, Pedersen! The stories under your first three headings have also happened to me. Almost exactly the same. It's kinda scary.

[Dragonlover]

I'm with Sarahj here, I think I'm some kind of time travelling clone of yours. Heres a few of mine:

Why can't I have breakfast?

This was a regular one. When I worked there, breakfast menu stopped at half ten, so you'd get a mad queue from about quarter past ten, all wanting breakfast stuff. Of course, by the time the people at the back got to the counter, we'd changed all the grills over, leading to the following exchange:

SC- I'd like a sausage and egg muffin please
Me- Sorry, we've run out
SC- So cook more! (at this point they start getting agitated)
Me- I'm afraid we can't, the grills have been changed
SC- But I've been in the queue for the past ten minutes! I demand to see a manager!

Yup, the manager told them exactly the same thing.

Also, whats with everyone deciding they want the same thing? I was working drive-thru one night taking the orders, and for about an hour all we sold was Double Cheeseburgers. I'm not talking one per car either, at one point we were waiting on about 20 of the damn things.

One that would fit into Morons in Management, but since we're on a roll here...

First, a note for anyone unfamiliar with fast food tills- they're basically computers, and the configuration of the buttons is changed from the office. This is only done when the topsheet gets so cluttered and theres so much random promo stuff on there it's getting hard to remember everything, so about every six to eight months.

I got to work at 8am one Saturday to find that the tills had been changed. No big deal, until you find out that the only working buttons are Apple Pie, Donut and Muffin, and you have to price everything using those. That alone nearly gave me a nervous breakdown, cos I had no idea what the breakfast stuff was meant to cost, but I got through it, and then when the main menu started I was fine. Then lunchtime hit, along with the announcement that all the tills were being turned off for a couple of hours.

'Thank christ for that' we all thought, 'we'll have a nice easy lunch while the store shuts and then open back up for the quiet patch'. No. We had to write down the orders on trayliners, total up the cost in our heads/with a calculator and put all the cash into one tray that was being watched by a manager. As you can imagine, that went down as one of the worst shifts to work ever. Luckily the customers were pretty understanding, and I actually had a few reduce the orders when they saw what was going on.

Dragonlover

[HALFHUMANHALFZOMBIE]

Why can't I have breakfast?



SC- I'd like a sausage and egg muffin please
Me- Sorry, we've run out
SC- So cook more! (at this point they start getting agitated)
Me- I'm afraid we can't, the grills have been changed
SC- But I've been in the queue for the past ten minutes! I demand to see a manager!

So cook more he says. How can you cook something that is run out. make one come out of my ass?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The Time To Serve Contest

So, the shift managers had a great idea: for the next hour, run a contest for the cashiers. Whoever has the lowest time to serve gets a free sundae and a short paid break (I think it was 15 minutes). I worked my ass off for that hour to try and make it happen. When it was done, the managers declared the winner to be the slowest moving person up front. And I don't mean just that I was bitter. The person who supposedly won was the slowest cashier. Everybody else would handle 3 customers to her 1.

Why the managers decided to mark her the winner, I don't think I will ever know.

I'm guessing one of the following:
1.Nepotism (slow cashier has some connection to franchise owners or management)
2. Misguided attempt at motivation (if we give them the sundae, they'll work harder!)
3. Getting slow cashier the hell off the registers, as Juwl suggested
4. Sexual favors
5. Incriminating photos of management held by slow cashier
6. All of the above

So cook more he says. How can you cook something that is run out. make one come out of my ass?

That would be about the most disgusting sausage McMuffin ever.

[Becks]

That would be about the most disgusting sausage McMuffin ever.

Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust barely.

[Pedersen]

Why can't I have breakfast?
This was a regular one. When I worked there, breakfast menu stopped at half ten, so you'd get a mad queue from about quarter past ten, all wanting breakfast stuff. Of course, by the time the people at the back got to the counter, we'd changed all the grills over, leading to the following exchange:

Dang, I'd forgotten about that! My personal favorite was one time working on the drive thru right at the change over. Customer asked for breakfast item. Told them it was out. They said either "Dammit!" or "Shit!", I forget which.

My reply? "Sir, this is a family restaurant, and we would appreciate your not using that kind of language here." He thanked me and drove away. Silly, but it was fun for me

[Imogene]

So cook more he says. How can you cook something that is run out. make one come out of my ass?

*points at Toolbaby's sig line* Hey, the same situation came up in another thread, only it was chicken then.

[Dips]

That's about the time I worked at McDonalds. About 1979 through 1982. We had to wear uniforms which matched the decor of the store. Mine was bright lime green double-knit polyester pants with no pockets, white nurses' shoes (which I had to buy myself), a double knit bright lime green princess line button front top with a few white stripes to break up the lime green a bit and a white baggy visored cap with a few bright lime green stipes on it so it would match the rest of the horror.

I almost wish vanity hadn't prevented me from having my picture taken in that thing. It has to be seen to be believed.

Despite that I did manage to find a clip of the color.

[MadMike]

I worked there when they introduced Chicken McNuggets.
The slogan at the time was "You deserve a break today".
I worked the very first Monopoly game they ever did. Ever.
Drive thru time was expected to be less than 120 seconds from the time the car arrived until it was pulling away.
When I started, they still hired people who had their primary duty as keeping the dining area clean, and scheduled people for just such shifts. I know, as I was one of them.

While I never worked there, I remember most of those. (Showing my age here...) I also remember when the introduced the sundaes, the whole "McDonalds is becoming a little more grown up" fiasco, involving the failed experiments like the Arch Deluxe, the coming and passing of the McDLT (What happened with that? That one actually sounded like a good idea), and the old jingle for the Big Mac:

Two all beef patties,
Special Sauce,
Lettuce, Cheese,
Pickles, Onions,
On a sesame seed bun

Hmm, that reminds me of a joke that I'm sure no one under 30 will get. Off to the Jokes forum...

[Jack7957]

...the coming and passing of the McDLT (What happened with that? That one actually sounded like a good idea)...

With McD's phasing out the styrofoam, they had to get rid of it. No way to keep the "hot side hot" and the "cool side cool" without styrofoam. Now it's the Big & Tasty.