MrSchroeder
Lombard, IL
Male, 33
I *was* an assistant manager for a McDonald's Franchisee in Tucson, AZ from 2007 to 2008, and was hired with the explicit intention of being management and not a standard crew member. I worked hard in learning the procedures and processes of the corporation, with a goal of a much longer career than I actually had. My every day life evolved while I was there, starting from the least desirable position to overall operations. I wrote a blog detailing my experiences as well.
Well, yes and no. There were expectations and projections that each store should achieve. Each day-part (Early Morning/Breakfast/Lunch/"snack" hours/Dinner/Late Night) all had different projections based on historical sales, promotions and what was going on in the real world, such as holidays or local activities. These are subject to a variety of influences, though the McDonald's plan really considers the critical, manageable factors primarily. These are (and everything within McDonald's is) QSC&V. Quality - Service - Cleanliness - Value. All negative changes in a McDonald's restaurant, short of there being some significant, tangible external effect, are thought to be due to shortcomings in QSC&V. It's really true, when you think about it. Do you ever drive out of your way to go to that McDonald's that has the really fresh french fries all the time? Ever avoid the one with the filthy bathrooms and stained, old seats? How about that one McDonald's that you will *never* return to because no one smiles and they give you dirty looks when you ask for more napkins? I personally have boycotted a franchisee that started charging 25 cents for 4 packets of ketchup (I kid you not, those things come in 1000 count boxes for about $11 in 2008). A very large amount of planning is based off all these projections. Short and long term product stock, short and long term staffing, hours of operation, and much more. I'll get more detailed in the planning based off those projections. Long term stock means everything from how many wrappers, containers, bags, condiment packs, straws, cups, napkins and "Bag-in-a-Box" sodas are stocked to the number of french fries, hamburger patties, eggs, tomatoes and other food is based off projections. Short term stock means how many pieces of bacon are cooked for a 12 hour period, how many cooked hamburgers and chicken nuggets are prepared and waiting to be prepared and served by 15 minute periods, how many gallons of ice cream/shake mix are poured into the machines in the morning, and how many cups, straws, napkins should be stocked accessible to busy workers in a rush period. Long term staffing refers to how many crew members work at the store in total, how many managers there are, and whether or not the store needs full time maintenance and lobby staff. Short term, this might mean how many individuals there are working in each day-part and even more short term, when breaks can be scheduled without interrupting the flow of business. Hours of operation might mean whether or not the store is 24 hours, or if it isn't if they close at midnight or 1 am, do they close the dining room an hour before or two? Should the store open at 5am or can it open at 6am? In some franchises and in corporate stores, management teams may or may not make bonuses for exceeding expectations in a positive way. This might mean reducing wasted food to under 2% of total sales, or reducing labor below 17%. Maybe this is exceeding sales by 5% over last year, or improving service times by 10 seconds in the Drive Thru, or perhaps it's simply achieving a 45 minute store closing routine. Again, all of these things can be achieved and improved upon by improving QSC&V (which is applicable to internal customers such as crew members and management, as much as it is to actual paying external customers).
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Most of this comes from coaching people. The process for coaching is to first identify the issue, then to explain the proper way to do something. This can be done very easily by simply taking them aside for a moment, without other crew or customers hearing and saying something like, "Hey, please remember to smile and be nice to the customers. Fake it if you have to!" The next part is to demonstrate the behavior - which means having that employee see you doing exactly what you explained. That may be passive by simply doing it and when they're around, or it can be active, "Hey, let me show you what I mean, go around that side of the counter for a minute" then demonstrate the expected behavior. Last is follow up. Catch the person doing it right later on, and give them feedback immediately in front of peers and customers when they're doing it right. The real reason so many people are grouchy in customer service positions is they get paid jack diddly squat. It's sad and stupid really, that most customer-facing positions in customer service enterprises pay between $7.25 and $10 an hour. That low wage translates to poor attitude, which translates to a lethargy about doing well, which itself turns into a lack of effort. Without effort, there's no growth and without growth there's nothing but a sense of stagnating in terrible, and if you're stagnating in terrible, how likely are you to engage the next stupid bleepy-bleep-of-a-bleep that walks up to you with their "Gimme a ..." BS? However, if the management team encourages trying hard, rewards it with praise, recognition, growth and more recognition, people will be willing to grow. I know for a fact that I turned at least 3 people who hated their jobs into motivated, hard working *team members* who took pride in their ability to do their jobs very well and even train and encourage others to do that job as well as they did - all without changing anything about the physical environment or the compensation for the job. It just took a change in attitude.
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Good question. This depends on the market, really. Urban areas or rural areas with generally lower incomes definitely do not experience a downturn in traffic after New Year's resolutions are made. Suburban areas definitely experience this - many pictures are out there on reddit of empty post-New Year restaurants. Areas where shopping happens (near malls, in malls, etc.) *definitely* experience a downturn in traffic after the New Year but mostly because most people are not shopping as much.
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Some restaurants have switched to ketchup tubs, like the various nugget type sauces have available. Heinz apparently is in a court case over this very thing right now, because they appear to have violated someone else's patent by marketing these. This could seriously be a dissertation on ketchup - ketchup packets are a really important part of American fast food society. I know that sounds silly, but Americans are generally very "nostalgic" people. We do many things in a nostalgic way, the way our parents and grandparents did them, for no reason other than that's how we've always done it. This could turn into a diatribe about vertical toasters and gasoline combustion engines, concrete roadways and steel-beam bridges - but it won't. Suffice it to say that the ketchup packet, while annoying, tiny, and an undesirable expense to owner/operators, they are also the most effective balance of cheapness, convenience, and nostalgic ketchupy goodness.
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Professional Reseller
What kind of mark-ups can you fetch on the clothing you resell from thrift stores?
Day Care Provider
Is it ok w/your employer if you babysit one of the kids outside of daycare hours?
Day Trader
What can a good day trader earn in a year?
Well... I guess it's not related to the Q&A but sure. I love games. I like pen and paper games like D&D and Call of Cthulhu very much, I also love video games especially, including some MMOs, many RPGs, simulators and strategy games, flash games (kongregate.com is fun for the whole family!). I play board and table-top games like Settlers of Cataan, Risk! and Go. As to the self-induced chemical brain attrition, I enjoyed many psychoactive and psychedelic substances in my youth, which my best friend did not enjoy as heartily.
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This differs depending on the operation. Most franchisees and corporate offer 1 free meal per day that you work, up to anywhere from $5 to $10, though most that I know of are in the $7 range. Some franchisees do not offer this, and they're completely jerks for it. As for "eating for free while working", every manager is required to taste pretty much every product during the course of the day. You need to make sure the fries taste right at various times during your shift, taste breakfast food items to make sure they're coming out correctly, taste burger patties and completed product, test some shake of various flavors, try all the flavors of drinks from all the different dispensers in the store. It really does get old at times, because you're not enjoying it, you're testing it. It was common for me, when I was working, to get people I relied on to do this. So, if someone mentioned they're hungry or something, I'd have them place a "complimentary" order (required manager override to get it to ring up at $0.00 for inventory management purposes) and go eat it. We didn't have people eating full prepared items endlessly, but in the course of a day at least 25% of the various food items would be made completely and someone would eat them. We, for obvious reasons, didn't make things like Double Quarter Pounders, and it's unlikely the fancy Angus burgers (which we did not have when I worked there) get made and tested, but it's likely about 4 times a day someone's trying the Angus patties for quality.
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There was this girl named Gabriella - maybe 19 years old - who worked in the kitchen. She spoke very little English, was constantly arguing with people in the kitchen, refused to follow procedures and policies, and liked to simply stare with an angry look when she was asked to do something that was more than putting sandwiches together. I observed all this in the first two shifts working with her, and it was more apparent a few weeks in. So, she was in fact my first "target" for growth. I spent a lot of time trying to demonstrate to her the proper procedures, and in fact, since I was so new, I made her train me some of the things that I didn't know (or what I wanted her to demonstrate correctly). Every time she did something well I praised her for it. A few shifts into this, I started taking it more proactively. I'd show her things that I knew she was uncomfortable and possibly even angry about doing - like stocking small freezers correctly, labeling things with times, making sure that cheese is "tempering" and labeled properly, mopping, preparing sanitized water, etc. I'd follow basic "coaching" procedures on all of these - explain the right way, demonstrate the right way, provide praise when they do it right. After a while, it sank in that all of these things were easy, and earned her praise from managers all the time. Silly thing that it is, praise from someone (even someone you may not like) is valuable and potent. It's even more important when it comes from someone you do know and love. We were short handed one day, and none of our staff could cover. So we got a staff member, Luna, from another store, and she was essentially this girl Gabriella +5 years. As soon as I explained where she'd be working and she got next to Gabriella, I was like "Wow you two could be sisters! You look so much alike!" and they both giggled. They were sisters. Well, it turns out Luna was in fact the rock star super-Ace in her store and throughout the day Luna and Gabriella were praising the hell out of each other, and Luna seemed genuinely surprised that her sister could not only keep up with her in the workflow, but was able to hold on to every policy and procedure in the heat of a lunch rush. In the end, Gabriella started along a path to management and was transferred to another store, as ours already had 3 new-ish swing managers and 2 management candidates. The whole time between meeting her with her horrible attitude and her moving on to being a management candidate in another store would not have happened if I did not coach her using tried and true McDonald's coaching procedures. It took me having a good attitude to accomplish this as well. Keep in mind however, there are total jerks and a-holes who have no intention of doing well, ever, no matte what you do. Those people get fired and wonder why the world hates them so much.
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