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.
This really depends on the store, how common a problem this is, customer flow, and local and state laws. Your best bet is to ask someone who works at your neighborhood McDonald's.
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Look the person in the eye, like they are a human being. Smile at them genuinely. Start your order off with, "Hi! May I please have..." and end it with, "Thank you!" Compliment them, if you feel like it, in exactly the same way you would compliment any other human being you interact with in the world. There's no magic trick. That person might still hate you with everything in their soul. Or you may be the first person to treat them like a person all day. As to tips, almost assuredly no, McDonald's employees are not allowed to accept tips. The reason for this is varied, but mostly because tipped employees are paid differently than non-tipped employees and it's a terrible hassle when you have tipped employees. McDonald's wouldn't be able to have their prices so low and allow tipping. It's fine at more expensive eating establishments because that's built into their pricing. Also, low-priced mom and pops will always allow you to tip and they'll keep that part of it quiet, most likely. But anywhere that always has tipped employees has to have at least one accountant to handle the headaches.
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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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Several million dollars a year of product testing and development is the short answer. I think the deal is they use seriously high quality potatoes (because they have buying power), and ensure consistent cut size. The fries go through a very thorough cleaning/soak to get some level of starches out of them. Then, they get flash fried (par-cooked), and then flash-frozen. At this point they're packaged and sent to stores. There was a really good "Modern Marvels" episode called "Fast Food Tech" that Netflix probably has.
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This is entirely dependent upon the franchisee and the market. In general, standard crew members do start off right at or barely above the minimum wage. Managers have several pay brackets and most of it is based off experience. You might have two people with the exact same job title and responsibilities working in the same store with a $2/hr difference. Depending on the market the store is in, and how many qualified applicants there are, pay might be as much as $9 for crew, or it might be bare minimum wage. Store managers might make anywhere from $27k to $75k a year depending on the market, performance, and many other factors. As far as raises, there were 6 months reviews for crew and lower tier managers, annually for store level managers. At these reviews someone would receive anywhere from nothing to 25 cents an hour pay increase. Usually it was about 5 to 10 cents. For assistant and store managers, the range was nothing to $1 per hour, with 50 cents being the norm. Keep in mind, assistant and store managers also got bonused (as explained in a previous post).
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I think on the Store manager/Director/Owner Operator level this went on, but among crew no way. Like I said in another question - we knew where we were working.
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First - not only have they considered it, they’ve been selling them for at least 2 years in stores that have a McCafe. http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/promotions/Smoothies.html Secondly, that statistic is, in my experience, hugely inaccurate. As I’ve explained in the question about why McDonald’s serves breakfast/lunch in separated segments, most McDonald’s restaurants are focused solely on breakfast food items during breakfast time. More importantly, most McDonald’s stores don’t have their ice cream or shakes machine running until about 9 or 10am (depending on the market, traffic and other factors). The prime reason for this is that the person who is generally assigned the task of "building" the machine - that is, takes it from its dismantled, clean state and puts it into operational condition - has other tasks before then, like recycling oil. This role is generally filled by a person with the title of "maintenance". They have a regular schedule of tasks, from cleaning the outside of the store (including pressure washing sidewalks, watering/maintaining flower beds, scrubbing and rinsing out the trash corral area), to taking out last night’s trash (remember, you never open the back doors after dark!), cleaning out the lobby (which also includes scrubbing out trash corrals and trash cans and cleaning all of the Play Place area), and making sure the bathrooms have a deep sanitizing clean (the bathrooms are touched up as needed throughout the day, and sanitized again if needed later). So, as I said, this person has a tight schedule with many tasks. It’s usually about 9 or 10am when they get to putting the shake machine into operational condition, which takes from 5 to 20 minutes depending on the quantity and types of machines. Then, the mix is poured in which takes about 25 minutes to become servable, making shakes and ice cream ready just a bit before 10 or 10:30am.
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