Because.

Because I'm so busy, I don't really feel like I have any time to maintain this blog. It's on indefinite hiatus.

Busy, Coming Soon!

I've got a seriously busy week ahead, so no posts for a least 10 days or so. XOXO

From the Comments.

A reader, Anonymous, of this blog made an interesting kind of comment to me just yesterday.

On May 31, 2008 Anonymous said such things as

"Oh man, you are such a total arrogant blowhard, it's not even funny."

"you have a totally over-inflated sense of self-worth"

"How about spending more time mentoring and teaching with patience, rather than spewing out your complaints on this blog?"

"you'd be a dick to work with."

and

"So why would I fire you? I do not care about your adherence to process. You clearly have no ability to lead or motivate. You clearly are in this for yourself and your own self-aggrandizment(sic)."

"I do not care about your cleaning behind the fucking milkshake machines."

"One more self-absorbed post from you and I will send it to McD.hq because I'm tired of your shit."

- -

So, even though my first reaction is to just delete your comment, Anonymous, I'm going to respond to what you wrote me, but only because you're a giant pole-smoker. I'll address some of the parts of your comment that I posted above, in a random order.

As for the final item you wrote, well point blank, this is called "McDonald's -> Management" and is my WEB LOG (or fucking diary if you will) and my blog is subtitled "One Man's Life and Journey as a McDonald's Manager". What exactly do you expect to read posted on my blog? "Tales of a Classical Pianist"? Shut up. Tales about me cleaning behind the shake machine are the only reason this blogspot is wasting drive space.

Also, as I'm an employee of a private company, a franchisee of McDonald's, as well as the fact that I am not violating a single McDonald's or franchisee company rule in anyway, not even a moral guideline, your forwarding of my website to McD Corporate would not have any effect in any way, let alone wind me up fired. In fact, I've told my owner operator about my blog, and then, blogged about it. He knows it's here, he can come look if he cares at all what I'm posting.

As for me being arrogant, self-serving, and self-aggrandizing, as you quite perceptively pointed out, I'm also very selfish, commanding, demanding, self-absorbed, egotistical, opinionated, very nearly always right, and, I'm hung like a rhino.

If you were my boss, and fired me, it'd probably be a grave mistake. Just about any boss would love to have someone who is super-adherent to policy, who is always willing to correct behaviors and deliver feedback, and all the other things you've pointed about about me that you don't care about. I get the job done!

So, as for you trying to paint me in a negative view by discussing my supposed lack of training and support for my crew or my appreciation of my crew, I have a few things to say to you.

First, go read all the posts on my blog. I wrote about raising a fucking crew person who came in full of gusto up to a manager, and helping her learn some functions of the store and coached her through things on the phone. Maybe because I do not include the names of people, merely first initials, you could not catch it. But M. is that person and she rocks, even if she's incredibly capable of being a bitch and causing everyone around her to suffer.

Secondly, the post you commented on started with "My whole team worked hard today!". I'm sick of your shit too, and I've only read one thing you wrote.

Thirdly, my sense of self worth is perfectly right sized, thanks.

Working Hard.

Today, my whole team worked hard.

First of all, I showed up over two hours later. The reason is unimportant, the fact that it occurred sucks. The reason was, in fact, stupidity. I did not know my schedule for today.

So I showed up late, just in time to arrive before the Store Owner. Each of the organization level employees (there are three) has chosen one or two of the stores to be their focus. The owner chose my store. Our focuses are on inventory control including ordering the right products, get waste under control and other factors to food stat loss controlled, there are in fact a whole list of focuses listed out in a commitment we all signed last week Wednesday at our manager's meeting.

So today P. was at our store for 4 hours or so and he lately has been been at our store for at least 3 hours every day. It was a day of working hard but we all worked well together. There were rough moments and such, but it was still a relatively good day.

Myself and M., the only other manager I really respect as a professional, were discussing how well we each were doing with one another, how respectful we've been of each other and how hard we've been working for each other. I felt great to have someone I have a respect for tell me about their respect for me. That's why I work every day.

Short Operations Review - Breakfast Day Part

Last Saturday morning we had our first visit from a McDonald's representative (I'm honestly not sure of his title), who gave our store a S.O.R., partly based on the execution of Breakfast Optimization - which we started just two days before. Yes, two days before, which was also free Southern Style tasting day. That was fun! I got out of it due to a previously mentioned recovery from a norovirus experience.

Which means I arrived to my first shift after ASM training, which was also the day of an S.O.R., to learn the Breakfast Optimization system - breakfast really isn't my strong point (it's an opportunity in fact, specifically breakfast grill). So it was a slightly stressful day.

Also, the Director of Operations threw a ton of negative at us, in many small ways. I don't know if it was his own expression of his stress, but he really was sharp tongued about quite a few things. It was pretty unnerving, I try not to subject myself to negativity, and I think he was being a bit unfair on most of it. We scored a 92.5% on the S.O.R. We missed a few procedural points, some really dumb shit that no one really even knew was a procedure, like using rubber trivets under the aluminum thermal pots, UHC liner paper in the Burrito drawer of the UHC, 3 or 4 really stupid little details like that.

On Service, which I completely ran and owned nearly all the time the S.O.R. went on, service scored a 99%, and I was written up for doing an "exceptional" job running the store by our Rep, B. and for how I filled the role of an Ambassador of Hospitality. My service team has got it's stuff down. I owned that store, and made sure I used my lot and lobby person (we had so many people floating around) for the store's benefit that it too was mentioned by B. in his S.O.R. review. My Presenter E. rocks. He pwns the Drive Thru. I think there was a swing manager at Front Cash, someone who did a passable job throughout. They all rock, my maintenance guy the most.

I like praise, and it was three days later that I learned of what the review said. It was the only positive feed back that I had heard, well after the fact. Pretty good stuff, considering I thought from the way the D.O. was carrying on a non-stop stream of negative feedback during that day. We got a 92.5% not bad when all we lost points on was some details (and dry scrambled eggs).

What's Up?

It's been a while since I wrote because I've been incredibly busy, like stupid busy, for about 3 weeks, basically since that post called "Long Day".

I spent two weeks working ridiculously long hours, 6 days a week, about 46 hours each week. Basically, just getting a taste of the Assistant Manager position and the amount of dependency my store really has on my input in the role of an Assistant Manager. I also developed quite a few new responsibilities.

For about 4 months that I was doing what I thought was a pretty good job of taking care of many of the responsibilities that an Assistant Manager has, including schedules and training crew and trying to have input on hiring crew, and especially dealing with volatile crew relationships and interactions. Trying to solve problems involving crew and management egos, emotions and senses of esteem is like trying to carry a couch made of something.. well I tried to think of some object to use as an analogy but I just can't. It's like trying to carry something that is heavy and delicate at the same time - a difficult task.

I got even more of that put into my responsibilities when I actually got the "promotion" of being Assistant Manager. Also, at the same time, my store lost one manager who worked there for 6 years, and another that worked there two months and no managers were created to fill their positions.

Back to topic - last week I worked like 30 hours in my store, and spent 20 hours over 3 days in ASM (Advanced Shift Management) training. I took alot out of that, in knowledge, how to gather knowledge, some McDonald's operational systems, and quite a bit more. We had an S.O.R. (Short Operations Review) of our Breakfast day-part. I'll talk all about that S.O.R. and some things I've begun to understand from it. Last week was especially rough because my whole family (along with like 5 other people from my neighborhood) got a foodborne illness from a Mexican place that just opened up (the food was really good at least). I spent 3 days (thankfully during my training) suffering from a norovirus - stomach cramping and all the rest that goes along with it. So I finished ASM. I'm working on my Post Class Action Plan with the manager who went to training with me, J.L. It's been a great week so far since Sunday. W00t!

Time Off.

I've been ridiculously busy with life, work and home. I've got to take a little time off (if you haven't noticed, by the dirth of posts).

I'll be writing again sooner or later.

Wednesday.

Today was quite the long day (in fact, it was yesterday, because it is well into tomorrow (today) already). It was also incredibly productive, and it was my first full shift working absolutely away from the customers. I helped one single, $1.08 customer today.

I worked for about 3 hours doing next weeks schedules. It's really an involved process doing the schedule through the ISP. It's also frustrating and difficult to balance everyone's needs and desires, for hours and availability, against the store's needs, what the business needs to remain profitable.

Then, for about an hour and a half I did a truck, with two other guys for the first time - normally it's two people for 3 hours. We had some unique receiving to do. My store's freezer has been out a few days, and we have a GSF trailer parked in our back parking lot, and it's where all our frozen product is currently located. What a pain in the ass! However, it's a great solution to the problem we're having.

After that, I counted a full, end of month inventory (so should you!) with the store manager. By hand. Our TelXon hand-held device is being repaired and we won't get it back for a few days. So, I did a phenomenal amount of hand writing today.

Lastly, I had to hand-enter those items into the ISP, then double-check it all. I got out at almost 1:00 AM.

All in all, a productive day. Now, sleep.

Long Week.

A 13 hour day mostly spent in Production, followed by a 9 hour day mostly spent in Production, followed by today, a rough morning and a long 8 hour day. I am beat.

Career Growth.

I have taken strong ownership of my store, and all that happens within it, being a professional manager, while learning how to fulfill my commitments to my store and my position and my people within the McDonald's system and structure.

I model the behaviors of a McDonald's Assistant Manager by offering as much lead-by-example role modeling that I am capable of. I give my all to my store nearly all the time.

I am constantly learning new tasks, practicing the ones I've already learned, and trying to pass along knowledge to the managers in training when they're receptive.

I have started, completed and maintained organization and anti-clutter projects in my store, as well as implemented (amid much skepticism and resistance) comprehensive procedures.

Customers come first, last and always. Good customer service is my primary goal when I'm working and I try to follow the 5 Hospitality Cues all the time. I have some solid skills with customer recovery, turning potential McHaters into loyal customers nearly every day by following the 6 Steps.

I arrive on time, nearly always do everything I need to do (Saturday night's close I left two under-counter drink station trashes overflowing. I didn't even look to see if they needed changing). I'm the man with the plan (Pre-shift plan that is!) and am able to communicate effectively with my team, even when they don't speak the same language as me.

I am able to diagnose problems and find the best-fit solution to them more often than not with a minimum of collaboration or help.

When I am frustrated or confused or unable to find the answer, I have no problem opening up communication to my store manager, my operations manager, the training coordinator or the owner to discuss my difficulty or my problem with them, seeking solutions.

I am doing the very best I can, and giving all my focus while I'm at work (and often when I'm at home and should be focused on my family).

I was just told yesterday that my promotion to Assistant Manager, which was supposed to occur immediately after the current A.M. moves to the newly acquired store (the changeover occurs this Thursday), will be held off until my Advanced Shift Management course, at least - which is mid-May.

I'm trying to decide whether or not my effort is delivering the result expected, and I'm getting damn little information with which to make that decision. If it's not, then ... well, I'm not capable of not delivering full effort, but I'm damn sure not able to allow myself to get the short end of the stick.

Roll Call.

There's about 40-50 people who read this blog about once every three or four days, and another set of random visitors totaling about 10 people a day. My peak daily visit count was 62 visitors in one day on a day recently when I didn't even make a post.

So, who are you visitors? You know a bunch about me, and I'd like to know a little about you, beyond what your favorite Dollar Menu item is or an estimate of your "regular" order.

Take a few minutes and tell me your name, where you're from, your role in your McDonald's (if you have one), and if you feel like giving me appreciative or constructive feedback, by all means, please do so.

Thanks.

An Easy Friday Night.

I did nothing special, or extra tonight. I worked 7-close, which is 11 PM for Dining Room, 1 AM Drive-Thru.

I came in about 6:15, did my Pre-Shift work, breezing through all of it without extra focus or my typical level of attention. I worked in Service with J. with one guy, C., in Production for a half-hour when my other Production crew was on break. Later, I worked in Service with C. and the other J. in Production when J. was on break. It was pretty hectic, and at that time I ended up telling people my Dining Room is closed for the night about 15 minutes early (I was just too deep in Drive Thru). All in all, for those bursts of customers, we held KVS times of about 65 seconds and Drive Thru times of 190. Nothing great and well outside the goals, but before the closing team decided to become stronger (I believe I inspired this), those numbers would have been considered a pretty good night, if that was every hour's times. Our day ended about 110 in Drive Thru and under 50 in KVS times.

My last customer we screwed up her order, and only made her a 10 piece nugget instead of the 20 she ordered, and she was the last customer. So she waited until well after our closing time, getting her last nuggets.

After everything, we ended up getting out 50 minutes after closing. Our goal is 30 minutes, but a realistic goal for Friday and Saturday, in my eyes (not from the Store Manager's viewpoint) is 45 minutes.

So, nothing special, we passed some goals, as far as time is concerned, but we did about 40% more sales this week than we did over the last 3 weeks. I know, I checked the DSRs.

A Conversation.

My week has been almost interminable. It's been a great week, to be honest. I did quite a bit of thinking and problem solving this week, spurred by conversations.

The first effective conversation I had this week was called by two other managers, both right around a year into their first career in management. Both are female, hispanic managers, and I'm only pointing it out because it is so. Both seem to feel that I speak to them poorly or am disrespectful to them. They addressed this with S., who is upper-management in my organization. She basically called a meeting between these two managers, my store manager B., and me.

The two women were offered an opportunity to open communication with me, they feel there's a problem with me. They apparently told S. they did not like the way I spoke to them. However, what they addressed at this meeting was that I take control of a shift when I'm in the store. One specific complaint that was voiced was regarding a day earlier this week when I came on the floor at about 8:10 and there was no positioning guide completed, no Pre-shift work at all. In fact it was being so poorly managed that it spurred a previous post entitled GROWTH.

So I came in and took over, by doing the Pre-shift planning that should have already been done. I positioned everyone and started giving out breaks, and signed our Accountability Sheet, which basically is a manager's signature that they have done a customer-visibility travel path (where the customer can see) and made sure everything was right.

This incident was mentioned. However, let's take a flashback one week prior to the manager's meeting held the previous week. These same two managers complained that no one else filled out the Accountability Sheet (which may actually be true) so we all agreed, at their urging, to take a more active hand in getting that particular item taken care of.

Now, within the course of a week, their specific complaint became the direct opposite of what it was originally, regarding a specific task. I felt attacked unjustly, but I was able to keep my cool. This doesn't always happen, but I did it.

I voiced the switch in bitching they were making, and pointed out how silly it is. Further, they claim I'm off the floor for hours at a time, patent bullshit. However, I addressed that very well also.

I asked them to think for a moment about 3 months past, how they saw their job and responsibilities, and if they thought then about most of the things they do now. Both of them were honest and said, well, no, not really. So I asked them to imagine 3 months from now, can they really see all the new responsibilities they may take on, and the new details of their jobs? Both agreed, no. Meanwhile, B. is nodding his head off. Then, this is when I had their attention. (This is the first direct quote I've made on this blog.) "Now, Ladies," said I, "I'm seriously a few years further along that responsibility path than you. Do you even want to try to imagine all the details I've got delegated to me, to take care of during the times I'm on the clock?"

I further explained that it's necessary, when possible to dip off the floor for 5-10 minutes at a time, taking care of the store and running things.

I think I got through to them. However, S. was completely focused on how they didn't like how I communicated with them. The problem is, apparently, that I'm brisk with words, I'm a very big and handsome guy, I've got a deep bellowing voice, and I'm commanding. (Picture Zaff Branigan from Futurama, with pants.) I can't help any of those things.

Not the Best Day Ever, Still a Great Day to Be Alive!

So, my day was off to an odd start from the beginning. My alarm didn't wake me up this morning, and I woke up at 5:30 AM instead of 4:00 AM. I should've taken the 5:45 bus, but that wasn't happening. I would've arrived at about 6:20 AM, enough time to eat and pre-shift. I didn't start my day off early like I should have. Then, the 6:22 bus arrived at 6:16 while I was still across the street from it.

Now I was really late. So I got to work late, didn't get to pre-shift much at all and didn't have any breakfast. I was definitely not the best role model when I showed up to work, but I finished my pre-shift within my first 30 or 40 minutes and even got the positioning guide done.

But while I was running around, and working, one of the managers who was working Front Counter position, J., was leaning against the counter, holding that sucker up for all he was worth. I asked for his attention for a moment and explained to him that whoever is working Front Counter is responsible for cleaning everything from HERE to HERE, including the HLZ, the runner's station, the OJ machine, the Iced Coffee Station, and the shake machine and the McFlurry Station. If they've got a free moment and that's done, they are responsible for keeping the Drink Station clean as well. It's really not that much, and a good Front Counter crew member like T. or the other T. or even E. could keep those areas clean. Maybe the last part was over-stepping the bounds, because he got all pissy with me. He claims to be so good at what he does, and gets defensive of his actions when his behavior gets corrected. It's just that there are many behaviors to correct in the store and damn if that is my fault and damn it if my job isn't to correct behaviors.

We ran a good lunch, if a little tense, then I was off to work on schedules. I stayed an extra 3 hours doing schedules. Now, an hour blogging while listening to music. Today has been pretty cool so far, in general.

Growth.

So in around a week or so I will be the Assistant Manager at my store. I really do feel I've done the job of Assistant Manager for the past few months or so.

In fact, I came into my store doing a better job at being a Shift Manager, more wholly exhibiting the behaviors of a role model, maybe having been short-tempered a few times, and willing to apologize for it (people seem to think I'm too high strung) when I've been wrong. Usually, though, I do feel that if I've increased the volume of my communication to a direct and absolutely clear, resounding level, it's usually been an appropriate reaction in the situation.

In any case, I'm not too high-strung. I'm just exactly high strung enough to be me.

I take care of quite a few areas and particular systems, because it just feels like no one else is following up on them. It's difficult sometimes because even such a basic, simple system as PRE-SHIFT PLANNING gets left behind by nearly all the managers. I am glad to come in and assess the store, check things out and find out about the day. I like communicating with my staff and fellow managers and checking sales projections versus actual sales and taking a guess at how my store will perform that day.

I absolutely revel in setting realistic, achievable goals for the day and for our peak hours. The best part of my day is my first real people travel path when I communicate those goals to each employee.

Really, I can't understand how any manager can not travel around the store, checking the restaurant and equipment and people and product to .. I mean, fuck, PLAN THEIR DAY! I work with many managers who want the store to run itself, and crew to develop themselves and for teams to grow themselves with as little interaction as possible. I on the other hand have a passion to watch all those things, but to help create successes in my store, on my team, and with my crew.

Pedantic as it may sound, I see every satisfied customer as a success for the Brand, and the success of the Brand is something I want to be a part of. It's been an opportunity for men, some greater and some lesser than I, to become successful.

Why McDonald's is Successful.

It's not hamburgers. It's not the commercials. It's not massive corporate contracts with Disney and Coke. It's systems.

McDonald's has some phenomenal systems in place, developed and proven by the input of Billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours worth of research. The systems they offer are effective, or they would not be in place - and when the systems and procedures that are not effective are proven ineffective, they're changed.

Any unsuccessful McDonald's - whether unsuccessful from the customer's point of view (poor quality, slow service, dirty restaurant) or unsuccessful from the employees' point of view (drama, bickering, lack of teamwork) or from the O/O's point of view (unprofitable) - can be grown into being a successful McDonald's restaurant by implementing and vigilantly following up on the systems and processes and procedures that the McDonald's system offers.

The most important thing that leads to McDonald's success is managers willing to do what it takes to follow procedures and implement policies that ensure employees follow procedures, not to mention riding crew and other managers' asses in regards to training those procedures and following up with them on the procedures, all the time!

It's a heavy responsibility for a manager who wants to do the best they can everyday, because it's pretty likely most of the people around you do not wake up and set out to excel every day. The majority of crew and managers in any McDonald's are just people showing up collecting a paycheck, looking to finish their shift and get away as fast as possible! So if you are "that manager" who wants the best for your store, your crew and your own career, you'll have many obstacles in the way - but the obstacles are only people.

It's nearly always possible to motivate any person, no matter how difficult the personality is. Honestly, if what you want is your crew and managers to follow procedures, the easiest way to - I'll be blunt here - manipulate those human beings to do what you want them to do, is to show them how it benefits them and how their actions can affect others.

Production crew? Explain to them the severity of following Food Safety procedures - How would they feel if their child/loved one/spouse/parent were to come in to the store on a day that Food Safety procedures weren't being followed, they get E. coli and, if they survive it, they may have to live on dialysis for the rest of their life.

Service crew? Ask them about a situation where they got poor customer service, and how they felt about it. Get them to describe the whole situation. Help them to realize for themselves that when they aren't smiling, when they aren't pleasant, when they aren't providing and instant greeting, and fast, accurate service, they make someone else feel exactly how they felt in their poor customer service experience.

Managers? Well, honestly, I have a hard spot for managers who don't want to do their best. I know that it's really no different than crew, but I really, really get angry over some "managers" who chooses to be lazy, inaccurate, or fail to follow proper procedures. I work hard, so hard, to treat lazy, work-avoiding, procedure-skipping managers the way I would crew, and counsel them and coach them and give them new skills to work on, and follow-up on them often with constructive and appreciative feedback. It's difficult though, and it's my own area of opportunity to work on. The most difficult thing about these type of situations is that the manager who needs to improve is likely to be a peer or even a superior. How does one enforce behaviors on someone who you can't provide consequences to?

In short, systems are great. There are some amazingly simple systems in the McDonald's program, and for just about every situation you do encounter, there is a system in place to help you win in that situation, efficiently. Use the resources provided to you (MDP materials, Operations and Training Manuals, SOCs, e-Learning, and the experience that your peers and colleagues can offer) and remember - BE HERE NOW.

New Iced Coffee Flavors.

OMFG. Caramel Iced Coffee. HOLY SHIT is it good.

Career Growth.

I was unofficially officially told I would be staying at my current store, instead of moving to the new store my O/O is purchasing. I am a little disappointed because I'm not headed to the newest store, and being a part of the powerhouse team that is going to be managing that store. Mostly, though, I'm really excited about being promoted into an Assistant Manager position. I've been doing the job of Assistant Manager for a few months, and my Store Manager B. and I have got a solid rapport and we both have a similar vision for where our store needs to go for us to grow. It's going to be nice to be paid at Assistant Manager scale for Assistant Manager work.

Hard Work.

My day today was the perfect example of why McDonald's is so damn great a place to be working.

My day was nothing like I expected it to be yesterday. (See previous post.)

First of all, K., my manager-in-training, no-call-no-showed me for the training. Also, he didn't return my phone call. I'm a little disappointed.

But that's fine, I gave our shake/ice-cream machine a professional, expert cleaning today. I even fixed some issues we were having with our syrup dispensing system - something I am damn proud of having figured out on my own. After that, I worked in the Production Area for basically the rest of my day. I ran lunch on Assembly, as the Production Manager. It was a slow lunch, but we still made some money, and kept the kitchen running at a bit higher than normal (62 instead of our 40 second goal) for the first half hour, then got our speed up to right in sniffing distance of 40 seconds.

The tail of my day was working in Service for about 45 minutes, half at Front Counter, half in Drive Thru Order Taker. I had my normal sun-shiney attitude and our customer got the best Customer Service they're likely to get for the next week, anywhere.

All in all, it was a great day at work. Nothing like I expected it to be, but I stepped into the roles I was needed in when I was needed in them and "Be Here Now"'d all day long. Awesome.

Teaching.

Tomorrow, very early, I am training K., a manager-in-training who happens to be the O/O's relation. He's a hell of an individual, and seems to be able to hang in many situations. I've not seen him giving direction to anyone yet, but he and I have discussed accountability together.

In fact, I created a situation that was almost a way of testing his behaviors - I sat down and ate right as he was getting a rush through Drive Thru. I waited till he had 3 orders on screen, then got up and helped - and told him that I was examining his behaviors - I sat down and ate to see how he'd react. He didn't communicate what was going on where he was, he saw the situation but did not make a reaction to it (the situation being, I was sitting down with someone on break when I should have been helping him with orders). I felt like a dick, but he really did seem to, at the least, look at a likely and frequent scenario with a different perspective.

Tomorrow, it's straight teaching and showing for our shake machine training. Like every day, it's going to be a great day.

Opportunities.

I'm currently being considered for an opportunity with a new store that my O/O is purchasing soon. It changes hands next month, and either myself or a current colleague of mine will become First Assistant Manager at the new store, and the other person will be First Assistant Manager at my current store.

Honestly, I feel that my "competition" is in no way competition to me. I can boast readily of several areas of responsibility I've gotten to function regularly and with all proper procedures in effect. Not every area I've taken on have I been successful with, but I can honestly say at least 10 functionally important procedure-sets were put into place solely because of my direct action and involvement in them.

As far as I know, my competitor has one functionally important responsibility, and is unwilling to do a great job with it. I firmly believe this person is capable of doing a great job at many things, and they are experienced - something like 6 years. She has willingly chosen to perform at an average level and at an average pace for ... well nearly all the time I've seen her in action.

But I have decided that the opportunity I have in the store I'm in is a great opportunity and has a ton of growth left in it! I've got a great team that I'm helping to build, I own my store damnit! I can help improve it a hundredfold over the growth we as a team have already made.

So, tomorrow, I'm telling the owner I want to stay at my current store and that I don't really want to be considered for the position. Although, I truly do want to go to a store with more vocal and communicative managers who are confident in situations. The two other managers who I am certain are going to that store are phenomenal people, and I would love to work on a team with all three of us - it'd be a powerhouse team.

I have alot of growth to go where I am and I intend to experience it.

Arizona Smart Choice.

Yesterday, all Arizona McDonald's restaurants officially were participating in the Arizona Smart Choices Program. Basically, it's a program that identifies meals or foods that are healthy - and yes, McDonald's has a bunch of meals designated as smart choices by the Arizona Department of Public Health. A few other chains are participating as well. Arizona Daily Star website - A full story can be found there.

I tried to find a time on Saturday to get the signage up, which consists of a window stick-on and a menu-board sign on double-sided foam tape, and put some brochures out but couldn't find the brochure holder and did not make the time to put the signs up. First of all, no one had directed me to do so - and POP is one item I always do after direction. Secondly, I wasn't sure where to put it or when the program started.

Today, I was directed to hang the signs up, and immediately did. Before I finished washing my hands after the task, a gentleman who looked familiar was in line, and I walked up to the counter in time to introduce himself to me, he was P., who is apparently the local head honcho. I believe he was strongly involved in McDonald's of Arizona participating in the program, to judge by his enthusiasm for the project. I smiled big and gave vague, but very positive and supportive, answers to his questions. He and I had actually met but not introduced at the ball game I mentioned a couple weekends ago.

After he left, I ran to the office, got the Store Manager to find the brochures, read one, then gave one to all my service crew and told them there'd be a test later.

The important facts that I remember are these -

The meal must have 700 or less calories, 0.5 grams of saturated fats, no added or modification to the content of saturated fats, and less than 1,500 milligrams of sodium.

The meals that McDonald's offer that are Smart Choices include - Hamburger and Cheeseburger Happy Meals with Apple Dippers and Apple Juice. Awesome! Further, a Hamburger or Cheeseburger, Fruit n' Yogurt Parfait and Apple Dippers work for an adult. Also, there's the Grilled Chicken Asian Salad and a bottle of Dasani water - which actually rocks for lunch, and it's pretty filling. The only catch with the salad is, you can only use half a packet of the Ginger Vinaigrette dressing.

So, overall, I think it's a great way for any chain to improve the value of the experience. As it applies to McDonald's, I'm going to start offering information to people who look like they would appreciate it. It's also a great time and way to open up a good customer interview.

A Very Long Week.

My store manager B. was out of town this week. Scroll down to the posts from when my store manager was out of town the last time. All the same drama and problems we had that week, we're having again this week.

It seems that even though I'm being held accountable for the store and what goes on inside it, from inventory management to staff issues to staffing and schedules (even though I don't have control over all of it, or in some cases (like schedules) any of it), I'm also being told in the same breath that because I don't have responsibility for those same situations, I should back off and ease up a bit.

It's very frustrating to be told I have to be accountable for things I don't have control over. It's even more frustrating that when I try to hold accountable those who do have control over things when problems arise, that I am stepping over my bounds.

Some specifics:

The assistant manager does schedules. She makes mistakes all the time, like with today's schedule - she had a minor scheduled to work two different shifts the same day, for over 14 hours. First, she would not respond to my phone calls at all - then when I got 3 other people to call her and tell her she needed to respond to me, she asked for a manager who wasn't even there, and said she did not want to talk to me about it. Hello, I'm the manager who's working right now, I'm in the middle of the shitstorm she caused and she doesn't want to discuss it with me. What a worthless fool she is. I tried to tell her she had to solve it, and she wanted no part of it - until I told her she would have to come work the illegally-scheduled shift herself. Then she was all about finding someone who would not be working overtime to fill the shift. Bah.

Another situation. One of our managers is responsible for counting most of the morning shift drawers, as she is our 5-days-a-week opener. She can't count. This poses an issue. I assume it's through basic ignorance, but E. could also be dipping into the honey-pot, for all I know. The other day, of 5 cash registers and the safe, only one drawer was accurately counted - a drawer with $15.50 worth of transactions. The others were all wrong, the money was all mixed up, it was 40 minutes of counting and recounting to figure out just what the hell she did to fuck up the money that bad. When I discussed it with her, her response was to get angry at me for going back and checking her work. Well, when the $1000 of backup we have in the safe is $1076 and $2200 worth of counted cash ready for deposit is only $2085 and there's miscellaneous cash over in two other drawers, yes, well... I'm going to recount the money!

I think the real problem is there's very little accountability with my entire management team. "Mistakes" are overlooked, repeatedly, instead of used as learning tools. Carelessness is the standard. Sloppy and incomplete are regularly acceptable. BUT NOT TO ME DAMNIT! And there's bound to be some resentment on the part of those who wish to go about without paying attention, without doing the best they can, barely skating by, when I'm saying "That's not acceptable!" But, really, seriously, deep down inside, I feel, FUCK THEM. I should not lower my standards to match someone else's and I look upon the lazy with contempt, especially when it's such an easy job.

Sunday.

My boss invited me to a baseball game today, White Sox vs. Diamondbacks. I've got three tickets for the suite he's got so I'm taking my son and father. Gonna be a good time. Meanwhile, my wife is working and my daughter is spending the day with Grandma.

I may soon be able to share some news about my career growth. I'm damn excited!

BSM, Day 2

So, I came to terms with the lack of knowledge I would be gaining from the Basic Shift Management class. I realize it's entirely due to the work I did before class, reading my MDP1 book 2 times in full, and focusing on some parts 3 or 4 times.

Our second day consisted mostly of a store visit, to a McOpCo store, where the standards are set, not just met. The purpose of the store visit is to help develop the critical eye that a manager needs to ensure they are maintaining the standards of QSC&V for our customers. The store we went to was decorated phenomenally, looking like the inside of some rich guy's library with chocolate brown leather seats, dark wood paneling, glass-doored bookcases, a couple sitting areas with nice chairs and round tables. Then we got to the front counter.

Everything behind the counter looked disorganized, sloppy, and unclean. There was clutter all over the place, every behind-the-counter trashcan was overflowing and apparently the crew there have bad aim - there was trash around the trashcans as well as in them. I saw at least 5 different areas where they stocked sauces and other condiments and all of them were sloppy, unstocked and needed a good wash. That's just the impression I got in 30 seconds of approaching the front counter. Once I went behind the counter I was appalled.

The day was focused on timing Front Counter service, Production, and Drive Thru service as well as performing a travel path throughout the store and prioritizing tasks based on McDonald's Prioritizing system which we had done some review of in the very first part of the day. It was a good exercise but again, I did not really leave with any new knowledge or tools that I did not arrive with.

The only real benefit I felt out of the classes was to get an opportunity to discuss with others the systems and concepts I had until then I had only discussed in internal dialogues. I know however, that many other participants will go back to their stores armed to become the best managers they can be.

As for the Golden Hat award I spoke of earlier, there was solid competition between myself and my O/O's sister-in-law, B., who is an assistant manager at another store in our organization. She won by a single vote, and she definitely deserved it - she really did participate a bit more than I did. However, as the facilitators were reading out statements made by participants who voted for her (before announcing she was the winner), repeatedly the comments were "This person is very knowledgeable" or "This person has a really great attitude!". Because she thought it was me, she spoke up with, "Wow this person must be really intelligent and have a sparkling personality!" while staring at me. Then they announced it was her. Good times.

BSM, Day 1.

What a let down.

Aside from interacting with a few people from other franchisees' McDonald's stores, I gained absolutely nothing out of BSM class, Day 1. Further, due to the really small size of our class - only 14 people - we combined Day 1 and Day 3's curriculum into one day, so everything was quite rushed and question/answer sessions were breezed through and the majority of questions were answered with something akin to "We'll cover that in a few minutes!"

Now, I understand that they have things to cover, and if someone asks a question or two that is out of synch with the pace of the curriculum, teachers have a need to stifle it and let it be answered during the class or asked at a more appropriate time. However, if someone is earnestly asking for clarification of what was just discussed, teachers have a responsibility to clarify. If one person asks a question, it's likely that 2 or 3 or more other people have the same question and were unwilling or unable to ask it. That question should be addressed like it is a part of the core curriculum they are trying to teach, not as an annoyance that will send them off their double-time pacing.

The most ironic thing is, immediately after telling a class participant that their question was already answered - basically blowing off the question entirely - the same teacher changed screens in their PowerPoint presentation to display a quote from Ray Kroc:

"Customers are the reason we are here, not a distraction."

Positivity, Revisted.

In December, in a post entitled "Positivity", I discussed my store manager's actions, and some of his unprofessional behaviors. I have to say that I have seen this man grow in his actions and deeds, by leaps and bounds. I feel I've had a strong hand in assisting his growth, by communicating with the whole management team and delivering whole-hearted my "share of the bargain" - that is, demonstrating the behaviors I wanted to see out of the other managers.

In that post a long 3 months ago, I railed against B.'s "take, take, take" attitude (among a few other behaviors). After discussing with him in a really informal setting on a few different occasions, my views on professionalism, strong management and what it takes to be the best you can be every day of your life, I know I've had an effect on him, if only to advise him of and demonstrate to him, what he should be doing. B. now is willing (and damn capable!) of sharing his experience and knowledge with people, most recently 3 to 4 of our newest Management Team members, including myself. He's delivering on the guarantee of QSC much more than he ever was in my first 2 months that I worked with him. It's phenomenal to see a person delivering on his potential, not only to his colleagues but to himself.

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Tomorrow, I start my BSM classes. I'm excited as hell, am totally prepared for it, and will be looking forward to the Golden Hat award. In other news, I was talking with P., the owner/operator I work for, and in an effort to express to him how excited I am every day about my opportunity to work for him and McDonald's, I told him about my blog. I didn't send him an email link to it, but wanted him to work for it. Leave a note if you read this, and give me some feedback, P.

BSM

Basic Shift Management is the first of a handful or so of accreditations in the McDonald's store management universe. I will be attending BSM classes in Tucson, next week from March 11 - March 13. To say that I am excited is an understatement. I love social engagements, especially ones that center around learning processes and demonstrating knowledge. This will be phenomenal.

In the meantime, I took a pre-class assessment test today, one in which I had to pass to attend class. I believe I passed, but not very well, at all. My problem is numbers.

Times, temperatures, ratios (what exactly is the pepper to salt ratio of the McDonald's grill seasoning?) - that's exactly what the core of this class and certification is about. I'm having severe difficulty with it because of my numeric dyslexia. It's not a joke and is very difficult to live with, especially when it comes to recalling numbers correctly.

So, I'm going to do phenomenal in class, even though I have severe difficulties with the primary focus of the class. I have a plan. Monday, I am going to cram as hard as I can, and cram the information into my head, as well as sit with all the times and temps on a sheet of paper next to me, to keep them fresh and in front of me during classes (and to maintain the cramming process throughout a 3 day class). However, I'm knowledgeable about operations, management in general, the McDonald's processes for management from the Crew Trainer position on up to the Store Management functions that I put to use daily.

There's an award called, I believe, the Golden Hat award during BSM classes. It's awarded to the most helpful, involved person attending the class. I'll probably receive it, as I've been told by 3 or 4 people.

Shift Manager.

A couple months ago, I posted about the week my store manager, B., was out of town, and how the shifts went. That was a great learning experience, being tossed into the fire to see how well I fared. Since then B. has offered me the opportunity to run shifts with up to 10 or 11 employees scheduled on my own, with his supervision, basically every single shift I work that's not a close (and then I am running a difficult shift as well, having only 4 people including myself) . It's actually opened my perception a bit to his teaching ability - or ...

I'm quite confused as to B.'s intentions and which of us is actually in control of me running day shifts. I remember sometime in early December working an early day shift, and being stuck to a position (2nd cashier) during lunch and being primary cashier before and after lunch. I did not like it at all. Throughout the next 3 weeks I basically worked closes or late day shifts, and did not really have to worry so much about lunch, and was basically running the floor whenever I worked.

In January, I started working many day shifts again, and I chose, I remember clearly making a conscious decision, to run the lunch shifts. I positioned crew, I ran the orders, I delegated responsibilities, I controlled the lunch and it was pretty good. I remember the day, B. and I were looking at each other going "Man, we didn't even do $450 for our hour" at about 1:00. We looked, and even though our lunch hour felt slow to us, we did $600. We made it feel easy, and I know it's because I communicated to my crew exactly what they were doing, how much time they had to do it in, and the offered a solid reward (a free dessert item to all the Production Crew if we hit our goal). How easy is that?!

If I were in B.'s shoes, I'd allow my "Guy" (the manager under my wing) an opportunity to run the show, while being there to offer guidance or help if they need it (or, to take over if my "Guy" crashes and burns, LOL!). That would make me a phenomenal teacher! I know I'd have a hint of ulterior motive, or rather a benefit for me personally that I would indubitably take advantage of - being able to run a stress-free lunch hour with MY GUY! W00t! in charge. That's if I were in B.'s shoes.

Then again, often, I am in B.'s shoes. Tonight, M. is the closing manager (almost a manager), who I mentioned previously when she was a new crew member because she took control and action. I just got off the phone with her at 10:00, to make sure everything was good, offer her an opportunity to ask questions, explained a process based on her questioning, and gave her encouraging praise, as well as offered her my trust in her ability to do a good job.

Fuck, I should be writing books.

High Power.

I'm a high power kind of guy. I move alot, I do alot, I identify many tasks and delegate my ass off. That leads to me having to follow up a ton and deliver feedback all day long. I also have my own responsibilities that are delegated to me. My customers consume much of my attention and energy, almost as much as my crew do.

I was asked the other day if I'm "always this hyper" by someone. I'm really not hyper. Hyperactive implies a certain lack of control to the force with which one focuses and then refocuses on things around them. I'm passionate, and powerful. Absolutely, not hyper, because my attention is directed, focused like a laser beam, and quite deliberately moving all the time, to ensure that I'm taking everything in and getting everything taken care of. There's quite the difference.

Yesterday, I went to ServSafe class, and tested for certification. I'm confident about 89 of my 90 answers, and about 75% confident about the one I'm not certain of. I can't remember what the question was, but I remember feeling just a little unsure when I answered one of the questions.

Overall, the ServSafe class was pretty solid. Nearly all the topics covered in the test were covered in the class, I sat next to B., the Assistant Manager of one of our stores, and the sister-in-law of my O/O. She's a solid individual and had some good questions, and some great answers. We had lunch on the corporate credit card, nothin' fancy, the bill between B., another B. from my store, and myself was probably $25. But, we had some conversation and it was good. Again, she's a real solid individual and I'd love to get an opportunity to work with her.

I'm working on getting some solid individuals in our store, and removing two of the weaker elements, which is the staffing goal for every month for our entire organization. The hardest part is identifying who our two weakest team members are. I actually know who they are, and they're both managers.

Another Great Day!

So I woke up and was very, very tired. I've got this horrible pain in my sinuses and upper lungs. So do something like 1 in 1,000 Tucsonans. It's not really stopping me, but I am tired as hell, in general.

I met S., a new trainer who works for the guy who owns my McDonald's and 4 others in Tucson, with a growing collection of McDonald's restaurants. She was a phenomenal, positive person. It was a blast meeting someone with a passion for what they do. She's also one hell of a thorough trainer.

Throughout the day, which I arrived for at 9:30, I just felt a happy and fun day coming on - most of my days are. Right from the start, she was clear and presented well. She seemed like a solid individual. In return, I presented well and followed up with an exceptional performance during lunch. Our lunch started out with S. and myself in the Production Area, where S. discovered an issue with our grills, and with a quick text message or two and a phone call, she had three guys there tearing our grills apart and making them work on the hot-damn double!

Right at the tail end of this, B. called up to me and had a bit of panic in his face and voice said, "Mike I need your help up here!" I looked around where I was, saw that I was not crucial to the situation, told the team I was going to the Service Area and I assessed. There was a deep line in our Drive-Thru, a deep line at our Front Counter, one cashier, one presenter and B. doing fries and taking orders in DT, with no one to run. Within 45 seconds the situation was well in hand. I got someone on fries, asked S. to take orders on Register 2, and I had assembled about 15 orders in 3 minutes. What a great time!

Later, S. told me something that made me pretty proud, as already I respect this person's opinion. She said, "If I came in, just came in to your store, I would have thought you were the store manager." Hell yeah, cause that's how I roll.

I am driven to succeed and exceed in as much as I can in my life in small part because I love to have praise, which for me directly translates into an ego boost. My confidence is pretty arrogant.

This Guy's Blog.

My best friend is coming to visit me this weekend (and visit the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show). I'm off from Friday to Monday. I'm taking a hit in pay but I'll certainly enjoy the free time.

In the meantime, I learned today to manual clean or brush clean our shake/ice cream machine today. I had a good time and enjoyed the sense of a job well done, even though I was being hassled over "how long" it took me to do. B., the store manager, admitted the syrup lines definitely hadn't been cleaned in the 7 months he was there, and probably not for a good while before, either. Syrup line cleaning will happen every week while the full brush cleaning will occur every two weeks. With me in control of it, I have a feeling that it will be done like clockwork.

Tuesday, I take on another new responsibility as well. I will be conducting a full food inventory every Tuesday night for the last 2-3 hours of the day, then arriving early on Wednesday for our manager meetings. It'll be a blast.

I'm not a blogger.

I've decided I'm not a blogger, and I'm taking a hiatus from blogging.

Although I enjoy it, it consumes way too much time - enough of my time is given to McDonald's as it is. I'll probably make a comeback mid-February or so.

Where Have I Been?!

For the past 10 days I've been without access to the Internet, but life has been busy, as well as life in McDonald's. Our Full Operations Review is coming up tomorrow (Wednesday) and I have some tales to tell. Stay tuned!

A Great Day!

I am on a huge New Year's Eve positivity and proactivity rush and I'm trying to build momentum so that it will continue throughout the year. Every day that I wake up, I win!

Yesterday, Thursday, was a great day. It was a long day, as well. I was originally scheduled for 11-5, but my hours were rearranged pretty strongly this week (to my favor). I was at my store at about 8:20 AM, ate some breakfast, smoked a cigarette or two, got a Full Throttle energy drink and then clocked in at about 8:40 AM.

I worked basically as a back-up cashier and the "take-care-of-what-needs-doing" position all day, until about 1:30 PM. Throughout Breakfast and Transition, I was stocking, covering, flexing in and out of positions - a great shift doing what a manager does and it was a blast. However, halfway through our Lunch rush, the Closing Manager, By., called and asked to speak with Brandon - from her voice I could tell she was sick as could be. I said, "Call back after lunch, if B. doesn't call you" and hung up the phone. I told B. about the call and he agreed to address it later. Lunch was good, we broke $600 for lunch, which is nice and busy for us.

After I reminded him, B. called By. and the end result (which was all I heard) was "Can you work late tonight?" My conditions were - she covers me Saturday if she can and I get an hour off between shifts. Conditions met and I took an hour of lounging, smoking cigarettes, drinking another energy drink and finishing off a great book I got the other day.

I shamelessly digress - Gamearth is a mild thought experiment in metaphysics posing as a fantasy paperback. Some young teens have been playing a pen and paper role-playing game, and created - together - a world into which they dive every Sunday night. However, the metaphysical elements come along when the main story of the book begins, living the events leading up to a fantastic adventure that occurs inside of their world when the "real world" gamer teens are split in mind about whether to continue playing Gamearth or not. A good 2-day read.

So, my morning shift began at 8:40, and ended about 2:10. My afternoon or closing shift started at about 3:10, just in time for the beginning of crew shift transitions, which lasts for about 2 hours. Getting the new crew informed and up to speed on the goals (Something we've been communicating much of lately - and by we I mean I) and the projections for the day. I still had a great energy level and maintained my can-do spirit throughout the night, in fact. I had 5 people throughout my dinner, which was good and kept things running. Dinner got exciting when we sold something like 100 Doubles in an hour. With 2 Service, 2 Production and a manager in Service. It was great, throughout it all we kept upbeat, we had fun with customers, our food was good, we all had smiles, we encouraged one another and it was AWESOME.

So with dinner past and down to 4 people running the store, we start some cleaning and stocking tasks, while keeping up with customers and pulling breaks for everyone. It was a good, well-paced night and we did about 50% more sales than we projected for the evening. Always positive when the cash register rings. Right at about 10:15, with closing looming on us and being much more brisk than we have been recently, I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. I was fueling myself with caffeine and nicotine. A very large, extended size van was outside and a very friendly looking guy pops his head out and said, "What time do you stay open till?" "Drive Thru till midnight, inside till 11!" "Great, the other van-load will be here well before then." I chuckled and said, "Really? Van-load?" The man turned his inside light on and pointed behind him with his thumb. "Got a van-load of hungry people right here and another one on it's way!" I snubbed my cigarette out and said, "Well let's go!"

40-odd people from a Church convention, mostly teens, and more than the usual number of random customers later, I announced we were closing our dining room in 7 minutes! Everyone chuckled and I said, "Tell you what you guys can have 10 minutes!" And some old lady who looked a bit senile said, "Yaaay!" with way more enthusiasm than her aged near-corpse looked like it could ever muster up.

After closing up for the night, which went smoothly and everything got taken care of (I cut two short corners counting things). It was a great day and today promises to be great as well.

Happy Friday!

Woot! 2008!

Happy New Year!

I hope it is prosperous first and foremost for myself and my family, my friends and colleagues, and for you, dear reader.

Woot!

Growth of a Crew Member.

One of the crew members in my store, M., who I have mentioned once or twice earlier, as someone who offered me feedback on my own growth, is being keyed for a management position. She's young and smart, has the ability (if not always the desire) to charm the hell out of customers with impressive service, and seems to be a pretty quick learner. Part of management is being able to hang in all areas of the restaurant. She did not know a single thing about Production, until yesterday. Saturdays are typically mellow days, we get more families and more people just out living life than people rushing a half hour lunch break from work like we get during the week.

I had the shift in the afternoon and instead of having M. work in the back Drive Thru booth, giving our customers impressive customer service, I positioned things so she was in the kitchen learning with a fairly efficient crew member named C. and I worked her position in the Drive Thru, while the assistant manager ran the front end of the store. I still have control and my hand in things, as well as training M. in the kitchen, even while working a very busy area of the store.

M. and C. had a communication difficulty - M. doesn't speak very much Spanish and C. effectively does not speak any English. They got along great though, because things are pretty simple - and I acted as translator for most of what was going on (HA! those life skills are coming in handy here!). M. picked things up really fast, and got to get a taste of production (even though I neglected to have her do E-Learning first) on a relatively slow shift. It worked out well.

The funny thing is, though pegged for management, it really did not come to anyone's mind to train M. on Production, at all. This strikes me as just a sloppy mistake, and I actually had to use politics and persuasion on a decision maker to get her the time to start learning the kitchen. It turned out well though - it's a really simple job, when just about everything is made identically. It is hot, and M. mentioned how she needed water. I personally watched her drain 3 cups of water in a row 4 different times. It sure is thirsty work.

M. did a great job, and we got a chance to talk after the shift. She liked getting the opportunity to grow her diverse skills and told me she appreciated me getting her into the kitchen so she could learn. Job well done.

Arrogance.

Often times in my life, I have been called arrogant. Many times by myself.

Some could say that I am just over-confident in myself, and a vast sense of self-confidence in nearly all situations can be misconstrued for arrogance. But it's not something being misconstrued as arrogance, some misunderstanding of my character. I am arrogant. I'm OK with it.

However, I am also humble. I may not always be able to easily admit an error or lack of knowledge, but I can almost always spit out an "I was wrong, thanks for showing me that" or "I made a mistake and I'll fix it".

I try to temper my arrogance (well deserved as it may be) with pleasantness. Who can hate someone who's nearly always right and has a great big smile and happy voice? I give of myself to my store and my fellows by trying to teach things I know, take control in situations where I believe I can provide a great solution, I build rapport between management and crew as well as our Production and Service staffs, my interests and eyes are always out for the employees there.

My arrogance is surpassed, however, by a couple people that I interact with who do not temper their own arrogance with any such frivolity as humility. One male I interact with, closely and often, has an inability to accept feedback. Or, apparently, to give feedback. If a mistake is pointed out, he turns red, puts his head down and walks away. The reaction is the same if a joking comment hits too close to home. It's ... amazingly readable. This man has a seemingly infinite capacity (like nearly all human beings) to justify, or explain, the essential rightness of his actions, instead of admitting there's a chance he can be wrong. When receiving feedback, especially of a constructive nature, he defends his actions instead of listening, he likes to explain why he did what can seemingly or actually be incorrect. My perception of these responses is a deep desire to be right, so much so as to provide a veneer of delusion that helps to create a world-view in which one really, truly is always correct, even in a situation where correctness is faced with negatory validation. Arrogant as all fuck!

A woman I interact daily with likes to present a smiling, friendly and cheerful front to nearly all. For some, however, she vents quietly or openly about what's on her mind. She is absolutely, to the core certain that no matter what venom she spews in the ears of those she believes she are in her "inner circle" that those people exposed to her bilious comments will enjoy hearing them and stay quiet about what abuse she puts forth, vicariously. The venom I speak of is her negative mental attitude, her dislikes of other people, her frustrations and angers. Her arrogance is blind, believing that whatever she says stops right there. However, people who have venom spit upon them typically do not enjoy the situation. Further, those same members of this woman's "inner circle", although not willing to tell her directly that they repeat to her targets (or perhaps only this single target) her vitriol, have often asked her to go calm down in some other way. My point is this - I know when she's talking shit about me, because her "close friends" whom she shares her negative energy with often advise me on who said what, so that I can keep abreast of the political winds of my enclosed work-world.

Again, I admit I am arrogant. The big difference is about results. My arrogance leaves the result of a better world, for everyone who occupies the space that touches me.

Pulled From Comments.

Hi - I don't have the time or energy right now to post something new - see the comment thread under "Challenge" to see where this came from, but here is some of my insight and thoughts on a McDonald's restaurant.

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the only value that customers have to McDonald's is that of the customer of any business - profit.

Every procedure and policy put into place in a McDonald's restaurant is designed by McDonald's corporate (based on billions of dollars spent (possibly trillions) and hundreds of thousands of man-hours utilized (possibly millions)) in attempting to develop the best way to run a McDonald's.

There is no point to opening a store on any day other than to provide impressive service to customers, deliver on QSC&V, so that each customer who comes in that day is much more likely to come in the very next day and spend more money.

However, that is a short focus. There can be no qualified level of QSC&V delivered out of an untrained group of individuals working together. Without each and every employee at a McDonald's - from the guy on the grill, to maintenance, to the Front Counter crew, to the O/O - dedicated to delivering QSC&V, there is no customer service. I say dedicated, not willing. There also has to be a team spirit - human beings are easily manipulated into giving their all (i.e. becoming dedicated) when they feel a great cause to be dedicated to - when there is leadership and teamwork and their contribution is acknowledged.

Most McDonald's, from my perspective as a frequent customer of many McDonald's restaurants across the nation (I've been to McDonald's in every state east of the Mississippi except Florida and Maine), McDonald's are run by underpaid, undertrained people who see their job at McDonald's as a bandage, to stop the immediate pain of unemployment and destitution. However, now and again, there are those old timers who also see it as "what they've been doing since they were 15", and it just is their job. Also, there are an even smaller number of people who see it as a potential career. There's lots of growth to be had in a McDonald's, and the way to grow a store's volume and return visits is by ensuring that crew are dedicated to delivering QSC&V, ensuring all proper procedures are in place, and having the best trained, most accurate employees in the most important positions (Aces in their Places baby). See above to find out where that dedication comes from, friend.

A McDonald's restaurant is about customers, sure. But it's also about 24/2 (Why do we stock 24/2? So that customer orders aren't interrupted during a busy service time so an employee can go stock something that is desperately needed and absolutely not stocked).

It's all about cleanliness - I personally have boycotted at least 20 different fast food restaurants in the areas I've lived in during the past years of my life because I went in at some point and could not find a single clean table - or there was trash on the floor - or there was overflowing garbage - or the bathroom was dirty. I know many, many other people are the same way.

It's all about the procedures (every single fucking one of them) that McDonald's lays out for each and every facet of operations - because those procedures help guarantee: trained crew, fresh product, safe product, cleanliness, speed of service, reduced waste, or improved customer service. All of these effect the bottom line heavily in a McDonald's restaurant.

As for customer service, I'm not in any way inexperienced in customer service. For 2 years I worked at McDonald's as a youth, for 2 years I worked at Burger King as management (my job was to make 12 stores clean, trained and improve general operations including service), I owned and operated my own business for two years that was a direct-to-customer sales business: service was all I had, and I worked for 3 years in other various retail businesses where customer service was my primary focus. For the two most recent years of my worklife I was a telephone salesman - the only way to sell anything on the phone is to be a god of service and I had a rightful place in that pantheon. I have my chops in customer service, and in fact building rapport with people is one of my strongest abilities.

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XOXO

Challenge.

I enjoy challenges. Personal, professional, social, mental. Most types of challenges intrigue me.

I find working with people, and learning new skills to be fun. I enjoy social situations in which I am at a seeming disadvantage. I like being at a moral crossroads. I enjoy challenges because they help me to grow.

I feel, as a serious salesman (which I always consider a huge part of my personality), that if you aren't growing, you're dying. Cliche, but so true.

McDonald's is a place full of challenges. There is the challenge of being polite, welcoming and smiling for each of the thousand or so customers who pass through our doors every day. Coordinating and gaining the cooperation of anywhere from 4 to a dozen people who have their own challenges is fantastic.

In my personal life, I have challenges all the time. With a pre-pubescent son who acts way too much like me (arrogant little punk) for his own good, and a 3 year old heathen girl who apparently is Princess of the Universe, and my wife who has put up with me, I am challenged every day to be the best daddy, husband, cook, housekeeper, lover, bookkeeper, and teacher that I can be. Especially challenging are the days I want to just play video games all day, and let the house fall to ruin around me.

Without challenge, we cannot grow. Very few people understand this. Or rather, many understand it and prefer the alternative. I like to grow, and feel I do a good job of tackling things in different ways so that I can come out on a positive end.

Busy, Busy Week.

This is the busiest week of the year for me.

I work a full string of 11-7 shifts, which means I get to work at 10:30, and leave about 8. Also, my wife and kids are going to Las Vegas this Sunday for Christmas. Also this week at work, we've got a rather important visit from a gentleman with McCorporate, who apparently decides how many and which stores an Owner/Operator's domain increases or decreases by. Further, I have until the end of this month to get Foundation training on each of the employees of my store completed (I've got about 25% of them completed) and also I need to complete my MDP program by the first week of January. It's crazy - and I haven't even mentioned the Xmas shopping and wrapping I need to do! Earlier this week, I also had two Christmas parties for work to attend - one at my store manager's house (which was exceptionally .. low key, shall we say?) and the other at Laff's Comedy Club in Tucson (which was riotous).

We've been cleaning like mad at our store, for a pitifully short amount of time. For the past three days, we've had people staying late, busting hump to get detail cleaning completed. I think the store is in great shape, and I look forward to an opportunity to shine for the owner and the corporate representative he'll have visiting us today.

I'm a bit disappointed at work, after yesterday, however. We have a manager's meeting every Wednesday morning, and after a repetition for the 5th time regarding Drive Thru service times at night, I brought something up. I told my fellow managers that I tried to think of a diplomatic way to say this, without anyone feeling attacked or anything. Three of them said, "Just say what you gotta say" or something to that effect so I said, "Listen, every single manager needs to make sure the store is clean and stocked and all the cash is straight and other responsibilities are taken care of before they leave after their shift. It's pitiful that a manager can or would walk out knowing there are drawers uncounted, or seeing the lobby is filthy or that the service or production areas aren't stocked. We're all a team and rely on each other, and no one, not even me, is not guilty of leaving the store in a sorry state for someone else to take care of. I understand giving direction to employees to get things done - but you gotta make sure it gets done and doesn't cut into customer service. If you have to stay 20 minutes extra to make sure everything happens then you do it. Or like P. (the owner) said, if you gotta stay two hours late to make sure everything gets done, then you do it." I looked around and saw nods and agreements from everyone. R. took it upon herself to get defensive, but B. quieted her down and said, "Let's not make this about any one person, Mike's right, it's all of us."

So there was a general agreement that we would all focus on .. oh I donno, doing our job? ... and make everyone else's shifts run smooth. Fast forward two hours, during which I did some training in my MDP. I was scheduled to start yesterday at 1 o'clock, which means I come on right after lunch (again) to help recover from it. At 12:20 I was going to go order a Cheeseburger and a parfait, smoke a cigarette and come on shift for my pre-shift work. B. was struggling through lunch and said, "I need some help." I took a look around and saw that, yes, they needed help, so I jumped into the kitchen, and started getting food moving out of the Production area. I did my part for the team.

Two hours later, and it's approaching the end of B.'s (the store manager!) shift and he comes up to me and gives his ever famous "do you need anything else from me before I go?" I looked at the clock and it was only 2:25. I'm thinking to myself, "I come on a half hour + early, and he leaves a half hour + early?" So I said, "Well is everything stocked and cleaned? Cause we're going to be busy and I'm not going to get a chance until Jn. gets here to stock and clean at all." He says, "Didn't you see E. stocking?!" (that was over an hour and a half before, at the end of .. HER SHIFT. My response was, "Well B., yes, I did, but that was a while ago at the end of her shift. Is everything we've used since then replenished?" He says, "You'll be fine," and I respond with, "Well I know the shake and ice cream mix needs to be stocked, we need A and B bags, and Happy Meal toys need to be stocked. Can you get those before you leave?" Infuriatingly, he is refusing to clean and replenish after his shit, then when I directly requested just 3 things out of probably 40 that need stocking his response, maddeningly was, "You'll be fine, Michael." Then he walked out the door.

I will admit that perhaps I have a misconception of what a Store Manager should be - I think that a Swing Manager needs to be basically an uber-crewperson who also takes care of light managerial duties, and I see this in action. It seems a Shift Manager needs to be an uber-crewperson who handles light and medium managerial duties, and an Assistant Manager needs to be the uber-crewperson and an uber-hourly manager who handles heavy managerial responsibilities. This means the Store Manager needs to be the uber-crewperson/uber-manager and handle all sorts of responsibilities of all those positions. Obviously the majority of them need to be taken care of by the crew people and managers they work through, but when shit gets down to it, and there's 5 people in the store, 4 of whom are absolutely tied to their positions to make the store run with appropriate customer service times and the 5th person is leaving or preparing to leave, they better be able to make sure the 4 people being left, stuck to their positions and unable to even stock a single item without sacrificing customer service or service times, won't have to sacrifice customers' best interests to go stock something that should have been stocked before.

Grr! Rant! I'm sure that if B. were having to work a 9 hour shift (heaven forbid he even stay for all of his 8 hour shift more than twice a week), closing the store and only having 4 people, he would demand that everything be in pristine, fully-stocked condition before taking over the shift. It's part of the basic McDonald's Operations procedure, it's the right way to take care of the business, and it's an expectation laid forth for each of the managers in the store except the store manager. This is why it's making me Rant. Our store manager replies on his managers to make him look great. He relies on the crew to make him look great. By look great, I mean in the eyes of the owner, who is entrusting a million dollar+ business to him daily and paying him handsomely for the efforts. There seems to be no motivation on B.'s part to put forth the same effort he expects out of everyone from his newest swing managers to the exactly-minimum-wage paid Production members of the team. Further, it seems the operations procedures laid out by McDonald's don't really apply to him.

Perhaps I've got a misconception, I will admit, of his role and duties. I'm still learning and am new the McDonald's business. I do, however, know that in our low-volume store, managers are expected to maintain crew positions as well as manage, when in a high-volume store manager's are expected to flex in and out of positions as backup, when and where they are needed. Again, it baffles and infuriates me that the Store Manager, who should be the uber-manager, is not fulfilling the same commitment that the other members of the team are fulfilling - and the assistant manager is following his example - which in our low-volume store is creating a situation where from 1 o'clock on, we're always 5 minutes behind on what we need to do. Is it any wonder we're seeing Drive Thru service times of over 200 seconds at night?

Ability.

I firmly believe that everyone (basically) is equally capable of being exceptional at what they do. Life takes hard work, commitment, passion and a dedication to a job well done.

I am infuriated and saddened by seeing people who are this/close to being phenomenal at what they do give up the extra effort it takes to escape the close confines of mediocrity. To see someone who works just hard enough, or someone who tries (again, trying is failing with honor) when they could so clearly just do, it makes me angry and sad and sometimes makes me want to lash out at them.

It frustrates me in a way that I can't quite put words to.

Positivity.

I work hard to remain positive at all times while working, no matter where I am. I don't say "I try", because I believe that trying is setting out to fail, but with honor intact. In any case, I don't always succeed at being positive. Sometimes I go outside, into the back of the parking lot and curse loudly (not shouting, quite), or I'll go in the walk-in freezer and do the same thing. Sometimes, however, being the direct, blunt and authoritative person that I am, I have to confront the individual(s) that raise my ire.

I was scheduled for a close shift yesterday, the day after my birthday, which means I start work at 5 o'clock. Considering all this, I basically had about 4 hours of sleep in me when I got a phone call from B., my store manager, informing me that he had made a mistake and double scheduled myself and another manager to close tonight. He asked if I could not only come in early, but also work a shorter shift than my scheduled shift to avoid a horrible labor situation. Now, if I can do something to better my team, I'm almost 100% going to say yes. They needed me, so I agreed and rushed to get ready in less than half an hour.

When I showed up, it was just the very tail end of lunch. I went to go do my pre-shift functions, like counting our safe, verifying the deposit so far was accurate, a pre-shift checklist, etc. I got through the first step and found an error with the money (something that happens just about every single day in my store, and something that really, really irks me. Cash is the reason we show up every day, it should be the single most important part of the operation) when I was called to help out up front. Normally, I won't let anyone interrupt my pre-shift duties. I cannot prepare fully for my day if I don't do my pre-shift stuff, because that's when I prepare. It's important for me.

So I went up front to "help out", but mentioned to B. that I needed to get my pre-shift work done, and that the safe was not balanced as it should be. He looked at me and said "Well it's right, I know that." So instead of saying, "Hey we'll figure it out" or "It's possible I made a mistake (like I do every single day I work, because I don't know how to count to 1,000)", he tried to make me feel inferior and that I had made an error on something that I feel is the primary focus of my professional life. I was a bit miffed, but I got over it really quickly.

Our brief post-lunch rush wrapped itself up and I mentioned that I needed to get my pre-shift work taken care of, again. B. tells me he needs about 5 minutes to take care of something and asked me to cover his position for that 5 minutes. Next thing I know, 2 of the 5 crew members on the floor are going on break at the same time, the store manager has been gone for 20 minutes, the assistant manager was walking into the break room to speak to one of the crew members on break (I saw her!), the store hasn't been recovered from lunch (it's after 2 o'clock now), nothing is stocked, nothing is cleaned, there's no crew to deal with the customers we've got coming in to eat, and I'm standing in the front bellowing for some help, and being ignored. After calling for help like 6 times, I went to the back area of the store where both the manager and assistant manager were at and said this, "Listen I've got 3 crew people in the store and about 20 customers right now. I need help from both of you two five minutes ago. I came in early to help, not to be fucked over with a dirty, unstocked, unstaffed store, now get up front." Yeah, a bit aggressive, I know. But I was really pissed.

After this next little rush period, I told the store manager I needed to get my pre-shift work done. He said he was still busy. Our encounter went like this. "B., you called me in early. As a professional, I leave every shift clean, stocked and staffed. If there are too few people to work, or a rush, I stick around and help take care of it. You however haven't given me a chance to do the pre-shift work I have to do, you haven't even given me an opportunity to count the safe and make sure all the money is in the right places, which you and I both know it is not. You need to get the store cleaned and stocked, and I need an opportunity to get my work done. You're not treating me fairly, and you're making me rethink the wisdom of helping you out by coming in 4 hours early."

His response to my little tirade was, "Well, R. (the assistant manager) had the floor throughout lunch, and she has to clean up. Besides, the store manager's job isn't to stock and clean, that's why you're here. Besides, I'm leaving in 5 minutes."

I was flabbergasted. I respect this guy. I'm in his store to "learn" and be trained on how to be a store manager. For him to break out some straight bullshit like that stunned me. First of all, R. was in the kitchen throughout lunch, and when I asked her for help, that's where she went. That's where she was working throughout her shift. How exactly can she be responsible for the Service area's cleanliness and stock when she was in the Production area all day? Further, if the owner and operations manager can come in and clean, stock, and help with customers how the hell is it not the job of the store manager to do that when it needs to be done? I voiced my opinion to him, perhaps not in those exact words, but similar.

Great, you're the store manager and you've got things to get done. Then schedule people correctly so you have the time to get those things done. Schedule so the post-lunch cleaning and stocking can happen - with two people in the Kitchen, one in Front Counter, one in back-booth of Drive Thru and one person to run, present, cap drinks, and make fries is just not enough. When we have 2/3 of the business of the lunch rush and less than half the staff, with the store very obviously not Clean-as-you-go'd during lunch, it's not enough.

So he stocked what needed stocking (after pissing and moaning about it for a further 15 minutes, instead of just getting the job done), worked through other people to get clean what needed cleaning and then left.

Three hours later, with the assistant manager working in the Production area again, we were just coming out of an hour where we did 87% of the business of the lunch rush with only 6 people (11% labor for the hour!), the assistant manager says, "Ok, Michael, I'm leaving." I said, "Hey listen, can you make sure the kitchen is stocked and clean before you go." She threw a damn hissy-fit about how she was only in the kitchen for an hour and why should she have to clean it, there's crew members there. This time, I was fed up.

I stopped what I was doing and said, "Listen, R. we're busy. My crew members cannot clean right now because they're serving customers. I know you've had a long day, but honestly, I came in early to help you as well as B. and you should show some gratitude. Can you imagine how this day would've been with one less manager? I'm not asking you to take care of everything on your post-shift checklist, which you BY YOUR JOB DESCRIPTION, need to do. I'm asking you to clean and stock one area of the store which you've been in ALL DAY LONG. Now, if you don't think that a manager's job is to make sure the store is clean and stocked for the next shift, then fine. Let's go call P. (the owner/operator) and ask him what he thinks about it."

Here, she interjected with "You're not being fair Michael!" and I finished it with, "Listen I can't force you to do your job, it's on you. In fact, since you don't want to do your job, just go. Get off my floor, get off my time-clock, and go." I wasn't yelling, I was just speaking very pointedly.

At this point, I've got every customer and every crew member stopped dead in their tracks. R. grabbed a towel and started cleaning saying, "See Michael, I'm cleaning, I'll get everything pretty for you!", as sarcastically as she could.

I made direct eye-contact with her and said, "Hey, R. Stop. You need to get off the clock, Right. Now." There was apparently just the right amount of finality in my voice. She stopped what she was doing and left, exactly the moment her scheduled shift ended.

Now, I know I may not have been entirely right. But the thing is, I'm a professional. I'm not there to babysit other adults. I go to work everyday to help make sure my store is as profitable as can be. McDonald's restaurants are profitable because they have the best QSC&V. I ensure Quality by making sure, every day, that I am training and reinforcing training with all the Production crew members - and when I am in the Production area, I follow and demonstrate the correct procedures. I ensure Service by making sure that every day I am training and reinforcing training with all my Service team members, and make sure that I smile directly at all customers that I interact with, use a pleasant and firm tone of voice, and make sure I fix any problems following the correct procedures. Cleanliness is easy - I make sure it's a priority and actually go on travel paths every hour (or close to it). I have little or no control over Value, except making sure people get everything they paid for, their drinks are topped off, they get the right portion size for fries, shakes, ice cream and other Service Produced menu items. If I can balance all of these, and my people, product and equipment, every shift, then I am doing the best possible job of improving profitability of my McDonald's.

I assert again, fiercely, that I am a professional. This means, further, I have high standards for my colleagues. I have no place for people who are not willing to come in and do the MOST they can to ensure QSC&V. I hate slackers, I despise a lack of accountability, and I think I'm pretty much done with my store manager and his attitude of "take, take, take" with no "give". The primary function of a McDonald's manager, if you ask the McDonald's training, is to work through other people. But this also means showing respect for those people you work through, being considerate of the people who get work done for you and, very importantly, offering both Appreciative and Constructive Feedback.

None of these things are happening with my store manager - and honestly I could tolerate that if he'd be willing, at the least, to leave the store stocked and cleaned, or if he did all of the administrative functions of his job accurately, like a professional. Not a day passes that we're out of some critical food or paper product. Not a day passes in my store that we don't have a horribly unbalanced schedule, with 30-40% labor before lunch and 14-15% labor during the mid-shift. The point of this complaint is: B. has an expectation that myself and the other managers be the utmost professionals, and when we do make the slightest error or oversight, he brings a hammer down on us. When he is wrong or makes an error, it just can't be and he points the finger somewhere else. I've spent a lifetime being surrounded by inferior human beings play-acting at being exceptional, but it's still a real emotional and intellectual let-down when I discover someone who I thought was exceptional revealed for what they are.

12-13! My birthday!

Happy birthday to me!

I'm 27 years old today. My amazing wife helped to make it phenomenal.

The kids and Nicole woke me at something like 6 to wish me happy birthday and give me presents! Awesome!

I got some nice shirts, a fatty box of chocolate, a really nice, solid steel watch (W00t!) and a $20.00 Gift Certificate to Bookman's. Bookman's is a used book/music store that also has a miniature selection of video games, all at awesome bargains. We have probably spent $1000.00 in Bookman's in the past two years, and today was the first time I ever used Bookman's to it's fullest potential. They have listening chairs, and allow you to read books before you buy them and such. So I sat down with the "O Brother Where Art Thou?" soundtrack and a nice reggae compilation and rocked out while reading most of an entire book of short stories about Warriors in fantasy stories by authors under the DAW publishing label. Awesome!

I came home and my wife greeted me in the best way, and we spent a wonderful afternoon together. After a nap, we picked the kids up and went to a fatty steak restaurant called Pinnacle Peak, and watched a Cowboy/Christmas stunt show. Awesome!

I intend to relax a bit, and read about a quarter of one of the books I got today, and my day has just been stupendous. This is the best birthday I can remember, all thanks to my wife being awesome.

Busy!

No post today! Close today, early morning tomorrow for manager's meeting, which is going to be two hours before a ten hour shift that ends with receiving a delivery. Then, the next day, my birthday! Woot!

Closing on a Saturday.

The last few hours of closing are usually pretty slow at my store, but this is especially true of a Saturday evening. Although there are many Tucsonans going out to any of the two nightclubs or two strip clubs within two miles of my store, we're still located in a spot that really caters to breakfast and lunch for the 9-5 crowd.

I think I mentioned previously how I like to get things detail cleaned when I have time. I don't understand how other managers can't get the same type of things done, and then it dawns on me, very clearly, that it is because of a focused avoidance of doing any real cleaning. It has to be!

Last night, I was short one Production Team member (someone who fired themself by not calling and not showing for 3 days in a row last week), who I replaced with a young lady named T. who really wanted to learn Production. She did a damn fine job considering it was her very first time ever working Production. Every single person on my team got breaks, including myself. This almost never happens during our closing shifts with the usual reason being "there was no one to cover".

Also, I was able to detail clean our shake machine. Boy did it need it. I started by pulling it out, intending to mop behind it. I had to dust the back vents free of a 1/2" of dust, which led me to discover that much of the dust had calcified (with the lovely grease that flies in the air) and would need to be scrubbed off. After doing that on the back, I had to do the sides as well. Then I removed the side-mounted cup dispenser and discovered... well let me say it was dirty. So I cleaned all that, then cleaned the wall behind the shake machine. All told, an hour of grunting and scraping and scrubbing away shake mix from years past and I was left with a gleaming, clean shake machine. I was proud of myself. I also spent a half an hour or so getting the first layer or so of this horrible calcified mess behind our Lobby ice dispenser taken care of. I recommend CLR Kitchen & Bath cleaner! W00t. (Granted, there's probably nine more layers of calcified scum back there, I got rid of the layer growing organisms).

The thing is, I cannot understand how just about every area of our store is neglected on a regular basis by the closing managers. There's never areas being detail cleaned. I know this because each night I close, or have an extra body around to get some cleaning done, I discover all sorts of obscure and obvious things that need attention and love. Examples: the reach-in refrigerator a couple weeks ago; the front-end cup storage area; the shake machine; the menu boards; the little Cambro containers we hold customer conveniences in (in our Lobby, behind our Front Counter, and in Drive Thru); the fryer-side reach-in freezers; the inside of our Castle bins (the containers for our garbage cans in Lobby); our Janitor's closet; the "operations closet" that we keep all of our operations material. The list goes on and on, and I can't really get over the fact that it feels like I'm the only one doing detail cleaning, as I'm the only one cleaning these things.

Perhaps others are detail cleaning things that I'm not seeing. Maybe the things that I've been detail cleaning and getting cleaned on my shifts have actually been cleaned within the past couple days and what looks like years of neglect and misuse is really just a few days or at most weeks worth of regular use. It would be surprising, and honestly, we'd have to be operating 24-7 on a parallel time/space continuum where we serve thousands of customers daily.

Labor.

It's very difficult to balance the Labor percentage of a McDonald's store. This is true of every business - the goal is to maximize the profit of a store by minimizing the opportunity of wasted payroll hours. This is almost always somewhere in the neighborhood between 19 and 20%. We overshot that by a good amount in my store last month.

I'm learning that it is especially difficult to balance this Labor in a low volume store. There may only need to be 4 people on any given hours of a shift based upon sales in $, but there are also a set number of jobs that can be performed well by a minimum number of people, and in my opinion the minimum number of people to comfortably run just about any given hour of any shift is 5. There are exceptions - the first and last 2-3 hours of the day. These are easy times, for openers you show up and make coffee for hours. For closers, you clean and hump your ass to clean some more. In either situation, there's not many of customers.

However, during what I like to refer to as "Snack Time", the hours between 2 and 4, we may not be having as much sales dollars - that's mostly because we'll have twice as many customers, ordering a third as much food. Still, it's a lot of transactions and when you sell 50 Doubles and Hot N Spicys in an hour, it may not be as much money as 50 Value Meals during the lunch hour but it is the same amount of work, effectively. It takes as much time to make 10 Doubles as it does to make 10 different types of sandwiches, and each order during Snack Time has more individual sandwiches than each order during Lunch Time.

I wish all people could have some love for McDonald's Employees. I do my best to make sure every customer at the very least thinks I do a good job. There are a large amount of customers for whom I just shine, shine, shine! I like to go for the Wow. Stupid is diverse and populous in the world, however, and some people leave hating me, while I hate them.

A woman came through my Drive Thru during Snack Time today, and took a good 3 minutes to place her whole order, which totaled about $6.00 and was changed no less than 4 times. Meanwhile, a line of about 8 cars grew behind her. She came to my window holding out a bag of coins and said "Count this, it's what I'm paying you." She had a big stack of bills sitting on her lap. I said, "Why don't you pay me with a 5?" Her response was to shove the bag of coins toward me and say "I'm paying with this," So I told her, thank you have a nice day, and I'll buy her food for her. I'd rather explain a $6.00 customer satisfaction manager meal than count out 6 bucks in goddamn coins. Screw that! I told her so.

She told me I was rude and she would call McDonald's on me. I told her the number posted on the window in front of me would get her in touch with the Owner/Operator and I told her my name and explained that I was the only guy who looked like me, and the only Michael there, and could she please move to the next fucking window so I could help the people behind her. She told me no, and folded her arms like a 4-year-old. Finally, I said, as close to verbatim as I can get, "Lady, you're only fucking with the people behind you in line, and the people in the front of the store. Our interaction is done, your food is waiting for you, MOVE. ALONG." Finally after a few more seconds of huffiness she moved on.

Seriously, a bag of coins? What kind of a moron do you have to be to get angry that someone wouldn't fulfill that stupid request? Go to a bank. Spend a Saturday afternoon rolling pennies with your kids. Get one of those old people coin purses and spend it penny by glorious penny and nickel by shiny nickel. I can't believe the friend in her car didn't slap her. I would've.

The best part of my day was that this was the worst part of my day. If I'm alive, and the worst part of my day was when a 5 minute interaction set me behind maybe another 5 minutes, then I can honestly say I'm winning.

There were some phenomenal parts of my day, at least 6 different interactions with people where I felt like I had made a human connection. That's what the day is all about. In fact, looking back, that stupid bag-of-coins lady and I made a human connection as well, merely of a more base sort, less positive.

Addendum: I apologize for the swearing. It felt like a swearing day.

December!

My blog made it through a month! Woo-hoo! Or, if you prefer, "W00t!".

Today was an exceptional day at work, starting December out right. We have a mystery shop sometime this weekend, so we had a huge amount of employees, all putting their best effort and smiles forward.

With 12 people working when we only needed 8 at a maximum, I had an opportunity to get some training done with employees. I'm working on a program to get each and every one of our employees trained on the Foundation training topics. It's not as easy it seems, to coordinate approximately 5 hours for each employee to watch the e-Learning program, review and get the first Station Observation Chart completed, then do a follow-up training session on the floor with them. However, I will get it caught up to the point that new hires can have their Foundation training completed within their first 6 shifts - that's my goal for the end of the first quarter of 2008.

With so many people working today, I was able to get 4, count them, 4!, larger pieces of equipment detail cleaned: our oven, our reach-in fryer-side freezer, and our reach-in kitchen refrigerators. This is on top of large sections of wall/baseboard being cleaned, as well as our front counter menu boards.

Honestly, I barely was on the floor at all today, between coordinating projects for all the extra people to get done and training and then I worked in Drive Thru back booth through our lunch rush. I love getting an opportunity to do nothing but customer transactions. Every other customer tells me "You have such a nice voice!" or "You're so polite! Thanks!" or, once in a while, "You're the best Drive Thru person ever!". I'm not exaggerating. I love that stuff - I know I'm great and love to hear it!

One downside to things right now is that our sales are low - dismally low. We've got absolutely no shopping centers near us! No one is Christmas shopping within two miles of my store while one of the owner's stores is inside the largest shopping mall in town, another is inside of Wal-Mart, and a third is right across the street from that largest shopping mall in town. It's very frustrating for the crew because we're usually just busy enough to be running around a bit short-handed, but not busy enough to include one more person onto the schedule. It's very frustrating as a manager, because I've got people working just a bit harder than they would need to be if we did our projected sales - because if we hit those, we'd be able to get that other person onto the schedule. Cyclical frustrations. I believe it goes with the territory, and so long as the crew are treated great, they'll be willing to work that/much harder to ensure the customers get treated great as well.

Employee Statements.

As part of my Basic Shift Management training program, I'm obligated to ask the employees for their input into the management team. I've asked questions such as, "What do you expect from your management team?" and "What can the managers do to better support you in your job?". There have been some interesting answers.

I've had two situations with non-English speaking, female crew members who gave me an interesting (in my opinion) response. They both, in separate encounters, broke into giggles and one of them giggled so nervously and hard that she turned purple. I can only assume she got so nervous from being asked such a direct question, and the request for her input. I donno.

One of our newest crew members, who was being eyed for management after two months or so of working at one of our groups other stores, told me she felt that there was no team feeling in the restaurant. Basically, she feels it is most apparent at the management level, and that the crew is full of people who don't care. I'm flattered she felt like sharing her observations with me, especially when she gave me some positive feedback on my performance. But what could I tell her, really? My response was, "Well, as far as I can see, that's basically life, right? A smattering of exceptional people trying to do the best they can and being hindered by stupid. Legions of stupid." It really is that way. If you disagree, it's probably because you're part of the herd, not the smattering.

Another employee told me, "Michael, I am very angry over this" in his incredibly soft-spoken and faintly Spanish-accented voice, "I work hard to keep this area clean, and other people don't respect it. None of the managers stop it from happening. I am very angry, my friend."

One of my favorite employees is a woman who works at two stores, has two kids and is always taking up any opportunity to get things done. She is phenomenal, and always has a bright and positive attitude. She's always willing to help out and make sure the team is running well. Her response to me was to get inside of my personal space, and patted my belly (an incredibly frazzling situation every time she does it) and says, something in Spanish that I'm told means "Your head is going to blow up". I think. She's a strange one, but she's one of my favorite people.

So depending on the outlook of the individual, either there are many Opportunities to Improve for the management team or just a few Opportunities to Improve. Either way, it's going to be a rough go - I'm not that great of a team builder, honestly, being so "Me" oriented, and I think that if I can help develop a more team-like environment at my store, it will be a great accomplishment.

I Truly Am a Control Freak

I'm discovering that I truly am a control freak.

My symptoms are simple yet incredibly clear. When I am attempting to give control to other people, I feel so.. so... Out of control.

It's very difficult to be asked by someone who I think of as a professional, someone who does a damn fine job, someone who I am glad to call my colleague tells me to lay back and let others lead the pack. Well, I am trying, and what I'm experiencing is watching something I have recently become dedicated to being mistreated.

Our shifts have been hectic the past few days, and they've been horribly, horribly slow. Things seem to be run by scrambling from one emergency situation to another. It could be egoism, but a week ago when I ran a Tuesday lunch shift, in general there seemed to be a better rhythm than there was today.

Further, I'm a bit confused. I was asked to give up control a bit on shifts when other managers are working. Three managers in particular, apparently, felt that I was grossly overstepping my bounds. This is possible. I like control and usually feel that someone's feelings can't take precedence over taking care of business. Maybe at times I'm a bit brisk. I know, though, that I'm respected by most of the people I work with - I know this because the crew trust me to help them take care of their problems (business related only, thank you). Also, a couple of the more intelligent people I work with have given me positive feedback on how I give positive feedback to others! Hot damn! Pardon my digression - I'm confused because I was spoken to sternly over leaving an hour early with huge labor and no business, and two managers on the shift. The words actually used were, "I wanted you to be in control of Sunday." From the same manager who asked me to exert less control over shifts.

However, the past week or so of hanging back and exerting a lesser amount of control over the store during my shifts has been difficult.

I've noticed there are quite a few more business-related problems that the crew are having. There's something of a standing grudge happening between the Production team and the Service team. And little things with schedule issues or personality disputes have been arising much more.

I don't say this is entirely because of my restrained direction. But it certainly has a large impact on the existence of the situation.

There are a grand total of 8 managers at my store: the General Manager, 1st Assistant, myself, and 5 swing managers. Of those, only one manager other than I, does all of the things they are supposed to document correctly. There's a pre-shift checklist, a once-per-hour travel path, a twice-per-shift people travel path, a production checklist, a service checklist, and the owner has a system of giving managers responsibility for the cleanliness of the store by making us sign off on 4 major areas of the store, including a every-3-hour sweep and mop of the entire store. So only 2 of the 8 total managers always do all of a shift's checklists and travel paths.

I feel if one of us is not on a shift, then it's just not getting done. I'm sorry, you did it but couldn't take the added 30 seconds to document you did it? It's easier to think (especially when you see it -not- happening right before your eyes) that, much like the documentation, you did not do the work. And because I've been asked to take a step back, it feels like even if I'm there, it's not really getting done. I'll ask another manager if they're going to do a travel path that hour and they'll certainly say yes, but the only traveling I see happening is from the HLZ to the Presentation window. What about the other 80% of your store that you cannot see from the front counter? Sorry. It's frustrating.

The fact is, I've given over control to these managers who said I was stepping on their toes. I've even bluntly said, "You are in control of this shift, what should I do" and gotten either a denial of their control or a vacant stare and a shrug. To me, the reality is, no one else decided to take control of anything and so the position (of leader) is open to whoever wants it - that's me.

So, I'm going to get my control back, and show how things run smoother when I'm there. If that doesn't bluntly bring home the point to the gentleman expert who asked me to relieve some of my exertion of control, that I, in full-power mode, am an extremely beneficial part of the team ... Well, then I'm just going to go and re-assess why exactly any manager would have asked someone to be a less motivated and active a part of the team.

Black Weekend.

I had the expectation that the day after Thanksgiving would be slow. It fulfilled, and surpassed, my expectations. Saturday, and also today, Sunday.

Our store is at a real low as far as customer counts and gross sales are concerned. It's the very first time I've experienced a slow period that lasted multiple days. We're getting all sorts of things cleaned up, and the store's equipment and Front-End storage areas are being maintained well while we're slack in customer counts.

This morning, I was running a bit later than I normally do and also left early - before our lunch even started - my labor was high, things were slow, and they had more than enough staff for the projected sales. I got to pick my kids up from the sitters early, and I get to hit the internet up for the first time in days (life's busy even if the store isn't!)

I feel a lot of ownership for my McDonald's. I want the store to be the best it can be, not to just do well, but great. I like being a part of a succeeding team. I don't believe the world runs itself - there has to be intelligent, thoughtful, careful human intervention into an environment before it will operate in it's intended manner. Especially in a McDonald's. If there is no careful direction given to the individual team members, the team won't exist. I enjoy being the giver of direction in a team. I can and will take direction, though not as well. It's been a difficult week by not stepping in and taking control of every situation that I encountered. It was part of a deal I made with my store manager.

I've mentioned my need for control, but it's not as though I feel I need to wrest control out of the hands who hold it and use it responsibly. I have no problem letting someone else who is doing something very well continue to do so. I would probably seek this person out as a friend, as a counselor and as a mentor. However, I have little respect (often none at all) for those people who have the control and do not appreciate it and use it with responsibility. There are plenty of people who abuse power, but power for power's sake doesn't interest me. I will assume control or leadership if no one else maintains control for something integral to what I do.

Some things I have taken control of, and even during my week of "not taking control" I have still maintained include: our dry stock area, organization and cleaning; receiving deliveries, often alone for all or part of the delivery; tracking speed of service times on a whiteboard, 3 shifts per day everyday; and a crew training program which is the one thing I'm not maintaining as well as I could be. I waited for a couple weeks for resources and my steam kind of petered off. I have, however, also been training three Crew Trainer candidates, and we're at a point where they have to do some self-study.

So, again, I think it's important that all aspects of my store be in control of someone capable and willing to do a job well (which usually means extra or harder work). I don't for a second doubt that each of the managers I work with, and nearly every single crew person, has the ability to do their job phenomenally. It's the character of willingness that I feel is in short supply.

Gobble, Gobble.

It's incredibly surprising how busy McDonald's is on Thanksgiving.

It surprised everyone, including the owner and the store manager, who cut hours down to literally nothing. Then, during breakfast from 8 all the way to 10:30 breakfast cut-off, when we were really busy, and short-staffed, it surprised our customers, as well.

Lunch was like a normal mid-week lunch. This surprised me more than anything. Breakfast I understand. You're cooking up a storm for dinner, who wants to cook a breakfast too? But lunch? At 1:30 PM?

In my family, and everyone I have spoken to about this, Thanksgiving Dinner is usually eaten early afternoon, 2, maybe 3 o'clock. How exactly is it normal for people to be coming in in well-dressed groups of 4-6 family members, ordering $25-$30 worth of food? How is it normal for people to swing through Drive Thru ordering 20 Double Cheeseburgers and 10 Hot N' Spicys?

It's insanity, but at least we were closed at 2:00, and I was able to make it home for a lovely dinner with the family.

I'm thankful for my loving wife, who takes better care of me than perhaps I deserve. I'm thankful for my two children, both intelligent (if they don't always use it to it's fullest potential), both have all the right parts in all the right places, and both are incredibly cute and well behaved around strangers. I'm thankful for my McDonald's opportunity and all the prosperous future that it holds for me.

Happy Thanksgiving. Be thankful for those around you. Be thankful for every day you wake up - another day on this side of the ground means you've won.

Last of my 3 days off.

I spent today running all over town, read a whole book (600 pages+! I don't even know how I pulled it off, and I'm an avid reader), and I return to work tomorrow. 9 AM for a managers meeting, and an 11-7 shift. It's currently almost 4 AM and I can't sleep. Grrr! Tomorrow's going to be a rough one, but, as always, a good one.

World Children's Day

I was scheduled off for World Children's Day (today), but went in to get my paycheck anyhow. My store had a local Tucson radio station doing promotion outside the restaurant, with a very, very, very cute afternoon DJ working presenting food in the Drive Thru. That was incredibly special. Much better than the neo-slacker, Jamaican-flag-colored-hat-wearing bearded production assistant and the butter-face production assistant manning the booth outside the restaurant with a little spinny wheeley thing with prizes ranging from a radio-station ball-point pen, to free coffee Be Our Guest cards. Hopefully it drew some attention, and I heard the other radio stations in town were speaking heartily about the McDonald's World Children Day effort as well.

The owner of my restaurant, and 4 others in town, offered $0.10 per $1.00 donation that crew garnered from our customers. One of my staffers, a very gregarious woman named Jamie who is just fabulous had 240 at last count (that was a couple days ago, as I had the past 3 days off). She's going to love the bonus she gets on her paycheck. I believe our store out of the 5 our owner owns did the best. I have to believe that, because we've got some serious, dedicated, professional rockstar crew members interacting with our customers. Not all of them, but most.

My boss, the owner of my restaurant, is a phenomenal man. He truly has this phenomenal sense of thankfulness for the McDonald's opportunity, and it's rubbing off on me, in the few interactions we have together. This Thanksgiving, I'm certainly going to list the McDonald's opportunity and all the brightness that the future holds for myself and those around me within McDonald's' opportunity for success.

Three Days Off.

Today is the first day of my "Three Days Off", which I've been thinking about since the tail end of last month when I saw this month's manager schedule! W00t.

Day 1: Spending with the kids.

My First Current Post!

This is a special post, because it is the first time I am posting about the goings on of today, when posting. I've still got a bit of a backlog of the two months I worked for McDonald's and did not post, but I think I can fulfill what I feel I need to "put to paper" as it were as asides of posts concurrent to the days that the things occurred. Mostly.

I don't often work close shifts.

Usually, there's one manager, who leans like a cholo, that closes 5 nights a week and a couple others who rotate the remaining closes between them. Last month, the main closer mentioned to me that he is getting burned out. So I volunteered to close one Friday and Saturday per month to give him some time to go enjoy living.

In all things I do, the watch word is professionalism. Professionalism to me means doing things right, every time. Follow correct procedures at all times, especially when things are tough or difficult. That is why the procedures exist, to get you through the toughest of times, and take what could become a bad situation and make sure it ends up a great situation. The truest meaning, to me, of professionalism is paying attention to the details, especially when a more macroscopic viewpoint shows a difficult or challenging situation.

I try to encourage my team to be professional, and try to encourage the other managers to be professional as well. One or two of the crew members have picked up on it with me. Juan-tastico is one of those guys. I really, truly enjoy working with the guy, because I know if I ask him to do something, he'll get it done. Even when there are 1,000 other things going on, he'll ensure that the details of the one thing I asked him to do get done.

Tonight's shift I worked 7-close, which is not a "normal" closing shift, but I've been clocking some serious overtime, and when my store manager made my schedule, he knew (I think) that I'd be getting up there in hours at this point of the week. Our store closes at 1 A.M. The manager who was working a 2-10 shift, B., told me she couldn't stay until 10 o'clock and had to leave at 9. I made it very easy and possible for B. to leave much earlier than that, at 8 o'clock. The outward justification was that labor was high and we weren't busy. Really, I don't like whiners. The hilarious fact of this matter is, she sat around the restaurant waiting for a ride until after 10:15 - sat around not getting paid.

It was a slow night, and I have the responsibility of making sure the entire kitchen gets detail cleaned and is kept clean. Two days ago, I had my Production team members detail clean portions of the kitchen. One person cleaned the wheels and legs of all the tables, another cleaned the UHC in detail. Today, I had one person clean the top of all the machines: the friers, the grills, the UHC, the HLZ, the reach-in freezers (half of which are wall-mounted, cupboard style freezers, with a 3 inch clearance from the ceiling). Another person cleaned the sides of all those machines. Meanwhile, I detail cleaned our dual shake/ice cream machine top and all sides and our on-the-floor model reach-in cooler. On top of this cooler sits the Iced Coffee accoutrement, and right next to it is a shelf upon which rests our McFlurry mixer and a mini-ice cooler for the Iced Coffee.

This is a very syrupy, messy area (if you've ever made an Iced Coffee, you know. You know!) that never (apparently) gets attention and basically took all my free time throughout the night. While I was doing this, I also got the area we store our Happy Meal toys in detail cleaned by a Service crew member - it's right in front of our HLZ and gets a huge amount of debris in it. Which led me to see that the HLZ was horrible. Under, around, behind, it was disgusting. I mean, it had to be weeks, maybe months worth of crumbs, lettuce debris, all sorts of crap. There was even a chicken McNugget stuck in between the metal plate that stops the food, and the HLZ slide. That sucker looked like it was at least a week old.

Like most Friday nights, we were busy (for our store), running a couple of $250-300 hours. I like Fridays because many of the people coming in are going out somewhere. So there is usually a lot of interesting things to look at. My favorite tonight was the group of seven women, all obviously family from the facial features and body types, ranging in ages from approximately 14 to 40 or so. They were very Italian women, all set to looking good with makeup done, (big) hair done up and almost ... in matching clothes. Each of them wore incredibly skin-tight jeans that looked just painful. They all had white belts on, they all wore high-heel shoes and all of them were in slope-necked, black, 3/4 sleeve shirts that showed off their varying amounts of cleavage. Quite a sight.

So, throughout, I was chit-chatting while cleaning and stocking the Front Service area, and explaining to my hard-working Production team members how we were going to leave the place sparkling, so the next day when the opening team came in, and the morning team came in, they would think to themselves "Who closed last night?! This place is great!" In one of the Production team members, Juan-tastico again, I saw a desire for recognition. I know I had a desire for recognition of a job well done. But the other Service employee and the other Production employee just ... they didn't get it. The look on their faces told me they could care less if someone thought they did a good job (even though one straight out asked me for a compliment on her work earlier in the evening, and I was able to give one, because she did a great job of it). But to me...

My passion for doing things the right way will hopefully rub off on enough people around me. My passion for doing things the right way, the McDonald's way, with correct procedures and to the best of my ability (which is damn great, might I add!) will assuredly lead me not only to recognition, but to success. That's my goal.

All in all, it was a good night, and much got done that really needed it, for our store to be clean and sanitary for all of our guests.

Manager on Vacation - the Conclusion.

For the first time since I worked at McDonald's I was scheduled two consecutive days off following that first horrific shift. However, the very next morning I got a call from the owner.

He said something to the effect of, "Michael, I'm altering the scheduling. You're going to be working tomorrow, and you'll have Sunday off. I just want to make sure you're successful and can run a shift well before you're running a shift yourself when I or the Operations Manager are not available (Like the coming Sunday I was originally Scheduled)."

What I heard was, "You did a terrible job, and I am NOT leaving you alone in my store this Sunday!"

So the next day, Wednesday, I went in, and Lo and Behold, I was running the shift. I was still going to be short two people (and for the rest of the week, as they both "quit" by no-call-no-showing 3 days in a row). That day went phenomenal. I had better average order times than the assistant manager typically has. I had not one complaint. I did 20% higher sales for my lunch hour than the week before. The operation ran smoothly, like an expensive and well-oiled machine. The Operations Manager hung around all throughout lunch, and when it was over I initiated a conversation that started something like, "So, quite a bit different than my very first shift on Monday, hey?"

He told me in his no-eye-contact, hard-to-read way that it was much better, and that I had performed at the standard. Awesome!

Thursday was almost exactly the same, only with yet another person no-call-no-showing on me (thankfully this one was not in an integral position). There was one major difference however. The Assistant Manager, R., was running the shift. Now, I have some control issues but I'm working on them, and allowing others to do what they have to do, even if I know I could do it better.

R. asked me, about 2 hours before lunch, if I had done a shift preparation, with everyone placed where they would work through lunch. She seemed surprised at my surprise, I thought she had the floor! She asked me if I minded running the rest of the shift, and if she worked in the kitchen. Of course I didn't mind. Lunch went swimmingly, the rest of the shift was great as well.

Friday was an exact repeat of Thursday, with R. working the kitchen and I had the floor. My average Drive Thru time was right on target for our store (not for the McDonald's standard, but for our store). I had only one complaint and it was a guy who spent $2 on a Double Cheeseburger and a small Coke who didn't want pickles on his burger but got them anyway. Pick 'em off! You paid a buck!... I mean, "Sorry sir, let me fix that for you! We look forward to seeing you again, sir"

So, Friday is winding down, it's about 4:15, my evening schedule looks a little slim, but I'm discussing with the closing the manager how he can keep things moving, with the staff he has. I get off at 5:00 (which really means 5:30), and was looking forward to leaving. The phone rings. It's our delivery driver!! He's going to arrive at about 5:45.

I don't have the crew to do truck, no one is scheduled to do truck, what the hell! So I stuck around, and had one of my favorite crew members (I'll tell you all about him in another post, his name is Juan-tastico! I gave him the nickname because he's fantastic) start to help me. The closing manager came to me and said, "Dude I need help up there..." So I gave him Juan-tastico. I was going to do the truck by myself.

It was an incredibly efficient and simple process. 300 boxes in under an hour, since I was doing it all, I knew it was all being done right. The driver sure helped, he kept it paced right for me, giving me just enough time between boxes to get them offloaded from the rollers and into either the right spot or the best spot for now. I was actually surprised, because it went better than other trucks I had done (and I'm sort of taking full control of the trucks at this point). So, I spent another 1 1/2 hours putting away dry stock and getting the tops of all the boxes - ALL the boxes - in my dry stock area opened with a cutter, so they'd be clean. The only thing I asked for help with was clean up, I asked Juan-tastico to sweep and clean up all the little box-litter that happens with truck. No problem, he told me.

It was one of the most productive Friday nights I've had in a long time, and I certainly left there feeling like it was a job phenomenally well done.

First Shift, continued.

So the Operations Manager showed up later, with the sausage we needed, and took about 3 seconds to explain the dynamic of that shift to Jy. - he said, "Jy., you need to get into Drive Thru so Michael can run his shift!"

The rest of the day went smoothly, even though right before lunch our ice cream machine made some horrific yowling noises and came to a shuddering stop. The head of maintenance does all brush cleanings (every 14 days) on the machine and had failed to adequately lubricate the beater inside the machine the day before.

So for my very first shift that I ran, I was short all three key elements of McDonald's success: People, Product, and Equipment. Even so, I left that day feeling victorious. The store hadn't burned down!

First Shift

My store manager just returned from a week+ long vacation.

While he was gone, it had been communicated clearly, I would run the store on the days I was working, and the days I was off, the current Assistant Manager would be running the store.

One of the swing managers, Jy. did not get this concept. The very first day in fact, she screamed and yelled at me.

We were short-staffed when I showed up at 7 AM, and I asked her to work Drive Thru order taking and cashier. She spent 15 minutes arguing with me about how she should be running the shift, until finally I gave up on the situation and said "Listen, later this morning, J. (our Operations Manager for the company) will be here. He can explain the dynamic to you a bit more clearly." So J. did have to show up later on, because we ran out of sausage.

Now, I'm trying to run the store and work Drive Thru, and it's possibly the worst spot I could be in, while also trying to cover shifts for two no-call-no-shows, and Jy. who screamed about how she was in charge, comes up to me and says "We've got 10 pieces of sausage left, what do we do?" I asked her when she knew we were running low on sausage. She told me that she knew at 4:30 this morning, during the open.

?!??!!?!?!??!??!?! Are you kidding me ?!?!??!??!??!??!??!?!?!?

Closing

Night time is the right time baby!

I was a closing manager for a year at Burger King when I was 17 years old. (Following that year, I spent another year cleaning up stores physically, the inventories, and personnel. That's a set of tales for another time). Closing was always great when I was young. All the drunken women coming through, the teenagers out late, in general the rush of the day was long forgotten and the atmosphere and environment was low key.

The toughest thing about closing is cleaning. There are many parts of a restaurant that get dirty early in the day and don't get clean until the end of the day. Closers take care of that. Also, the big demand out of a closing team member is stocking - ensuring that everything that will be used the next day is stored in accessible, Service area storage locations. The closing manager has the "daunting" task of ensuring the day's cash is straight, and the deposits are correct. These are all things I knew before ever closing a McDonald's store.

I was scheduled to work closing shifts, wherein I was to spend a couple days learning and then doing the Production aspects of closing, the same for Service, and then Management, with a few extra days of doing for the Management aspects.

I had no problem with the Production close. McDonald's has created chemicals that make cleaning the grill effortless, and it's the hardest part of closing in the kitchen. Granted, it's hot, it's sweaty, it's Production, but it's not exceedingly difficult. Further, there's stacks and stacks of dishes to wash. I got out of doing that. Seriously, I don't need training on tasks non-specific to McDonald's. It was the things like how to clean the grill, what products get stored where, what order do the tasks get done, those specifics that I needed to learn.

The Service close was another easy position to learn. It's just normal service, with some cleaning tasks and ensuring stocking is completed. No brainer, nothing really to be trained on.

Closing a McDonald's as the manager is a trial of your time-management abilities. In a low-volume store, like I was training in, the manager is the Service closer. So, while stocking and cleaning is not difficult, nor is doing that while serving the infrequent late-night Drive Thru customers very difficult, when you throw balancing drawers and motivating people, and following up on the work they've done, and making sure there's no bums hiding in the bathroom waiting for you to close so they can rob you into the mix, it does get a bit pressured.

However, the tasks are none of them too great. The Lobby closes an hour before the Drive Thru, so you have an hour to count front drawers and get that area cleaned and stocked before worrying about the Drive Thru areas.

After the store is actually closed there's typically about 15 minutes of stocking and cleaning work to do, then you go count cash drawers, ensure the deposits are accurate, count down the safe to ensure it's accurate, then run the reports. This is a 15 minute process that you can't do anything else during, so you get an opportunity to follow up the Production closers and Service closer if you have one, ensure that everything is getting done properly and on pace or jump in and get sweaty and dirty if it's not.

So onto my experiences. I was working with a 19 year old guy named J., who was incredibly laid back. I mean, just smoked a doobie laid back, but he claimed very adamantly that he did not smoke pot. But man was he laid back. Anyhow, J. basically had no control, he just let the restaurant run itself. This was disgustingly frustrating to me. I like control, and I really truly, deep down inside, feel that people who are making less than $7 an hour really need to get fired up and motivated if they are to do things right.

There are some particular evils that occur in nearly all quick service restaurants late at night. The first and foremost one is old food. Yes, folks, the kitchen staff who work at night are typically shorter staffed than those who work breakfast or lunch. So, to save time later, they will bust hump for a short period of time and cook vast amounts of food, which can then be served whenever it gets ordered. The mentality with these actions is, basically, "If I cook it all now, I won't have to hit the grill for an hour!". The downside is, typically all the food they cook does not sell very swiftly, and so food exceeds it's maximum allowed (and might I add, safe) holding times.

This was a huge problem in the store I was training in, and while discussing it with J., his response was something like, "Yeah, well I don't want to upset the flow of the kitchen, even if I know it's going on and it's, like, really bad." The people who worked Production were not intentionally doing something wrong. In fact, after conversations in my broken Spanish and their broken English, it seems that the vast majority of them didn't even know that holding times existed! This wasn't a matter of laziness, but of ineffective training.

So I took it upon myself to make sure that all the Production team members were trained appropriately (by myself), the very next night, on how holding times work, and how to prepare the right amount of food. The McDonald's motto in the kitchen is "Less food, more often!". This reduces waste from the food cost as well as the number of terrible, old shitty-tasting burgers that get served to customers.

The amazing thing was, on my second night ever working with these people, they were all fully aware that I was in training, and they did what I trained them to do. I was particularly amazed, to be bluntly honest. I did not assume innocence (which is a McDonald's management cornerstone) and thought they were doing it out of sloth, instead of out of poor training.

The two young ladies who were implementing this "new", correct method of working ("Less food, more often!") with me the first night it was put into effect (my 2nd night closing), told me it was more work and they did not like it. In my broken Spanish, asking J. (who speaks Spanish primarily and English fluently) only how to say the words not to translate for me, I explained that as the Production team, they were, together, responsible for each and every item of food that left the restaurant. After initial disbelief from one (who told me it was my responsibility not hers, emphatically) and a shy sort of pride that I watched spread on the face of the other one, I explained further that they may, at first, feel like they're doing more work, but in fact they were working smarter and in doing so, delivering hot, fresh, tasty food to all of our customers. Basically, by cooking "Less food, more often!", they were doing their job better and after it became a habit, they would feel like they were doing no extra work at all - because in fact they weren't, it was just a different method of work.

Well, I was surprised by the effect. On my 3rd night closing, we had a different team member in Production, Mr. A., and he was trained by my two girls on how to cook "Less food, more often!", and was even reprimanded when he failed to do it the correct, McDonald's way. The next day I had a day off, and decided to show up anyway, after the dinner rush but before the cleaning tasks were too heavily started and saw that the two members of the Production team (the gentleman from the night before, and someone who I had not had an opportunity to train in this "new" method of working), were working with the old system of "Make tons of food and sell it as it comes, who cares about quality!" I asked J., who also closed this night, why and he reiterated his position of not wanting to make waves. So I hopped behind the counter, threw on an apron and washed my hands and (whisper it - off the clock) did some training for these gentlemen on "Less food, more often!". A. was not very happy about this, and expressed it to me. He told me J., the "real manager" did not make him work this way. I explained to him that I was not making him work that way either. He was very capable of clocking out and going home, if he did not want to work the McDonald's way. It was like someone took the needle off a record. There was about 30 seconds of complete silence throughout the store, with both Production crew members and the manager J. staring at me in awe. Then A. said "Yes, sir, we do this the right way for you" and got to work tossing all the past-it's-time food.

I perhaps had crossed the line. But, damnit, there has to be some accountability! J. and I had a deep discussion, while A. and the other gentleman (let's call him B.) went to work on implementing the "Less food, more often!" concept for themselves. I tried to impress on J. the very real severity of the situation - the food he was allowing to cross his counters and pass his window was not quality nor (most likely) safe! He had a commitment to fulfill the McDonald's Brand Promise, half of which involves satisfied customers. He finally agreed and promised me he would always, always work with the "Less food, more often!" McDonald's way as his standard.

The 4th and final day of my closing was almost tearful for me, as I saw the place working great, the kitchen serving fantastic food, and all the Production team members made a point to thank me and tell me how important my training was for them. I gave them responsibility and, more importantly, an easy and correct procedure to ensure they could deliver that responsibility to the fullest. A. even showed up, on his day off, to thank me for training him and to apologize for getting mouthy the day before. When he was leaving, and I shook his hand goodbye, I sincerely felt his respect for me, and more importantly, my respect for him.

Opening

McDonald's opens at 5 A.M.

Opening team members arrive at 4 A.M.

I don't drive, relying on taxi cabs and Tucson's phenomenal public transportation system to get where I need to go. I try to avoid cabs, because it's typically about $5 for the first mile and $3 for each mile after that. At 3:30 (I'm crazy about being early) the only choice is a cab. I set my training path over the next 4 days like this: Day 1, production. Day 2, service. Day 3, management roles. Day 4, do the management roles. The plan was for each day, I'd get there by 3:45, smoke a cigarette and at 4:00 A.M. sharp, I'd start training, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to be prepared for the day I opened stores myself.

A quick digression. I'm a powerful person. I'm big, I'm loud, I get stuff done. I focus on the details because that's where the devil is. For me, the big things just seem to flow right because the little things are taken care of. Further, I like control. I'm boisterous and typically let people know when I'm taking care of something, and afterward (especially in these early days of just learning how to get stuff done) let whoever needs to know exactly how I would like things to be done for that particular task. Everywhere I ever go, ever in life, I quickly get known as a bit over-powering, but fair and develop a reputation for PRAISE PRAISE PRAISE! for the people who do things the right way. The flip side of that coin is, there are always people who I have to dig at heavily to get an opportunity to praise. Sometimes, I never get the opportunity to praise some people, and those people inevitably consider me an asshole.

That first day I did arrive at 3:45 A.M. However, no one told the swing manager who was not nearly as bright eyed nor bushy tailed as I, that she would be training me. She ended up showing up at her accustomed time, which was 4:30 A.M. Needless to say, this left me a bit miffed and it turns out the manager was one of those few people who I do not often get an opportunity to praise (read, one of the ones who consider me an asshole). So once she arrived and saw me, she apparently had a quick internal conversation that included her perception of what I would say, and then her certainly witty responses to that, and my responses to those. I say this because when she got out of her car she was instantly on the defensive, though I said not a word. She was justifying her tardiness and cursing my punctuality before she had the key in the door. So I explained to her my intended training path over the next 4 days and she agreed, letting me rush into the kitchen and help the one production team member (who also had to wait 30 minutes in the nippy desert morning), who was rushing around crazy trying to do an hour's worth of work in only 30 minutes.

The sad thing is, there's not an hour's worth of work to do opening the store as a production team member. There really isn't. You get some McGriddles and biscuits baking, along with some Hot Apple Pies and cookies (oatmeal and chocolate chip, 3 for $1, hot damn!). You get your eggs going (damn those eggs!), but not too many because the first hour is slow, slow, slow! Then you cook a boatload of sausage and bacon, because they both have an interminable holding time.

Fast forward to the next day, and the arrival scene was identical, except one minor difference. It was a different manager this morning, showing up at 4:30! Two people in the store showing up late?! What amateurs I was dealing with! It frustrates the hell out of me to be working with passionless people, non-professionals, who can't show up on time or fulfill a commitment. Again, this manager had an internal conversation with herself (I think), like the one the previous morning had had, because she also was defensive and full of justifications for being half an hour late, just like the other manager was. I'd have to keep my eye on this one as well.

So I learned the service side of opening the store up. It was not difficult. It consisted of two things. Brew. Coffee. Again, not an hour's worth of work, really, but tedious. Turns out, the entire morning is basically just that, brew coffee, serve a small amount of customers every hour until 8 when things got really cooking. By then, there'd be a full staff in the restaurant and things would be delegated around. Simple stuff, although it seemed like a daunting task for those who I worked with in that store.

So for my 3rd day, during which I was going to learn the management aspects of opening a store, I showed up a bit later, dead on at 4:00 A.M. Well, without letting me know, the managers had switched schedules and I was opening with the store manager, M., who did not particular like me, and whom I (still) considered to be a terrible person in general. She showed up only 10 minutes late, but filled with more justification and defensiveness than the previous two managers combined! We walked into the store, and she said to me "You're going to do the store open by yourself."

I was a bit stunned at that. I know I had communicated to her earlier in the week my training path, and so explained that I had not received any training on the management aspects of opening a store. She gave me a mirthy little smirk and said "I know. You're gonna do it all yourself anyways." She proceeded to brew a pot of coffee, pour a cup and sat in the lobby watching.

I was angry. Let me rephrase that. I was ANGRY! But I went and did everything that looked right from the previous two days, got all my coffee going (the first round at least), and did the computer stuff that had to be done. 90% of what I did was guess work. The best thing was, most of the systems in place are designed to be executed by a typical McDonald's manager - poorly trained, undereducated, highly-stressed, underpaid, and at 4:00 A.M., nonetheless. I got the store all set and ready to be open, and poured myself a cup of coffee, and went to find M. in the lobby. She was reading the paper and didn't really notice that I was approaching her until it was too late. It's now 10 minutes before we open.

She looked up from the Arizona Daily Star laid out before her and with what seemed an exaggerated grin said, "What's the matter? Do you need help?"

I smiled me own incredibly cocky smile, the one that got me a wife, and many friends, and many sales contracts in the past... and said, "I got everything done, and we've got 10 minutes till we opened. I figured I'd relax a bit." I proceeded to sit down and sip my coffee.

Without a word, M. jumped up, ran to the computer, double-checked what I had done, made sure there were cash drawers in all the registers, made sure that each coffee urn was full, that the Iced Coffee was brewed, the kitchen was all set (I had even run through there twice to get some things prepared with the Production team member, who was incredibly thankful in her broken English).

I felt absolutely triumphant as I watched her running around, shocked to see that everything was done, as I had said. I had rocked it out. She cut 10 minutes of my time by arriving late, and I still had 10 minutes to spare, with absolutely no training on more than half of the work I had to do. I know I didn't then (or anytime in the future) win her friendship, but I believe she grudgingly developed a grain of respect for me.

Production Team Member

Since I was not a McDonald's experienced employee (disregarding the 2 years as a teenager I worked at my local McDonald's a dozen years ago), I had to get some first-hand experience working all positions in the restaurant. The logic makes sense: How can I manage a shift and ensure my kitchen runs smoothly if I don't know the Nuts and Bolts of the kitchen? The reality of it is a bit different. It's hot. It's sweaty. It's hard work!

I have nothing but infinite respect for the people (the majority of whom at all the stores the company I work for owns are women) who bust their ass in the kitchen making all that phenomenal, greasy food with a total visit time for the customer of 3 minutes, 30 seconds. Keep in mind that everything is prepared to order and meats are kept for about 15 minutes after cooking them. It's not like the old days where there's a dozen of each sandwich waiting for a customer to come purchase them.

So, I worked for a week as a production team member. I worked through 3 lunch shifts on the grill, basically sweating my ass off trying to keep up with the orders. After the first day, I think I did a good job. I kept up with it all, and kept the food flowing.

Each team member in a McDonald's restaurant is an important cog in a machine that must run smoothly, efficiently and effectively, at all times. This is most true for the person running the grill. They have to ensure that the level of meats and fried products (waiting to be made into lovely sandwiches) are accurately filled and the holding times maintained at all times. They are responsible for delivering every single piece of food perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned swiftly while maintaining the strictest of food safety policies. Adding to all of this is the fact that they make minimum wage, probably have not been trained nearly as well as they could have been, and most likely aren't the brightest bulb in the box (otherwise, why, really, are they working for minimum wage at a hot, sweaty, demanding job?) nor are their managers joyous beacons of professionalism, in most cases, for all the same reasons. This means the grill person is probably not the most highly motivated person in the world, even if they have a phenomenally demanding job.

After my time on the grill, I worked a few night shifts on assembly, making the sandwiches. After a few hours of putting things all together, it's really not difficult at all. The ingredients are not diverse, most sandwiches are made the same (ketchup, mustard, onions, pickle are the basics) with minor deviations: Quarter Pounders are made with large onion slivers instead of the dehydrated diced onions, the Big Mac has special sauce and a minor deviation in the order the ingredients are applied (to achieve the perfect "flavor profile" I discussed previously). The people who work in Production have got some skills. There's a particular way to put together Double Cheeseburgers, which sell in an unbelievable volume and pace (I've seen orders for 30 Doubles at a time!) There's this particular way to drop and then stack the meat and cheese that makes it incredibly quick and efficient. I never mastered that technique. My week as a production team member was coming to a close and the last day I worked Production, I was scheduled for breakfast.

Breakfast is the most simple thing to work, in the kitchen, unless you're in charge of making eggs. Why? Well, there's 3 kinds of eggs. Folded eggs, round eggs and scrambled eggs. Each comes from a different source. The folded eggs are pre-made, frozen and take all of 35 seconds to cook. Round eggs are from raw in-the-shell eggs and are a complete pain in the ass, because I could not once get the mold that makes them round to sit still and keep all the egg wetness inside of the molds. Lastly, scrambled eggs are made from a liquid egg-in-a-carton product, and are actually the least difficult to make. You pour them in a large square mold, and use a little device that rocks back and forth to scramble them just right. Who knew making eggs in a McDonald's would be so complex?!

Assembly in breakfast is exceedingly simple, as I mentioned. Muffin with a squirt of butter, biscuit or set of griddle cakes, cheese, egg, meat (order reversed for the original McMuffin, again for flavor profile). No messy condiments, no "does this one get big or little onions?!?!", no complex stacking tricks, almost no special orders, bacon and canadian bacon both cook in mere fractions of minutes... It's a special time of day, for both Production and Service members, where the most difficult thing on production side is getting eggs to stay in the molds, and on the service side it's keeping coffee brewed.

Anyhow, my time as on Production ended, I was done sweating incredibly (did I mention I'm 6'2" and over 300lbs? It's damn hot in a kitchen!) and then it was time to get my chops opening and closing the store.

Interacting with People

There's something phenomenally powerful about seeing someone, looking them in the eye, and delivering to them something that an entire team of people worked on, to make perfect, just for them.

Retrospective: Training Day 2

I spent an 8 hour day taking notes and watching the e-Learning programs on Production. By the end of it, I felt like a certified, trained Production team member.

I learned all about the temperatures the meat and chicken cook at, how to place and remove meat from the grill, the proper procedure for cooking the fried products... How to batch cook! I learned all the sandwiches and the way to assembly them correctly.

Did you know, as an aside, that McDonald's corporation spends hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of man-hours each year on ensuring the sandwiches are being built just right, to deliver the perfect flavor profile with each bite? I didn't, but I learned that along the training path of Production.

So, in the middle of my training schedule on that 8 hour day, the store manager of the restaurant I was training at (which has since become my home restaurant) invited me to learn by doing. So we went out into the grill and he showed me how to do a run of hamburger meat, and I sweated over the hot grill, cooking a few batches of hamburger meat. Aside from the literal sweat, it was no figurative sweat at all.

The training for production was engaging, complete, and empowering. I could do it! I had a head full of knowledge! Awesome.

The First Week

My legs hurt so damn bad. Every day, my first week, within 5 hours into my shift, I would be stiff-legged and clumping around like Frankenstein, wishing my legs would just fall off or something. The environment and the job was a huge change from my previous life of sitting at a computer with a phone against my ear. Now, I was standing all the time, and in fact running my ass around all over the place. Also, I wasn't able to take a mid-day nap, like I used to on my hour-long lunch hours. Now, I was barely able to smoke a cigarette, gulp down my $6.00 worth of comp'd food, smoke a second cigarette and hopefully sneak out a really quick poop (if I didn't smoke a third cigarette. I love you Pall Mall 100s).

So the first week was all service, and pain in the legs. However, the best part of that first week was PEOPLE! I got to speak to human beings and make people smile in my short interludes speaking with them. I heard "Wow you need to be working somewhere else, you're fantastic!". In that first week of working with people, human beings I could see and make eye contact with, I was offered at least 1 job a day by people I interacted with. I was buh-da-bum-bum-bah LOVIN' IT. Great for my ego, you know, to have so many people tell me how great I am, and to know that I'm doing a great job of it.

The end of the first week at McDonald's culminated in more exposure to that fantastic
training system, the e-Learning computer. This time, I was going to learn "Production", making all that lovely, greasy food.

First Day in the Store

So I arrive the next day at one of the 5 stores that my owner/operator has, fresh faced, full of new information, ready to get down and serve my little chunk of those 47 million daily customers.

The store I went to is big. Very big. It's old too! Dust gathers in corners in big, old places. That's all I'm saying. You gotta be attentive to that stuff.

So, the store manager was informed, I'm sure, that the new up-and-coming company manager was coming to her store, and she had to make sure he got impressed damnit! Well, whether she was told this or not, she definitely did not do it.

First, I showed up at 8am to a dirty store. Breakfast rush hadn't even hit yet! The store manager, who I'll call M., told me with a heavy, worn-out sigh, that I would be working presentation for Drive Thru, which is a demanding and important position. I was up to the challenge.

I got into the Drive Thru presentation area, and it STANK! OOoohhh wheee! I mean it was horrid. I asked M. about the stench in that area and she told me it was from the drain that was under the soda dispenser. So I got a couple buckets of hot water with some soap in them, and dumped them down the drain to make the water and (hopefully) the stench flow. No dice! It stank just as bad then as before I tried to flush the drain out.

While down under the soda dispensing area, I saw an odd, white ... puddle? Not exactly. It was like a stalagmite growing from under a counter, and it seemed to be the source of the stench. So after about 25 seconds of investigating, I discovered that the machine that dispenses cream for McDonald's Premium Coffee and Iced Coffee was placed in a ... poor position. The 'catch tray' under the dispensing nozzle was located directly over a pre-fabricated square access hole in the metal counter it was resting on. And cream would spill out over or around the catch tray. And then, that cream would drop through the hole, and made a puddle that was never attended to underneath.

I broke out some steel scrubbing pads, a couple buckets of water, and cleaned that horrible, calcified and incredibly funky mountain!!!! of old cream. Stench went away!

The rest of my day was spent scrubbing all 4 walls of that uncared for Drive Thru presentation area. I learned something that day. With enough elbow grease, the yellowed walls of an old restaurant can become white again. I'm certain I'm the only person who ever worked in that store who made that discovery.

Retrospective: Training Day 1

My first day I showed up at one of the 5 stores that the owner/operator I work for owns, which has an e-Learning computer. This is one of the most streamlined training processes I've ever encountered. McDonald's knows what they're doing, and have set up some awesome tools that, when used, create a solid training environment for new employees.

I started with "Foundation" training. The training was all on this computer, with sometimes overly-cutesy, sometimes overly-simplified slightly cartoon-y animations. There was a solid plot-line that the characters who were being trained in the animations followed. Some such about being time traveling teenagers with some agenda.

The important thing is, lots of important information was imparted in an efficient manner. There were internal verifications, such as multiple-choice tests and such, to ensure that the information was being comprehended by the trainee (it was). In fact, I took notes in a legal pad on everything I watched. I'm like that. I take notes, then refer to them until I can commit them to memory. I figured, if I'm a professional, then I must be a professional even working a job like McDonald's (which certainly does have some serious social stigma attached to it).

I then went through all the training programs under the heading of "Service", including Front Counter, Drive Thru, and more. All told, I spent 7 1/2 hours that first day watching training videos, taking notes, and making sure I had a firm grasp of the correct procedures, so that when I hit a store the next day, I could be sure to do everything right.

The information wasn't too terribly hard to process and commit to memory, although it was a bit of an information overflow, as the modules of training are designed to be done over the course of many shifts.

McDonald's has spent billions of dollars over the past few years analyzing and testing the processes and procedures for each and every small aspect of store operations, with the goal in mind of finding the most efficient and effective way for the approximately 2 million or so McDonald's employees to serve the 47 million or so McDonald's customers that visit the 33,000+ McDonald's stores daily.

Wow. Staggering numbers. There's no way that I, even though I'm incredibly confident in myself and at times a bit cocky, could be arrogant enough to believe my ideas about how to do things were more accurate than the world's best franchise and the fiscal and human resources that they've invested in designing operations.

I imagined that no one else would be that arrogant either. Boy was I wrong...

I'm not a blogger.

I'm starting this blog more than two months after I've started my career with McDonald's.

I've never written a blog before, mostly because I just never had the interest. However, I've searched the beloved Internets for blogs that are worthwhile, regarding working at McDonald's, and there's not really much positive out there.

Of course, there's a small community at community.livejournal.com/mcdonalds_talk but it's very small, and there's "head hunter" trolls over there, making a large part of the posting.

I've also read a bit of the "CSR" blog at csr.blogs.mcdonalds.com , but it's corporate sponsored and monitored and it really feels more like a marketing tool than anyone's blog.

The third blog regarding McDonald's is the McChronicles at mcchronicles.blogspot.com and it is from a customer's point of view, and is incredibly worthwhile to keep tabs on. Your McDonald's just might get some feedback from McChronicles.

Other than that are hundreds of comments on various blogs and community sites that are to the effect of "McD's sux0rr!!! I h8 my jobb and LOL McDs sux0rr fuchhs u maganer!". Not very productive as far as an open communication channel goes.

So why did I feel it necessary to blog about my job at McDonald's? I was actually struck by inspiration! It sounds silly, but I just feel compelled to make sure that a positive blog exists, and I'd like to show the world what working at McDonald's is like for someone who isn't a complete moron and slacker.

Why McDonald's?

So, Why McDonald's?

Record profits, record expenditure on training and development of employees, 33,000+ stores world-wide, the 2nd most well-known brand name in the world (behind Coca-cola, which I love and McDonald's serves), I love me some greasy affordable food. I like people, I like working with people, I love a challenge, I'm passionate about what I want to do, and that's to serve hundreds of people, every day, cheap greasy food quickly...

Well not really. I want to get paid to play video games and sleep, and do dirty things behind closed doors. But those are not happening anytime soon.

So the interview went swimmingly, I quit the job I was at, collected my final paycheck there and started working for McDonald's.

First!

Hello!

This is a new blog, for me, to discuss my career at McDonald's and my life in general.

I'm 26 years old, 27 very soon, have a wonderful florist wife who I've been married to for 4 years, and two kids - one in pre-school the other in 4th grade.

In the past, I've been primarily a salesman, most recently selling debt-collection services for B2B transactions (which I did for nearly 2 years), and directly previously to that, I was a stay-at-home father working weekends doing sales. For a couple years before that, I sold speakers out the back of a van, operating offices in multiple states, helping build others' wealth, and (unfortunately) participating in a "party" lifestyle that youth, money and expensive tastes brings about.

So, for the past couple years, I went to an office every day, and sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully, plied my salesmanly skills to hundreds of business owners and what I got in return is the traditional office-worker experience: profit margin of my existence, whether I paid the rent on my cubicle or not, indifferent training from an incredibly mediocre sales manager (shout out to Mr. Greg Herron of Tucson, AZ! You are the master of lacking! - abilities, charisma, personality, strengths, leadership, motivation, and more! You lack all these), and I also learned that business owners are irresponsible with their money and who they give it to.

I got sick of spending hours a day surfing the net while bored and eating snacks from the breakroom, while pretending to be passionate about selling a service that few want to discuss, over the phone none-the-less. Further, I heard "No" and "Fuck off!" more times than I could ever count (even though I have a 30" tall stack of CDs of my recorded phone calls over 9 months, I still couldn't count them all). Not that the job was all bad, just mostly. In my past, my favorite positions had always been face-to-face, high intensity jobs, with high expectations, enormous workloads in a short period of time, and many people to delegate to and train. Also, I like to make people smile. What's wrong with delivering happiness, I say?!

While surfing craiglist, I saw an advertisement for someone looking for McDonald's managers. I thought long and hard about it, about the McDonald's corporation, about my 2 years as a teenager working at McDonald's and how rewarding it was, how McDonald's - believe it or not - is a paragon of corporate responsibility, and how much I'd love to be back with people, face-to-face, in a challenging environment. I also thought about standing my 6'2" 340lbs fat-ass for 8 hours a day or more, running around, doing physical work (after 2 years stuck at a desk and 2 years before that stuck to a couch!), and the social challenges I'd face working for McDonald's.

I set up an interview with the owner, was blown off for the first interview, showed up for a second interview the next day which consisted of perhaps 10 minutes of discussion and a follow-up interview with the Director of Operations for this particular franchisee. The owner struck me as a together guy, a career McDonald's guy (20 years or some such), and I went and researched him a bit and he seemed altogether a good business man (based on what the Internets tell me). So, second interview, with the Director of Operations... But first a digression...

I'm a salesman at heart. I've spent probably 200 hours of the past 10 years in training (not counting the 300+ books I've read) on the topics of reading physical and verbal signs people give off, negotiation tactics, sales tactics, conversation direction and more kvetchy salesman-y topics.

So I show up for the 2nd interview (technically the 3rd), at the mall courtyard, where there is a McDonald's. I meet the Director of Operations, a very tall, very skinny gentleman who, in the first 5 minutes of speaking with him, has not given a single "tell" into how to read him. Basically the conversation is "I'd like to hire you, but you're a bit overqualified, and why the hell do you want to work at McDonald's?" In fact, "Why McDonald's?" was asked about 20 different times.

So, why McDonald's?