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.