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.