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.