Company: McDonald-s
Date: 2013-05-12
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Build character while losing your sanity
Pros: I work under an owner-operator (Non-corporate franchise), and their company has a very structured developmental process. It's an unforgiving environment filled with forgiving people that will work with your individual needs.
Cons: Many people are ambitiously pushed through to management when they aren't really ready for it. Additionally, we hire anyone that  can hold a pencil and stand at the fry station. They do these kind of things to meet our staffing and management goals, while expecting us to cut our highest paid employees and working will freshly-trained 16 year olds to save labor costs.

As a fast food manager, you deal with a lot of teenagers and people who don't know the meaning of "show up for work." Since McDonald's has such a pedestrian context, people are more likely to shove you under the bus as soon as a more appealing opportunity appears. Or if they just don't want to go to work. Additionally, many times people will not call to find openers or closers if they call in, so your management will throw you under once in a while as well.

Compensation is awful. A direct competitor down the street hires at $10.XX for crew positions. I make $9.55 because the higher-ups tend to drag their feet when sending you to out-of-store training and getting your raise. Even then, once I get my next scheduled raise for department management (Which I've been doing for 9 months now), kids at said competitor may still be walking away with a bigger paycheck than I do.

Last but not least, is the horrifically stressful environment. You are constantly surrounded by dramatic teenagers who can't concentrate on their work. When it's busy, there's a lot of product being cooked, which leads to a lot of beeping (Unwanted background noise dramatically increases mental stress). It isn't possible for any person to predict how a day will go-- You may be staffed for a slow day, and get slammed the whole time. Too many variables affect how much business will come in.