Company: McDonald-s
Date: 2015-01-04
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Everyone Starts Somewhere: Easy Job for Teens
Pros: Good place to start working in your teens, albeit this was my second job after being a busboy. Should take no more than two days to understand the process of business at McDonald's.

Job responsibilities are basic exercises of memory:
1. "Hello, how may I take your order?"
2. Try to understand customers
3. Push a couple buttons on the monitor
4. Debate with customers about prices
5. Collect money
6. Toss food in bag/on tray and hand to customer
7. Repeat.

The most difficult tasks include:
1. Running into the storage area to restock items that you did not know existed.
2. Tolerating the coworkers that flirt with you (My case was the weirdo women)
3. Refilling both sweet and unsweetened tea at the same time because you are oddly enough the only male working there at the time.
4. Definitely not talking back to the customers... If only I could facepalm with one hand and take orders without looking rude, that would be great.
5. The day McDonald's uploaded a new interface to their order screen that had longtime crew members complaining about it for days because they had to retrain their brains for the button location of the menu item.

Prevalent Observations:
Caucasians work the counter, and Hispanics make the food.

Highlighting the Pros:

Co-workers will make or break your experience at McDonald's, so just be sure that if you're applying there that you have a friend or vested interest in someone that will make the time fly by faster.

Furthermore customers don't expect you to be extremely chipper like the brainwashed female Chic-Fil-A crew "ITS A GREAT DAY AT CHIC-FIL-A," whereas, I sometimes like to "(Remains Silent)" confusing my customers on whether I'm still alive on the inside.

And by the end of it, depending on the state you live in, you'll be a commodity amongst your friends spouting off how mush a McDouble ($1.06), Large Fry ($1.06), Large Drink ($1.06), McDouble or Quarter Pound Meal ($5.30) all cost without having to look at the menu for prices.
Cons: Depending on your area some customers are just down right awful people. Woodbine is a densely redneck location, and at times you may need to bring a voice translator with you to understand what people are saying. For example working in the drive-thru McDonald's does not offer the highest quality of microphone recording technology, so at times I may have to as customers to repeat their orders if they are either a) to far away from the speaker or b) speaking one of three languages: gibberish, ebonics, and country dirt. Of course all my worse experiences deal with the latter.

Highlighting the Lows:

One redneck came into the drive-thru placed an order with his worst attempt at English. I asked him to repeat it, but instead he drove straight up to the drive-thru window, threw money at me (haha), and told me "I want two Bacon McDouble's you dumb [insert bad words here]." I took his order and gave him his change.

Another incident occurred at the counter, when I did not understand a man's order and I asked him to politely repeat it. Using hillbilly logic he connected facts. Because my hat was on crooked (slightly off to the side) I was not able to hear him, and thus could not take his order. I remember this one vividly because I kept rerunning what he told me back into my mind to make sense out of it, "Well! Maybe if you put y'er hat on strait you'd hear me." Again facepalm with one hand push buttons on screen with the other.

People that appear to be poor and asking you to break a $100? Who breaks $100 at McDonald's, please make me feel more lesser than a human.

Regulars know you by name and hate your service. I'm sorry, but putting 1 and 1/2 creamers into a coffee is a little difficult when you are trying to multitask so many other orders at 9am on a Sunday before/after mass.

The Pay... I started first week in June at 7.25/hr went back to college at the end of August. Came back to McDonald's over winter break (that was a mistake), but I did receive an $.11 raise! For non-mathers that's $7.36

Oh right, and standing. Make sure to practice this at home 24/7.