Company: McDonald-s
Date: 2014-07-23
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Few resources to meet high expectations
Pros: Serving the public can be tough, but can also be fun, in the right environment and with the right people.  While some of the customer base is a little downmarket, there are enough nice folks who appreciate your efforts to provide them with great service, and who appreciate prompt response to any problems.
Cons: As a manager in the licensee community, the expectations are  to maintain profit margins at the expense of service to the customer, and to long-term growth.  Much lip service is given to metrics like service times, etc, but these are often at odds with payroll expectations, for example.  Administrative duties can't be completed on a timely basis during the course of one's shift; it's impossible to complete schedules or a delivery order when one has to be the drive-thru runner!  There was also a resistance to using new-technology tools to perform administrative tasks such as inventory control and ordering, or to take shortcuts such as would render those tools less effective than they could be,

As an older employee, I found much preference was given to advance younger employees whose pay expectations are lower, as well as (in my organization) a bias against male employees.  The culture there was very much a "girls club", as opposed to more balanced view of how well a particular restaurant was running.  

Scheduling--the focus was on scheduling to do well during mystery shops, often at the expense of other dayparts that were just as busy, leading to under-staffing during "non-peak" (so-called) parts of the business day.  (Doing well on mystery shops was incentivized with a bonus program).  There is much emphasis on being a "working manager", which really is code-word for "crew person in a different shirt".