Company: McDonald-s
Date: 2019-11-21
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Don't do it
Pros: Flexible hours, the online system makes it easy to swap, give away or pick up extra shifts
Cons: Extremely busy and fast paced work. Upper management cared more about saving money on labour than actually having enough staff for the demand, so we were almost always short-staffed. Communication between staff was poor which meant a lot of mistakes and a lot of frustrated customers, and people on front (as I always was) have to deal with the brunt from both sides. Customers thought they could treat us like absolute dirt and their bratty, entitled behaviour was validated by managers bending over backwards for them. The 24/7 location across the road from a pub also led to violent incidents, but they were too cheap to hire a security guard. Equipment frequently broke and of course customers would take it out on me. Although I said the hours were flexible, I did actually end up having to quit because they wouldn't let me cut down my hours to accommodate for uni work (I was in my final year). To add insult to injury, they wouldn't even give me a reference even though I had been a good employee. 

I would only recommend McDonald's to people who are extremely thick skinned and able to work well under pressure, and don't care about stable hours since it is a zero hour contract, but even then there are places out there where you would be treated much better.