Company: McDonald-s
Date: 2014-04-01
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Stressful, low paid work with awful management.
Pros: - Hiring pretty much all the time due to high employee turnover
- Good way to meet people if you're young
- It's better than being on welfare
- Flexible in terms of uni/school/other commitments
Cons: - Stressful work pace. Imagine running around like a dog, having constant beeps and alarms going off and managers yelling at you to work faster for hours then you've got McDonald's. At McDonald's, in the kitchen, you could be in one of three places, the burger assembly line, on the grills (ie patties) or making fried products (ie chicken and fish). If you're on the burger assembly line, expect to be rushing around having to make 10+ burgers in under a minute, with constantly changing orders and managers yelling at you to work faster. This can go on for hours. If you're on grills and fried products (my store only had one for both, that's right, one person for two roles), basically you'll be expected to be in two places at once and you'll be running around madly between the two for hours.

- Understaffing. This contributes to the stressful work pace, it also ensures that staff can rarely leave on time. Before staff are due to leave they are often given a list of things to do, in addition to what they're already doing (which they must stay on until the other tasks are complete). Staff are frequently forced to stay back 30 minutes or longer after the end of their shifts.
 
- Bad management. The people that become McDonald's managers are those (generally) who work there full time and have been there the longest. Generally they are people who have screwed up in life, may have dropped out of school etc, so ended up at McDonald's full time, and aren't really suited to managing people. A lot of them have massive power trips once they become managers, many treat employees like dog poo, and i've had at least one who frequently made sexual, harrassing and hurtful comments about employees behind their backs.

- Lazy coworkers. When it's quiet, a lot of employees will just stand around talking instead of doing what they're supposed to do. This is often tolerated by managers, who often stand around and talk as well. Customers are seen as an inconvenience.

- Undertrained staff. Staff that have worked there for a year that still don't know how to do certain things because they were never shown how to. Instead of properly training employees 'crew trainers' (ie, people who have worked there for more than a year) just tick everything off without actually checking if the new employee knows how to do it or not.

- Favouritism. There is a great deal of favouritism that goes on. If you're 'friends' with the manager, you'll get good shifts, you'll be treated well on shift, and if you stand around doing nothing that's tolerated. Those who become 'crew trainers' (ie people who train new crew, get paid slightly more) are generally those who are 'friends' with managers, not those who work hard or are good at their jobs.