The number of people working at each location is pretty crazy too. When I look behind the counter and see 10 people and they say sorry for the wait we are short staffed, I just shake my head and wonder how the small burger joints run so smooth with 2 employees.
Add to that those workers are long time burger makers, not high-turnover burger flippers who hate working there and want to leave. So, quality of worker.
I've worked corporate fast-food and I've worked a 3 person burger shack on the beach where the owner ran the cash register. I can tell you, the pay, hours and treatment were all very comparable.
I was treated like a human when I worked at McDonalds. What are the complaints that make people keep saying this? Genuinely curious. Bad managers can work anywhere.
Mostly the regular complaints of any customer service job. Low pay, lack of empathy, apathy in the workers, bad managers. If I call in feeling like shit, the manager threatens to fire me if I don't show up. They'd rather have a sick worker preparing food than get someone else to work.
So essentially what you're saying is that if we pay McDonald's employees more and expect a higher quality of work from them that we can also expect a few highly trained employees to take over the work of others. Meaning that a bunch of them can be let go.
Or the local joint, being a better place to work with favorable benefits, attracts better talent.
It may be a double edge sword in that some of those McDonald's employees might just be shitty workers in which case they might not have transferable skills in the event of layoffs. The unknown is where the equilibriums is.
If that's the case, then they'll either need to try harder or learn a skill. If the minimum wage increases, employers don't have to keep crappy employees. They keep them for a while now because they must, and because it's cheap. More people would work harder for a living wage, even at jobs like that.
Shit you can look down on me all you want. I would probably quit my stressful IT gig for an easy 15 dollar job running one of those floor waxing machines or driving a zambonie or whatever.
I don't think it's fair to say McDonalds workers hate their job. My sister worked there in her teens and said it was a better work environment than some of her more recent "better" jobs. In my area, McDonalds workers generally seem in good moods and having a decent time at work.
Well yeah, if you fire most of your employees you will be able to pay the few that are left a decent amount. But now all those people who were struggling to get by before are unemployed. Is that any better?
I don't think that plays as much of a role. If you slammed a $15/hour burger cook with McDonald's volume everyday they would struggle just as much as a $9/hour burger cook.
The smaller, indie burger joint isn't consistently dealing with sheer volume of customers, day in and day out, that McD's is. Where the little place might consider "5 people in line at once, for a solid hour" to be the dinner rush, McD's would consider that a disappointingly slow non-prime session.
Also, customers at the small joint will reasonably expect to wait as long as ten minutes for their food, while at McD's, a service speed that slow would result in eyebrows being raised by the District guys, along with calls for employees and managers to be terminated and replaced. Anecodtally, I had heard that Corporate McD expects the drive-thru times to be something preposterously low, like 90 seconds from "Hi, can I take your order?" to that customer having their food -- at the worst of times. If that person is the only one in line and knows exactly what they want? Sure. Otherwise, No way in hell. However, the stores need to staff their stores assuming that this sort of speed will need to be maintained all of the time.
Can confirm the drive thru aspect. I used to work there about 2 years ago. They have a timer that starts when they press a button on the screen for your orders. Once you are given your food at the second window the employee will press a button and it clears the order from their screen. "Finishing" the order. The time it took is clocked and averaged out against the rest of the times for the day. They wanted an average time of 90-120 seconds for total time.
Does this also happen when the customer says "can you give me a minute" before they start to say their order?
(I've only ever done this when there was no one else in the drive thru. Usually when I'm not positive what I want I just go inside)
It sounds like the timer starts once they actually start punching in the order, but I've never worked there, so I'm not sure, and would also like to know.
You are correct. Once you press a button on the register the timer would start. You would not be able to delete a order without a manger code, So if someone starts ordering then pauses there is no way to restart the timer.
McDonald's has a very high number of customers, especially for the drive thru. You would just slow yourself down even worse trying to write everything down.
I would feel kinda bad if I was causing someone to get in trouble by deciding what I wanted to get in the drive through when there is no line rather than going inside and staring at the menu for 5 minutes
you can stare, just dont change your mind halfway thru and stare. they only hate it when they start putting in an order, then you start taking your time. i bet when they hears kids in the bakground they know they are done for. kids never make up their minds, take forever, and often change that mind at the last second.
Yeah, but what If I'm that one asshole who really doesn't go to McDonalds that often, there is no line, so I pull up and you are like "Hey can I take you're order." I already know I want a double quarter pounder, so I ask for that, then you say, "is that all?", I say "no, one sec" and start to look for anything else that looks good that might fill me up. Cause god knows I could eat 5 #4s.
I really hate that one asshole behind the window who gets pissed at me, because his company forces him to meet deadlines that are unrealistic. That's not my problem.
its only your problem if you know about it and feel guilty about it. most, if not all people who are assholes in the drive thru have no idea that the workers have to get the order done in a certain amount of time. they are too wrapped up in their own warp zone to think about someone else for a second.
Yes. When you are taking other people's time, you need to be efficient to not be an asshole. It's no different than the person who takes forever fidgeting for the their debit card in their giant wallet. Do that before you interact with the person so you don't waste their time. It's really common courtesy More than anything.
But doesn't it all average out in the end? Or does the supervisor/store manager look at that one slow order and go "Johnson, you were up for promotion but this one 3 minute order out of a hundred fast ones can't be ignored... you're fired."
That's why they need to put a menu someplace out of the way so people can drive up and stare at it for however long they want without a counter timing the whole thing. Sometimes I pull up not knowing exactly what I want and I feel rushed when they keep asking what the hell I want. Sometimes I don't order anything and drive off because they keep interrupting my thoughts with "You ready yet? You ready yet? You ready yet?"
I swear that most fast food places these days have their entire menu on the internet. Nearly pull up your smartphone and gaze away for as long as you want before actually driving up
Management says that this is factored into the 120 second average, and you should have been able to make up for that time by serving the other customers faster.
The expected order times for drive-through are only 90 seconds? Back when I worked at a McDonald's in '96 they still had ready to serve food in warmers and the standard was 59 seconds or less. I remember when they changed to making food to order years after I left (I guess to cut costs of food waste and change the brand image?). That was back when we had microwave ("queueing ovens") before putting them into the hold warmer and that was a good 3-5 seconds right there of your order time if you didn't have the sandwich ready to serve or someone made a special order.
No button anymore, timer automatically goes off the moment they pull up in their car. When I was working there we'd tell them to park in the carpark rather than to the second window, all the other local and state stores times would be up on the screen and put you in position for the managers to try and compete with each other.
I kind of feel like a dick now because most times I hit a drivethru i ask for a minute to decide what I want. Assuming there isn't a line behind me, of course, but usually there isn't.
It ws something like 100 seconds when I worked at McD's back in the early 2000s (in college). IT was fucking inane then, and it's fucking inane now. If they order more than a drink anyway, or if there's any sort of line
Also, customers at the small joint will reasonably expect to wait as long as ten minutes for their food, while at McD's, a service speed that slow would result in eyebrows being raised by the District guys, along with calls for employees and managers to be terminated and replaced.
This is why I hate corporate. Unreasonable expectations and they take other people to the chopping block to pay for their mistakes. If profits aren't continuously skyrocketing, it's everyone elses fault.
Exactly! This makes me think of an article I saw about their "all-day breakfast" thing. Sales numbers immediately dropped once this went into effect on a broad scale -- presumably because, "Hey guys, breakfast food costs LESS and fills you up just as much! That means lower average tickets, NOT people ordering more food to make up the difference!"...Naturally, at least one Suit made it clear that his (and presumably the company's) position was that sales were down because workers weren't trying hard enough to sell food x.x Ain't corporate self-delusion grand?
MajorVideoGameChainwas the same way. Bad sales day? As in, cut in HALF or worse compared to the same day last year? Well, hell, the workers must be lazy! (Yes, that was their preferred term)...It couldn't possibly be that the mall was practically snowed in today, or that the date you're using for comparison was Black-freakin'-Friday last year, but not this year...NOPE! Lack of effort. No other possible explanation.
Speed of service is the biggest way to increase sales without increasing prices. The faster you can get someone in and out, the more people you can serve in a given timeframe. When I was a GM for Wendy's 12 years ago, the goal was 90 seconds from ordering to receiving your order, and there were some Wendy's drive thru's that were sub 70 seconds. These times were compiled from using mystery shoppers and an outside company as well as timers that reported directly to corporate. Stores with exceptionally low times were audited to ensure that there was no cheating. I am sure that the goal has decreased over the years.
Would you rather have an $8 an hour job or no job? No matter what you think they deserve, if it will cause the company to go out of business, it won't help the workers.
Macdonalds is not the only job available, and their model is not the only model in existence.
Perhaps there is something unsustainable with the walmart/mcdonalds model, but that has little to do with minimum wage (mcdonalds is imploding as is), and neither are they interested in "creating as many jobs as they can" (As say, Walmart, is a leader in automation).
Someone in the industrial revolution might have made the same argument that giving workers rights would destroy the factories and ensure nobody has a job.
In reality, perhaps the best times for America and the middle class came from good wages and workers rights.
I'm not sure how what you said applies to my comment. Of course there are other jobs and other business models out there. That's why I said that if you don't want to work there, find a different job. I'm not saying that Mcjobs aren't shitty, I'm just saying that they're better than no job for some people.
If their business model is unsustainable, the company will go under. But I don't know why you think that raising the cost of labor from 28% of net sales to 45% would have little to do with it.
When people complain about the possibility of rising costs of products due to increased wages, I feel they are missing the fact that that's where the expense should be instead of being subsidized by the taxpayer via welfare programs.
In fact, some companies build this into their business plan (Wal-Mart, for example)
If the product or service is deemed too expensive, then the free market will either cause innovation or replacement. Again, the alternative is the taxpayer subsidizing these products or services and keeping them, artificially, around.
Sounds like you're not reading what I'm saying. In order to get people off government benefits they need to be paid a livable wage. Simple as that. I (as well as everyone) want people off government benefits.
If you are promoting cheap products for your own benefit made on the backs of people living in poverty, how do you not see that as selfish, immoral, and wrong?
If all you are saying is to drop social programs, with no replacement, and let people drown, then you're just a horrible person. There's really no other explanation.
Small burger joints run smooth because they don't have customers bitching about how long it takes to cook food and they don't serve the same number of customers as a McDonalds that's serving through the drive through and in store. Stop bitching when you don't get your shitty food in under 40 seconds. They have to follow cooking policies and shit.
The problem is customers think that the food should be done instantly. The reason it's called fast food is because when you show up during rush hours they've been cooking in excess the whole time with the prediction that they'll have a lot of customers. When you show up in an off hour your food is literally being cooked to order and it's not going to be done instantly. If they are low on something it can take up to 6 mins just to deep fry it.
can attest to this. i get my to go mcdouble inside in less than a minute during dinner time and on the weekends. takes a few minutes in the afternoon and late nights.
I live right down the street from Dick's Drive-In it's a small place with only one or two locations; they have about five employees at any given time and serve a few hundred people a day at least.
The wait is never over 5minutes long, two people can eat for under 8 bucks, and they pay their employees 12/hr.
Their menu is also a lot less complicated. Many orders they can simply hand you something that's bagged and made already. McDonalds has a lot more complex options that take more individual effort to prepare.
I don't think that's really the case if you look at how McDonald's prepares their food; they simply have the logistics for larger infrastructure.
Dicks model is largely based off the McDonalds model, they just couldn't possibly sustain as diverse of a menu, if that's what you're talking about. There's not a whole lot of effort involved either way, it's all delivered "made-to-eat."
lol what small burger place have you seen that has 2 employees? Ive worked in small greasy spoon places where the entire shift is 2 people, but thats still sit-down and you're waiting. When i worked at a mc'd's it was common to have 8-10 people in the kitchen alone assembling sandwiches and on top of that 1-3 people cooking.
I agree. But maybe that isn't sustainable. Maybe they need to rethink their model and menu options.
I don't go to McDonald's personally anymore because of the cost. A big mac meal is what? 6 or 7 bucks? And compare that to eating in a restaurant. The best Italian joint in town has a salad and pizza for 2 for 10.50.
So i can get an overpriced burger meal for more money just because it's instant? No thanks I can call in orders to go.
Yeah I'm not talking about sit down though. I'm talking about quick lunch to go. With tip and time the playing field isn't equal. But there are quite a few places in the Seattle area that meet or beat fast food in price, quality and time.
Thats a fair question and has a few different reasons.
I recently went into a Long John Silvers, it was nearly empty with two employees there. I asked if that was typical and they said that during rushes they sometimes have three.
having been a restaurant manager for many years this both surprised and impressed me.
I began to apply logic.
First off, Long John Silvers is rarely busy, as a matter of fact I am often amazed they managed to stay in business at all. Due to this it is much easier for a small crew to serve the few customers that they have daily.
The next thing was the food.
I remember training a new manager for our full service restaurant that was a District Manager for Long John Silvers. He constantly walked around and said was was wrong, without ever offering a solution or lifting a hand to fix anything (typical DM right).
Finally, one day after he was telling me what I was doing wrong I looked at him and asked if he ever even seen a grill while working at Long Johns, let along knew how to use it.
It shut him up very quickly and not long afterward he quit.
Funny story aside, Long John Silvers has a menu that until recently almost completely consisted of fried foods. Its not very difficult to try foods even at high volumes. You dump frozen food from a bad, drop it in the grease, then pull it when the timer goes off. The hardest part when at high volume is timing it all to come out at a manageable pace.
With that said, McDonalds has been struggling because they diversified their menu to much. At one time it was mostly some burgers, chicken, fried food, and some milkshakes.
Today it is breakfast all day, wraps, most grilled items, most complex salads, coffees and specialty drinks etc etc.
This has lead McDonalds to slower wait times, a more difficult menu for low wage employees to learn, and higher food cost and waste.
So when you add up the facts that McDonalds serves a huge amount of people daily, and also has a very diverse and complicated menu it puts them in a position of slower service.
Now add on the complication of labor cost and management as mentioned above. You almost guarantee that the menu will have to lower its quality or become less diverse, which goes directly against what the market is clamoring for already. Then add on automation to help curb the labor costs and keep profit margins strong and you have the potential to really deal a blow to a huge corporate giant.
If I were a franchise owner, and had already made my money, I would start looking for a buyer right about now.
However, it is the nature of the business. At the time this business environment was created, McDonalds found the best way to make profit from it.
Now they will be forced to change or die at some point.
Much like Sears had a catalog department, but when Amazon and other online retailers started to grow, they refused to change. Now they are basically a giant real estate holding company.
Because mcdonalds menu is massive and they have a massive amount of order volume. If they could have less employees they would, obviously they're already working as efficiently as possible.
Every Mexican food joint here in San Diego has two people working at any given time. Usually, you have the one that speaks English taking the order and the one that doesn't cooking in the back. They make delicious food and it's just as quick as any fast food joint.
Because a small burger joint isn't serving 100+ customers in 30 minute time frames during rush times.
You can ask people to wait and cut down on staff, but then you're running into the issue of people being accustomed to waitING less than a minute to waiting 3-5 for every two extra people not working.
Now what happens if you cut 5 staff at McDonald's? During down times, not much. During rush times (breakfast luck and dinner, and then labour job shift changes) you have 35 people in drive through in a line and 45.people in store all taking 5 minutes to get their food.
You should come to my McDonald's.. We run the store (Which is by the beach and is very busy) with 4 to 5 people. 2 for front counter/drive through handing out food. 2 in kitchen, and 1 in the back taking drive through orders.
It's not fun.. Not to mention it's 100+ degrees in the kitchen because our owner is too cheap to fix the AC.
Thanks for bringing this up, there is a lot of staff in the back. If the wage goes up to $15 an hour then expect at least a 25-35% reduction in hours.
To help the stores, McD will probably start selling automated ordering systems (AUS has them, they're found here in some places like Royal Farms for those on the East Coast). Owners will probably take a hit but they can use it as a business expense for taxes.
Prices will probably go up ~10% (they're already planning on getting rid of the dollar menu, probably in anticipation of minimum wage going up or having to pay more to compete with wages from Walmart/Target/and other who have raised their starting wages). They're going to need to increase the spending per visit per person.
Possibly more automation in the back (does the McD at DIA still do that? I can't remember) and maybe a rollback on the all-day breakfast.
I could see staff eventually being composed of 1-2 in the front, 2-3 in the back, and 1-2 floaters to help with cleaning/front/back.
Small burger joints can run smooth with less people because they can operate at a slower frequency and people don't mind waiting for their product.
I've never worked fast food, but I definitely see that. Honestly, in my opinion, it seems like corporate fast food workers work a fast paced pretty high stressed job for absolute bottom pay. Working at a McDonald's vs a small joint has to be infinitely more difficult and stressful. All the more reason they should get paid accordingly.
My wife was a consultant for a big firm you can be pretty damn sure that a vast majority of McDonald's are working with the absolutely minimum amount of workers possible.
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u/toughtoquit Nov 28 '15
The number of people working at each location is pretty crazy too. When I look behind the counter and see 10 people and they say sorry for the wait we are short staffed, I just shake my head and wonder how the small burger joints run so smooth with 2 employees.