Every life lesson learnt working a part time job at the McDonald’s grill

Jeff Bezos, James Franco, Seal. All have flipped burgers in the hallowed McDonald’s kitchen. Most who work there, though, leave with little more than the minimum wage, burnt knuckles, and a few valuable lessons.

DON’T YOU DARE LOSE YOUR BADGE

Name: Oli

Stars: QSVX, GAYE

Occupation: Crew Trainer

Experience: Four years

‘I THOUGHT THIS WAS MEANT TO BE CALLED FAST FOOD’

Yeah it is, do you know why? Because we can make four double cheeseburgers faster than you can fry one side of a steak. The fact it’s taken four minutes to make your Big Mac, no lettuce, no onion, extra cheese with ketchup instead of Big Mac sauce is not relatively slow or, in fact, unreasonable when you consider our batch production methods.

DEVELOPING A DEEP-SEATED HATRED OF CHILDREN

There are only so many times a person can be expected to peel pickle off a wall before they crack and burn the whole damn joint to the ground. Who will make your tap waters with ice then?

YES, SOMETIMES WE DO BAD THINGS TO YOUR FOOD

Sometimes you (humble customer) can be pretty awful to us and sometimes we spat in your food – among other things. It happened, you deserved it, let’s move on.

THE CAP HAIR NET COMBO

It didn’t look good on anyone.

AFTER TWO MONTHS THE FREE FOOD ISN’T THAT GREAT ANYMORE

Having unlimited access to the McDonald’s menu in its entirety is great for the first two months. But even after every iteration and mixture of all the different ingredients you will eventually cease to enjoy eating it. The last thing you want to do after making Big Macs for four hours is eat a Big Mac. Regardless, it’s still pretty sweet to give £20 of assorted beef and chicken to your mates when they pop in to see you.

‘I’M SORRY MADAM, BUT EXTRA SAUCE WILL COST 5P’

Each product has its own dip allocation. For instance, a portion of fries receives one dip of your choice and it’s the same for six nuggets. Or if you’re a big boy and go for 20 you can have four. That’s fine, ask away. It becomes annoying, though, when we’re serving a different customer and you interrupt to ask for the dips you declined earlier.

HEELS AND CROWNS

I’d like to have a very frank conversation with whoever thought that “tops” and “bottoms” were unsuitable names for the top and bottom halves of a bun to save any new starter spending their first three days on the grill expecting some kind of bread based coronation.

YOU CAN FIT MORE THAN 8 REGS ON ONE SIDE OF A TWO PLATEN GRILL AND NO ONE CAN STOP YOU (OTHER THAN THE FOOD HYGIENE AND STANDARDS AUTHORITY)

Cheese on 12?

THE ABSOLUTE LEGENDS WHO WALK THE DRIVE-THRU PRETENDING TO BE A CAR

You’re not even the first person to try and do that tonight guys, and no, we’re not serving you.

YOU WILL GET BURNS AND THEY WILL HURT

Of course your hand will hurt when it comes into contact with a piece of metal designed to cook eight 33g pieces of beef in 44 seconds.

BUT THE FILET BUN STEAMER DEALS IN A SPECIAL KIND OF PAIN

Thankfully it’s so unusual for someone to order a Filet-o-Fish that having to tackle the bun steamer only happens a few times a shift but MY GOD don’t touch anything other than the handle if you enjoy not feeling the heat of a thousand suns in between your fingers.

AS DOES THE CHUNKY PIPE IN THE BACK OF THE TAYLOR SHAKE MACHINE

It acts as an incredibly effective cosh/cane when swung toward the back of a knee.

DEHYDRATED ONIONS AND THEIR IRREMOVABLE STENCH ON YOUR FINGERS

Some lucky people go through their entire life without coming across dehydrated onions. Unfortunately for us it took three whole days to leave your nail bed and cuticles even with the most determined scrubbing.

‘SO MY COUSIN’S, FRIEND’S, SISTER’S MATE WAS SERVING COFFEE AT A TOP SECRET INDUSTRY SUMMIT, AND ONE OF THE CEOs THERE SAID MACCY’S’ BURGERS ARE SUPPLIED BY A COMPANY CALLED 100% BEEF, SO THAT THEY CAN LEGALLY SAY THEY ARE MADE OF 100% BEEF WHEN IN ACTUAL FACT THEY ARE MADE OF RAT/DEAD BABIES’

Yeah, and there’s a guy in the back called Big Tony who cums in every single one of the mayo bottles, and the shake machine, each morning too.  That’s an actual thing.  Honest.

CROSS CONTAMINATION

Over the course of your three week probation you were led to believe cross contamination was the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. Coincidentally, it was also an acceptable answer to every single SOC question you were ever asked. If in doubt, say cross contamination. In reality you were far more concerned about the queue to the door and “OH MY FUCK WHY AREN’T THERE ANY FRIES DOWN.”

THE DIVE

AND THE ONLY THING WORSE WAS CLEANING THE COMPACTER

If you think about it, its job is to concentrate all of the horrible rubbish into one smaller more horrible piece of rubbish. So it stands to reason that cleaning it out will be pretty horrible.

OR MAYBE THE SUNDAY DIVE

OR MAYBE THE PULLING

Where the cleaning task is so abhorrent you need a chisel and bin the four once new now unusable scratch pads cast aside in the process.

‘THE DIRTIEST THING IN THIS BUILDING IS THE CUSTOMERS’ MONEY, DO NOT HANDLE FOOD PRODUCTS IF YOU HAVE TENDERED CASH’

Well either that or the disabled toilet/smack shack the local homeless guy was shooting up in last close.

CLEANING THE TOILETS REALLY WAS THE WORST THING EVER

The lobby hosts are paid more for this reason, they’re meant to deal with this. I’m hungover, please, please no.

‘WE STOP SERVING BREAKFAST AT 10.30AM, SIR’

I’m very sorry, we’ve changed over now and I can’t change that.

IF YOU LOSE ANY OF THE COFFEE MACHINE PARTS DURING A DETAIL CLEAN, IT’S BAD

How can a macaroni sized tube cost that much money?

IT’S EASY TO TELL WHO IS A GAPBUSTER

A lone 30-something male orders a “medium quarter pounder with cheese meal to eat in” between 12 and 2pm. If you don’t ask the man whether he would like a receipt then, well, what are you doing here? The crew bash fund has been dangerously low since Jake was let loose on the sambuca in Moo Moo’s and I’m not up for settling with bowling again next month.

YOU MAKE BEST FRIENDS FOREVER

There’s a really high turnover of staff at McDo, it’s not for everyone. What that means, is that anyone who hangs in there very quickly becomes a part of a tight-knit group of friends. You work hard for each other, and that makes it bearable.

‘WHY DOES MY APPLE PIE NOT HAVE A STICKER ON IT?!’

Yes I know that you know they’re only meant to be hot held for an hour but they taste the same after six so what do you want me to do?

SEEING SOMEONE STACK IT ON A FRESHLY MOPPED FLOOR

Stop complaining about the lack of wet floor signs, there’s one on the side of the mop bucket and we’re out of dry mop heads, just buy the Shoes 4 Crews mate, your old winkle-pickers from Year 12 don’t cut it anymore.

THEN REWATCHING IT ON GLORIOUS 1 FPS CCTV

It’s so much more satisfying in reverse slow motion.

THE OPEN/CLOSE

Every crew has a few staff who will pull off the utterly unthinkable and rock the open/close which, although obviously dependent on a restaurant’s opening hours, typically lasted for around 20 hours. How did things get so bad that someone is being asked to run a marathon with nothing more than bacon nuggets and an extra 15 minutes of break as fuel?

‘I’M ALLERGIC TO GHERKINS’

1. Good job they’re dill pickles.
2. They’re in Bic Mac sauce too, but I don’t suppose you had a reaction the last three times you fucking ate it.

MONOPOLY

How long is my notice period again?