Young Women Tell Us What It’s *Really* Like Working In McDonalds

Working in the fast food industry is hard. Not only are you subject to minimum wage, that God awful grease smell and demanding customers, you’re also the butt of everyone’s 'do well in school or you’ll end up working at McDonalds!' jokes.

Contrary to popular belief, working at McDonald’s doesn’t mean your hopeless or academically inept. Many of my fabulous, smart, high achieving friends worked at fast food restaurants during their school years. The employer itself claims to be fantastic, filled with progress opportunities and benefits. But if Septembers pay strike is anything to go by, employees don’t agree. Yesterday, it was announced that the strike, which was the first in the company’s history in the UK, was successful.

Employees will now receive an above-inflation pay rise, with staff aged over 25 being paid between £8-10 per hour from 22nd January. Younger staff are also supposed to receive boosts. It may not sound like much of an increase from the £7.50 minimum wage already in place, but according to Steve Day, a McDonald’s worker, ‘it’s the biggest pay rise McDonalds workers have had in ten years’.

Of course, with a chief executive who earns $15.4m a year, workers aren’t stopping at the one strike. Steve told The Independent, ‘We know McDonald’s can afford to pay the living wage and what we’ve done with such a small amount of people going on strike shows what it’s possible to achieve,

‘We’re already taking more action, talking to McDonald's workers up and on the country.’

It’s not just the abysmal pay that has workers threatening to leave, the company has come under fire for how different stores treat their employees. According to Emma Lewis, who worked across three different stores, how your treated greatly depends on where you’re working.

‘I absolutely loved working at the Dublin company, I would’ve make a career of it if I could stay there but the UK stores are different. McDonalds are famous for making people take their breaks early, I would go into work at 4am and take my break at 6am then work non-stop till 2pm. So, you would go 8-9 hours without a break sometimes’

That was the most common complaint amongst former employees. Lucy Aspinall, who worked in a Liverpool store, said ‘Sometimes I would work 10 hour shifts without a break, I’d literally walk in the door and they’d put me on my break’.

Could you not just refuse? Not according to Jaya Bhavnani, who also worked at store in Liverpool, ‘No chance you could say no, they would just make you take it whenever it was quiet’. And for the few that did refuse the bad treatment, your entire future could be at risk. ‘If you disagreed you would have that burden on you were you would always get lumbered with the worst jobs. It was one of those environments where there was a lot of blackmail.’

Not only could you not complain about the seemingly illegal break policy, but Emma also was made to stay after her shift ended constantly even after telling her manager she had to pick her daughter up from school

‘If you were on tills they had to come and cash you out, but if it was busy it would take up to 30 minutes so instead of taking you off tills half an hour before your shift ended, you would work until the end and then have to stay for another half an hour to be cashed out. One time in particular I kept saying to my manager 'look I need to go' and she went 'why are you giving me attitude?'

Beyond the bad pay and bad management? Sexual harassment, unhygienic kitchens and terrible customers…

‘On my first day, my manager took me to show me the basement and felt me up and asked for my number. I complained and was told he had a few complaints against him and that he’d be spoken to, but he carried on working there and I’m pretty sure nothing came of it.’, says Lucy.

She was even made to catch a mouse loose in the girls’ toilet with just a bin bag, ‘I had to chase it round till I got in in this bin bag and then put it in the bin in the basement, there was no system in place for that stuff so the mouse most likely just got crushed when the bins were taken out, it was horrible. There was also a time when the sewers burst in the kitchen and they made all the staff wear wellies instead of shutting it down’.

Then there’s the instances of terrible customers that any of us who’ve worked in customer service will wince at…

‘Because it’s fast food customers expect things within 5 seconds and then rage at you when you obviously can’t do that’, Jaya tells me. According to her, that’s just a day-to-day occurrence, but Lucy’s most memorable moment?

‘Once some teenagers dropped a McFlurry from the top of the stairs onto one of the customer service team, he was just a lovely old man and there was no basis for it, but that’s the type of customers you have to deal with daily. I’d be closing up upstairs and they’d just come and move all the chairs and climb over the signs to sit down, I don’t think I was closing’.

Of course, there are some good experiences (you would bloody hope…).

George Fairhall, who worked in a Burgess Hill store, had a great experience. She only wishes the McDonalds worker wasn’t stereotyped so much, ‘the worst thing about working there was the reputation. I really didn’t mind myself but there is a negative perception around working in McDonalds. It’s a job at the end of the day and can actually offer a great platform for some workers.’ But in general, her story is positive, ‘For me my experience was pretty good, but talking with other people that have worked at different branches in the past, it definitely varies. City centre McDonald’s seem to be managed a lot worse.’

Jaya agrees that she had some good experiences, mostly because of the other employees, ‘the other staff were always a big mix of different ages, background and there was always loads of people on in my store so the team dynamic was good’, although that sounds like another store dependent aspect if Emma’s comments are anything to go by, ‘in one store I worked at the manager would always have as little labour as possible to save money, sometimes he would only have one person on in the kitchen and then scream why food wasn’t coming out fast enough’.

So, what can we gather from all of this dreary information? Basically, if you starting work at McDonalds, it’s a post code lottery.

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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.