Ask the fast food manager!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

shep proudfoot

  1. Are you going to stay in the fast food business? You could make regional manager, which is a good position actually.
    I’m probably staying in the food business, but hopefully not in the hands on store stuff. FRom my assistant manager position, I can go up to General Manager, then District Manager, then to the corporate office side of things. Humana resources, training, operations, etc. All very well paid, and very respectable jobs.

  2. Are you going to college? Probably important if you want that regional job.
    Wendy’s does 90% tuition reimbursement, so I’ll most definitely take advantage of that. I have another 6 months until I’m eligible though

  3. What is your turnover at your store? Is your store owned by the children of Dave Thomas (God rest his soul) or a local person?
    I want to say it’s like 10%. The same employees have been there since 1998…it’s the oldest crew in the district, by far. We’re a coporate store, so I’m assuming indirectly we’re owned by the children of Dave Thomas

  4. What do you eat?
    junior bacon cheeseburger, plain, and a 5 piece nugget. everyone tells me I don’t eat enough, but after smelling the food for 10 hours a day, I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything else

  5. Do your employees like or fear you?
    they adore me. seriously, they really do. i think in 5 years, i’ve had maybe 1 employee who didn’t like me, and he was dating my sister. and i’m the least threatening person you’ll ever meet…in my whole life, NO ONE has ever been afraid of me.

22

Lorenzo, I’m working as fast as I can!!! :slight_smile:

23

Closest thing I ever saw involved a much-reviled Burger King shift manager named Tom. He always ordered the same thing on his lunch break and he foolishly allowed his own crew people to prepare it. His lunch preference was a bizarre concoction, something like a Ham and Cheese sandwich with no cheese but extra pickles and onions or some such.

Eventually Tom graduated from Junior College and quit Burger King when he went away to university. Six months or so later during a “spring break” type of week an order came over the loudspeaker for a Ham and Cheese sandwich with no cheese but extra pickles and onions. The sandwich was prepared as requested, but a very unfriendly suggestion was written inside the sandwich box in red wax pen in ALL CAPS BOLD LETTERS

Lamentably, Tom was nowhere near the store at the time and the customer who actually had ordered the sandwich took exception to the message inscribed inside his chicken sandwich box. Unfortunately, at the time the kitchen was in full-tilt, three man shorthanded slide-deployment mode and the perpetrator was never brought to justice.

24

Yeah right. You’re going to post that and just get away clean without another word? Elaborate, please.

25

:wink:

26

Well know you should know these off the top of your head (no fair peaking in the manual):

  1. What is the temperature of the chili supposed to be?
  2. What is the temp of the coffee?
  3. What size is the lettuce on a sandwich?
  4. How many pickles on a sandwich?
  5. Who was Wendy’s named for?
  6. What city is “Home” to Wendy’s?
  7. Have you ever uttered the phrase “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean”?

My God, I worked at Wendy’s in NE Indiana, NW Ohio, SE Michigan for SIX years as a store manager. I have Wendy’s nightmares still after leaving there 15 years ago.

I did spit in someone’s pop once at the drive thru. I was the manager at the time and the guy was being a REAL ASSHOLE. The girl working the counter looked at me-looked at the pop-picked it up and threw it out. Never said a word. I wouldn’t have really served it…maybe.

27

Do you have to mark that on the little sheet?

28

It was a book, FWIW.

29

Thanks for answering my question, y’all. I had Captain D’s tonight, and felt safe eating it. :slight_smile:

30

A couple of questions/comments, but first of all, thanks for the thread. I thought it was going to be lame, but it’s actually quite entertaining, and I’m really hoping for a follow-up on the men’s room story.

  1. Is it true that at Wendy’s, the meat in the chili is actually hamburger patties that sat too long on the grill?

  2. This is kind of a complaint/question. I am a father of two. I’ve discussed this with many other parents who agree wholeheartedly. WHY don’t fast food joints make the burgers in kids meals PLAIN normally, and add condiments on request? 99% of kids eat theirs plain, some might like catsup or mustard, I’ve yet to meet a small child that will eat pickles on a hamburger. Do you have any idea how infuriating it is to have a long day at work, decide to skip cooking and go for fast food, and get home to find out that the guy gave you a burger with everything for your kid, even when you said PLAIN TWICE in a nice firm tone!?!?! (sorry, nothing personal, got a little carried away there)

  3. By the way, how’d the men’s room thing happen?

  4. I wanna compliment Wendy’s on the design of their counter. BK and McD’s have the counter where the food sits behind the people on that ledge. I know what I ordered. I have nothing better to do while I wait, so I watch them assemble my order. I know when everything is in the bag. There is (almost, see above) nothing more infuriating than being able to SEE your food and knowing it’s all there, and not being able to reach it. I hate when they finish assembling it, then get called away for something, and my food is right there but I can’t get it, so I waste 5 min. of my life waiting for them to come back and hand it to me! Ahhhhhgggghhhh!

  5. Why don’t they take credit cards, like at the grocery store?

31

EEk!! I didn’t know there was going to be a test!!!

  1. 165+. As a general rule, we don’t serve it until it’s 180 minimum, just to be safe
  2. At McD’s, it was 190. I honestly have no idea for Wendy’s…
  3. big enough to cover the 4 inch diameter bun.
  4. 2 on a junior, 4 on a single.
  5. Dave Thomas’s youngest daughter Melinda
  6. some city in Ohio…Dublin?
  7. only at McDonalds…
32

Metelhead:

  1. Is it true that at Wendy’s, the meat in the chili is actually hamburger patties that sat too long on the grill?
    -Yes. As the meat sits too long, it dries out, and isn’t really suited for sandwiches anymore. It becomes “chili meat”…it’s removed from the grill, and put in a heated cabinet and kept at 180 degrees. After the pan in the cabinet gets full, it’s taken to the sink, de-greased (sprayed with water and drained), and put into a big ziploc bag. It’s weighed, verified, and frozen. When it’s time to prepare the chili, it’s taken out of the freezer, boiled for 10 minutes, and drained. It is then chopped into tiny pieces, and added to the chili pot. If we weren’t using old hanmburgers, we’d be cooking up fresh ground beef to overcook. By using the extra from the grill, we’re also making sure we’re serving higher quality food…if we were throwing out the excess, a lot of sandwiches would be going out with overcooked meat…

  2. WHY don’t fast food joints make the burgers in kids meals PLAIN normally, and add condiments on request?
    -Not definite on this one, but I’d assume it’s just because it’s an extra question they’d have to ask, or more buttons to push. When I worked at the burger place in Weston, all sandwiches were plain by default, and even when we asked, customers were always caught offguard, and it took longer to order. Or we’d forget to ask, and they’d bring it back, pissed at their lack of condiments

  3. By the way, how’d the men’s room thing happen?
    -sigh I knew that one was going to catch people’s attention…the chance I take, I spose. When I was 17, I was going through my slutty phase…truth be told, it was 17-19, but that’s besides the point. So I was working one night, and this guy came in, about 20, and really hot. We were flirting back and forth, and he gave me his number. After my shift, I went into the bathroom to change, and he was walking out of the men’s room as I walked out of the ladie’s room. We made eye contact, and he motioned for me to follow him. So he pulled me into the handicppeed stall of the men’s room, we started kissing, and I ended up giving him a blowjob. We finished up, I left, and we never saw each other again.

  4. There is (almost, see above) nothing more infuriating than being able to SEE your food and knowing it’s all there, and not being able to reach it. I hate when they finish assembling it, then get called away for something, and my food is right there but I can’t get it, so I waste 5 min. of my life waiting for them to come back and hand it to me! Ahhhhhgggghhhh!
    -Yeah, that is pretty annoying when you know your food’s ready, but it’s just sitting there. Such a tease…

  5. Why don’t they take credit cards, like at the grocery store?
    -As of this week, all the New England stores accept credit cards. I’m not sure if it’s going national or not, but give it time, and I’m sure it’ll catch up sooner or later

33

sigh I knew my lame bathroom story would scare everyone away…

34

I was going to ask which Wendy’s you worked at (I had lunch at a Boston-area Wendy’s just today, and I’m curious if it was the same one), but to ask that right after the bathroom story might make it seem either joking or creepy.

My point is: I had a question written down, but I don’t think it’s gonna get an answer. I’ll come back later when I think another one up.

35

You didn’t scare me away, I’m just glad employees aren’t having sex on my Fillet O’ Fish. :slight_smile:

36

“If you can lean, you can clean.” At the end of an eight or nine hour shift, especially if I hadn’t gotten a break for seven hours, that started to have the ring of “Arbeit macht frei.”

And McDonald’s coffee pots? Not unbreakable. We actually had a swing manager in our store with the appellation “Coffee Pot Killah,” since he took out a coffee pot every week on average.

Lorenzo, the cashiers (or whoever) should be brewing fresh coffee regularly, especially at peak times. Unfortunately, some people just never grasp the concept. In my store, at least, it was because the coffee machine was all the way over on the far side of the lobby, for some reason.

I would not recommend bothering with McDonald’s decaf coffee after the store has been open for an hour or two. Most days, we could make it from 7 a.m. to 4:30 or later on one pot of decaf, since so few people ever wanted it.

Also, if you ever swing through and order a lot of coffee, say, 6 16-ozs, you may find that each packs a little less caffeinated jolt than one might anticipate. Nothing personal from the drive-through guy, but if you have enough regular coffee for 5 16-oz’s and a full pot of decaf that’s been sitting there all day… well…

37

I actually work in Peabody, not far from Boston. And it’s not creepy until you show up waiting outside the mens’ room for me :slight_smile:

38

Just in general, how hard would you say most of your employees work? Very hard, or do they slack off a lot?

How much training is involved for a new crew member?

39

How hard vs Slacking depended a lot on the manager and the time. When I was working for McDonalds back in the eighties, my store would have up to 11 managers , 5 would be salary and 6 would be various levels of hourly.

McDonalds would have various times that you would go all out busy in a rush, you literally do not have time to slack. While we did have some people that would be jaybirds , usually within the space of a shift , they would be exploring career options.

Most of the time , depending on the station that you worked , you would look at the clock at about 11;30 am and the lunch hour would be just starting. The next thing you knew you were looking at the clock and it was 1;30 .

As for how long it takes to train a crew person , is up to the person themselves. I have seen some crew people take to it like fish to water ,and others walk right out in the middle of a shift.

On average about 7 shifts before you have pretty much seen everything depending on what station they start on. When you are ready to move up , the time it takes to get aquainted with your new job and get good at it , grows smaller.

Generally you tended to move laterally , so a lobby boy would move into kitchen, on the reg station ,either handling prep and buns , or grill. Then move on to the quarter grill and what ever promotional sandwich is on at that time.

Once you have mastered the kitchen , you would be moved on to various shifts , either dinner , pre-close or close. Then its on to breakfast which is its own little bubble of fun , work wise. After that it depended on the crew persons own sense of ambition within the organization.
One thing about McDonalds that I will take everywhere i go , was that you will or have worked with every kind of Boss that you will ever meet in the rest of your life,and how to deal with them. Education in itself.

Declan

40

I hope the credit card thing catches on. Right now, the only fast food down here that takes plastic is KFC, and I’m pretty sure that’s just because it’s so fuckin’ expensive that’s the only way some people can afford it.

Thanks for the answers!