I came across this article a few years back when researching the earliest McDonald’s in NE Ohio. The article is a 1959 interview of one of the largest McDonald’s operators - Donald Coffey from Arlington Heights.
After he lists the enormous amounts of each ingredient and how they are prepared he goes on, “… it’s strictly a man’s world at McDonald’s where no female, regardless of her charms, is employed.”
"There are several reasons for this policy. The most important one is that, particularity in the summer month, the work is hard - much too hard for a girl. These boys are on their feet all day long and are constantly on the move. When their shift is over, even the toughest ones are tired.
Girl carhops are cute, but that’s the trouble. They lead to all kinds of problems. everybody tried to tell us that we’d be ‘dead’ without girl carhops, but we’re doing all right."
The reporter goes on, “Perhaps on the theory that the world’s best cook are men, McDonald’s is strictly a man’s world in the kitchen department too, without temper tantrums and tears - not even when the onions are peeled…”
It’s true. The original McDonald’s was in San Bernardino, California, and there were only males working there. Ray Kroc bought the whole concept, including male employees.
I remember the first chain stores when McDonald’s was starting it’s takeover of the world. The Golden Arches were featured in the building design, and the store was essentially a glass box, with the employees inside. Customers stood outside in the elents, to freeze or roast. And it was all guys inside!
I think I was in high school when the hiring barrier was broken, and women began working alongside the men.
Rosie married her old boyfriend shortly after he was demobbed. She got pregnant quickly, the first of four kids, and spent the rest of the 40s and all the 50s raising kids, volunteering with the PTA, and playing bridge with the other moms every Thursday afternoon.
It wasn’t until the late 60s that she burnt her bra and ran away to a free love commune.
As I recall reading somewhere, the reason for McDonald’s not hiring women in the early years was because burger stands back then had bad reputations as somewhere juvenile delinquents hung out hitting on the female carhops. McDonald’s wanted a pristine mainstream vibe so the middle class wouldn’t be scared away. No cute carhops, no horny teenagers getting into fights over them.
Look at those old movies about delinquents and most of them have a scene set in a burger joint with the hoods loitering and sneering and holding up Eisenhower’s America to ridicule. I can remember one where they killed a fat barkeep.
McDonalds was really no different than any other casual restaurant in this. Diners, cafes, drive-ins, and such mostly only hired women as wait staff. McDonalds had no wait staff; so no women.
This is the main issue: there were certain social standards 70 years ago , and most people were perfectly satisfied with them.
Today, it’s easy to look back in amazement, and wonder “how could they have been so discriminatory, so cruel, and so evil?” But remember —those folks were our own parents and grandparents.And they stood back and did nothing about it.
And our kids will find it easy to look back in amazement and say:" how could they have been so discriminatory, so cruel, so evil?"*
(evil, 70 years in the future, may be defined as: having social standards which most people were perfectly satisfied with: Making people slave away at hard work for bad pay,–while all the rest of society stood back and did nothing about it)
Times change, folks. That’s why we study history.
Be careful who you judge. You will become your own grandparents one day…
Forgive the bump, but I just wanted to point out something…
The idea that “women can’t be on their feet for eight hours or their uteri will tip” was disproven about ten years later by none other than Hugh Hefner and the women he hired as Bunnies. I read a book and watched a documentary (for real; not that short-lived TV show) about the Playboy Clubs, and I’m here to tell you, those ladies probably logged more miles walking around the clubs than McD’s workers did at the hamburger stands, not least because the clubs were bigger. Plus, the Bunnies had to work in three-inch heels! It’s like what people say now about Ginger Rogers: she did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.
I started reading the book expecting to hear a lot about harassment and crummy working conditions, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear that it was, by all accounts, a great place to work. First of all, to be eligible for hire, the women had to be college students or graduates. Hef wanted intelligent waitresses who could make conversation with guests. And there was no harassment: inappropriate behavior from a Keyholder would result in the loss of their key, and “inappropriate” covered a lot of actions and comments that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in the corporate world. A lot of Bunnies went on to much bigger and better things, and had fond memories of the Bunny years. So take that, Mr. Kroc and McDonald brothers. Did your tough-as-nails male workers smile when they handed over a burger and fries?
Actually, in the early 60s, Rosie and her slightly younger sister re-entered the workforce, even though married with children. One of the startling demographic changes of the 60s was married women going back to work, in part because inflation and new consumer goods and slowing of wages now meant families needed two incomes
I moved to Arlington Heights on June 12,1958 and was probably at Mr. Coffey’s store the next day. It was an open-air walkup, open eight months, for a couple more years. Criminy, I remember when he put a roof over the ordering windows. Coffey’s store was probably third or fourth in operation and I suspect it was a franchise.
What amused me was how Mac’s didn’t put stores in minority neighborhoods. That lasted into the mid-70s.
That’s what I read too. Just to put things a little more into perspective, the “carhops” they weren’t hiring and that had been typical at drive-in restaurants prior to them were basically a novelty or eye candy themselves. They were girls who typically wore roller skates and short dresses at a time when a properly dressed woman on the street wouldn’t show her knees. This concept didn’t mesh with McDonalds’ minimalist, efficient policy and their wish to cater to a squeaky-clean conservative ‘50s family crowd. Was their policy to hire only men sexist and stupid? From today’s more enlightened perspective, absolutely. From the perspective of the time, it was nothing unusual. It can seem shocking today to learn some of what went on regularly in society only 50 or 60 years ago. A LOT of progress has been made since the book “The Feminine Mystique” kicked off second-wave feminism in 1963. To show you just how far we’ve come, just look at this horrendously sexist ad about Eastern Airlines’ high standards for stewardesses - which dates to as recently as 1967. As chappachula said:
The casual sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. of the past certainly should be judged and condemned for what it is. OTOH, we need to realize that society only became more enlightened about some of these issues well within living memory and in the past, these stories you hear reflect what was normal in society. In the 50s, there were already some women who had successful careers in traditionally “male” fields, but they were relatively few and far between. A lot of people simply saw women’s work as a temporary thing meant to pay the bills until you got married and were supported by your husband, even though that didn’t reflect the reality in all cases. I would strongly suggest doing a search for the SD forums thread “In the dustbin of our cultural history” for tons of examples of the sexist and otherwise arcane things that people used to experience even within SD posters’ memory. I myself would not want to be alive as a human being anytime before the year 1968.
BTW, here’s another example of sexist employment practices. In the 1950s and 1960s, flight attendants (or stewardesses to use the gendered term) were almost exclusively women. This was still the “golden age of aviation” and being a pilot or a stewardess was considered a very glamorous job. But if you wanted to be a stewardess, certainly in the United States there was a high price to pay. Young women wanting this job were held to very high standards as to their looks, job skills, grooming and deportment, etc. Perhaps the highest standards were at Pan American World Airways, which at the time had the role of ambasador airline for the United States. Among the requirements (which were likely not much different at various other airlines) were that you left the airline at 25 or some such young age, that you were unmarried (I believe divorced and widowed was acceptable) and that you had no children. I don’t know if this included a widow with children, but it certainly meant that you had no children out of wedlock. That’s how prudish they were. I read about a case (I’m fairly sure it was at Pan Am though I would have to check, my memory could be failing me on this point) where a single mother managed to get away with working as a stewardess for three years before this was discovered (I wonder how - did they spy on their employees?) and they gave her the choice of either quitting or putting the child up for adoption! This example should serve as a lesson to those who think the 1950s had superior morality compared today. It wasn’t so much about being moral as about keeping up appearances. Asking someone to give their child up for adoption in order to continue their employment isn’t moral. It’s satanic!
McDonald’s was well known to use demographics to plan their locations. They needed a certain population density and traffic pattern before they approved a location. Wouldn’t surprise me that race was secretly considered.
The inside story back then was that Micky Dee would spend the money for a study and Burger King would wait until a McDonald’s was established and build nearby. BK was seldom the first fast food restaurant in an area.
That doesn’t seem to be the case with the restaurant in question:
“Girl carhops are cute, but that’s the trouble. They lead to all kinds of problems. everybody tried to tell us that we’d be ‘dead’ without girl carhops, but we’re doing all right.”
And yet it was? McDonald’s was competing with Drive In restaurants, the somewhat ubiquitous 1940s and 1950s equivalent of today’s drive thru fast food places. Except you didn’t drive thru, you parked, and waited a long ass time for your food. McDonald’s didn’t have car hops as Elmer said, and at typical Drive Ins the only employees who were women were car hops. McDonald’s early on didn’t do Drive In or Drive Thru, it only did walk up. As was mentioned upthread the stores were glass boxes, you parked, and stood in line. The thing that made them famous is even huge lines would churn through customers in a couple minutes, then you took your food away and ate elsewhere (in your car, at home, a nearby bench etc.)
