One of my favorite jobs was working the overnight shift at Hardees. It was a small crew, and we had the best time. The food was terrific, and we had a swarm of policemen, firemen and ambulance crews there all night because anyone on duty ate free. Safest job I ever had - much safer than the night audit job that followed.
I never worked carting at a grocery, but I will do the same thing. I’ll get my exercise any way I can.
In college I worked at a small pizza chain and in the produce department of a grocery store. Management was great about working around my schedule at a time when my availability changed every semester. The pay was so-so. Delivering pizzas could easily bring in $10/hr with tips. Grocery store was a respected organization that treated the employees right and the physical aspect was good, in that it was about the only way I was able to get regular exercise at the time. I made a lot of good friends and the aspects of basic hard work was reinforced, including the value of politeness and showing up on time.
Now-a-days I still work in restaurants every day, but as a health inspector. I often end up chatting with the employees and it seems many of them are in the same situation I was, so I always do something to congratulate them for their work ethic and encourage them along to let them know that it’s gonna be worth it.
I worked at McDonalds part time when I was a teenager and thought it was the best fun ever. There were a lot of kids my age and I didn’t even need the money.
I worked at McDonalds full time when I was an adult and thought it was pretty hard work for such a small check. It motivated my lazy butt back to school.
I think it’s a great job to teach someone about working with all kinds of people. I would be delighted to have my kids work there for a while.
I work at Mcdonalds currently and I would say its alright. The good is that they give me 35-40 hrs a week where at a different place like retail or a grocery store they wouldn’t give me. I am constantly busy doing something, there is never any downtime which gives good exercise and makes time pass by quickly. Ive made a lot of friends from Mcdonalds because everyone is around the same age including the managers. I don’t recommend working at fast food unless you need money.
The bad is that every shift is horrible because there is no 9 to 5, its more like 1130 to 8 which consumes the entire day. At my mcdonalds we are not allowed to have any overtime so there is only so much you can make at minimum wage. I get one break per 9 hr shift and it’s usually within the first 3 hrs. Every other person who works at mcdonalds besides a few dont care about their job so I end up doing most of the work. Basically everyones treated like slave labor at least that’s what it feels like. But what it has taught me is that work is demanding, its not a walk in the park. I have definitely learned to be more respectful to other people who work in fast food because its not as easy as it looks.
I did as a teenager. It was fun for the most part. But with some exceptions, the adults in non-management positions in those places seemed a little on the sad side, or downright creepy.
I was fortunate to work for a caring, sweet-hearted, but hard-assed lady at a Dairy Queen. She was all about having fun at work, and keeping every one happy, but she ran a tight ship and made sure everyone did their job properly. She was a role model for me, and I tried to work as hard as she did. I like to think that I was better at the drive-thru then she was, but she could run circles around me in the kitchen.
She gave me a shot at Supervisor, and I did very well in that role. The assistant manager hated me, but my boss went to bat for me twice when she set me up for failure: I destroyed the condenser coils of an iced-up freezer by chipping the ice away with a screw driver, as the asst. manager told me to do, and she got blamed for it. Then, the assistant manager gave me a “write-up” for not working orders on my break… Considering how crappy she treated me, I gave notice to quit. When my boss heard the whole story, she tore that write-up into pieces! a few months later, they fired that assistant manager.
When My boss took control of the owner’s other dairy queen in town, she moved me over there as her secret agent. Ok, it wasn’t really that glamorous, she just trusted my work ethics and values, and hoped I would rub off on the miscreants that ran that place. The assistant manager over there was fired within a week for drinking on the job. His number-two and I were promoted to co-assistant managers, and she lasted a month before being fired for theft. Then, I ran the place for about a year, and we weeded out the bad seeds and replaced them with responsible employees.
I worked at those two Dairy Queens for a combined 3 and a half years, and I value all the experience I gained. I learned basic skills that applied to every other job I’ve held.
There were some good memories too…
The cool supervisor, who could put his index finger behind his eyeball, got drenched in chocolate soft serve mix when he took apart the mix pump without releasing the pressure… He waddled out of the walk-in completely chocolate-ice-cream-colored. He had to go home to shower, and when he got back, we were all still laughing.
One of my high school buddies, who also worked there, and I tried baking the little bits of cookie dough for the cookie dough blizzards into little chocolate chip cookies, but we didn’t have an oven, so we used the conveyor-belt-burger grill. That was a disaster. You can’t grill cookie dough.
Large Butterscotch Dipped Cones… Any large dipped cone had a good chance of falling SPLAT on the floor when you turned it back over, or worse, falling into the bucket of hot waxy dip, and making a colossal mess… but the butterscotch dip was notorious for failures. Double-dipped large butterscotch cones were like landmines that someone had to jump on. You were a hero if you pulled one off successfully, on the first try.
I’m reminded of the guy who thought he’d see what would happen if you deep-fried a $5 bill. It disintegrated with a little pop. And that was back when $5 was really worth $5 too.