Fast Food Diaries Part 3: The Real Gold Behind the Golden Arches

    For the past 3 months, I’ve worked at McDonald’s. I’ve woken up at 3 a.m. 3 days a week to take orders and make parfaits, coming home so tired I’d dream about working cash registers. It’s a tedious job, the sort that requires more presence of body than presence of mind, but there was one thing that made those slow, stagnant hours a little less terrible: the people.
  
   Over the past 3 months, I’ve been privileged to meet an amazing group of people, folks who work longer and fight harder than anyone I have ever known. I’ve listened to life stories, discussed politics, looked at baby pictures, and laughed at countless jokes. There were a lot of things I hated about my McJob, but I’m extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to work alongside these people and learn the lessons they had to teach me. Before I worked at McDonald’s, I didn’t know what hard work looked like, but I have witnessed sheer, dogged diligence week in and week out for months now, and it has taught me what it means to work for a living.

    I’ve been going to McDonald’s since I was a little girl, but the past 3 months have introduced me to a different side of the golden arches, the side where real people work real hard for a company that barely pays them enough to support their families. I’ve always known that fast food companies get rich off cheap food and cheap labor, but it took living it to see just how staunch the paradox is.

    Fast food is one of the lowest paid of all occupations, with a median salary of $18,564 per year from 2009 to 2011, compared to the U.S. average of $42,110. The average hourly pay of a McDonald’s employee is about $7.73 an hour, according to self-reported salary cite GlassDoor.com, which is significantly less than the $8.90 median pay per hour of all fast food workers.
  
   In contrast, the previous CEO of McDonald’s, John Skinner, earned $8.75 million in 2013, or about $9,247 an hour.^1 In other words, it would take the average McDonald’s employee about a million hours of labor, or more than a hundred years on the clock, to earn what Skinner makes in a year, and the gap is only widening.
  
   According to data compiled by Bloomberg, the pay gap between McDonald’s workers and their CEO’s has doubled in the past 10 years. Twenty years ago, the CEO earned 230 times the salary of a full-time worker paid the federal minimum wage, today, that gap has ballooned to 580 times the average full-time salary.
  
   While the rest of the economy suffered from the recession of 2008, the fast food industry profited. McDonald’s reported higher sales in 2008 than in 2006 or 2007. While the U.S. employment rate dropped 1.3 percent from 2009 to 2011, fast-food employment jumped 7.3 percent, but it’s the shareholders, not the workers, who are benefiting from this growth. In 2011, McDonald’s spent $6 billion on share repurchases and dividends, enough to increase the salary of every McDonald’s restaurant worker by $14,286.
  
   Did you read that right? McDonald’s has the power to increase the salary of every one of its restaurant employees by $14,000, and yet it chooses not to. Instead, McDonald’s spends thousands of dollars on lobbying against minimum wage increases at the state and local level. McDonald’s is not a small business. It has the power and the capital to improve the lives of its employees, and yet the McResource phone hotline advises employees to apply for food stamps.

    It took 3 months of working 2 minimum wage jobs to show me what it really means to work, but it also makes me wonder, why do some have to work so hard to support themselves, while others barely work at all?  Why does it take the average McDonald’s employee 4 months of working overtime to earn what the CEO makes in an hour? Why does McDonald’s have operating locations in approximately 118 nations around the world, and yet the average hourly pay of a McDonald’s employee is less than $8 an hour? Why did McDonald’s open nearly 600 new stores during the recession of 2008, and yet the McResource website advises employees to “quit complaining," because "stress levels increase by 15 percent after 10 minutes of complaining."^2 Why, in the self-proclaimed “land of opportunity,” are so many smart, hardworking people making less than $20,000 a year? How is this even possible? How can anyone in this ridiculously wealthy nation work 40+ hours a week and still struggle to feed their family? We live in an age of convenience, where fast, cheap food is considered an unalienable right, but it’s time to consider the real price of that Big Mac. It’s easy to forget, but there are real people behind those golden arches and real stories behind those smiles, and they deserve better than this.

Footnotes

1. Analysis is based on John Skinner and not the current McDonald’s CEO, Donald Thompson, because full data on Thompson’s salary has not been made publicly available. 

2. Amidst public criticism, McDonald’s shut down the McResource website in December, 2013.

 Sources

Berman, Jillian (10 December 2013). "It takes a McDonald's worker 4 months to earn what the CEO gets in an hour." The Huffington Post. Retrieved 26 June 2014.  

Kim, Susanna (21 November 2013). "McDonald's defends telling employees to 'Quit Complaining' to reduce stress." ABC News. Retrieved 26 June 2014.

Neuman, Scott (26 December 2013). "McDonald's shuts down website that told workers to avoid fast food." NPR. Retrieved 26 June 2014.

Patton, Leslie (11 December 2012). "McDonald's $8.25 man and $8.75 million CEO shows pay gap." Bloomberg. Retrieved 26 June 2014.  

Taylor, Marisa (25 October 2013). "McDonald's advises employee to apply for food stamps." america.aljazeera.com. Al Jazeera America, LLC. Retrieved 26 June 2014.

Fast Food Diaries Part 2: Drive-thru Personalities

   This video in inspired by my experiences working the drive-thru at McDonald's. I met every one of these personalities over my 3 months in fast food, and although this video is a highly exaggerated re-telling of my encounters, these people really do exist. In fact, I know I've been guilty of these bad drive-thru habits from time to time, and no doubt so have you. Then again, that's what makes it so darn funny.

   Hats off to my brother and sister, who can add being absolutely hilarious to their long list of talents. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I enjoyed filming them!

Fast Food Diaries Part 1: 10 Perils of Working in Fast Food

Today was my last day at McDonald's. Can I get a hallelujah! In honor of this momentous occasion, I have composed a list of the 10 worst things about fast food. I'm sure my fellow fast foodies can relate, and if you've never worked in fast food, I kindly ask you to extend a little grace to those who do. It's a deep fried jungle out there...

10. The Breeding Habits of Trays

And you thought rabbits were bad. Try cleaning a million of these fertile little monsters, only to round the corner and see yet another gargantuan stack waiting for you.

9. People Who Talk on Their Cellphones
Really, talking to great-aunt Thelma Louise about the barbecue at Uncle Ned’s was so important that it couldn’t wait 3 minutes? Oh, now you’re rolling your eyes and muttering apologies under you breath, that really makes me feel valued as the person trying to make your day easier. Well, I hope you were listening when I asked if your order was correct. I certainly wouldn’t want to waste your time.

 8. The Food

Employee meal you say? Well, someone must have misunderstood me. I ordered eggs and bacon, not the saliva of Satan on a tray.

7. Hat Head

Although the picture speaks for itself, I will say I’ve tried every tactic in the long-haired girl’s arsenal, and the only cure for hair that hatted is a shower, followed by a blow dryer and a flat iron, not to mention a generous helping of hair product.






 6. Drive-thru Ear                                    
For the layperson, Drive-thru Ear is that swollen little bump that one gets right above their right, or in my case left, ear, typically acquired by pressing down on the headset call button 10,000 times a day.


5. People Who Pay in $100’s
“Good morning! Your total is $0.78. Oh, I see you’ve payed me with a crisp $100, forcing me to either get a manager or do some flurried mental math, all while holding up everyone in line. That’s all you have, you say. Nothing, not a few measly quarters or a rumpled $1? Are you sure? Because I’d be happy to climb in that car and check!”

 4. The Uniform

Not only does it stink you can’t wear cute shoes, there’s nothing like wearing the same outfit as everyone else to make you feel as generic and mass-produced as a Big Mac.

 3. The Hours
For the past 3 months, I’ve woken up at 3 a.m. 3 days a week to take orders and make parfaits for 9 1/2 hours. Incidentally, I’ve developed a lucid appreciation of time and the countless things you can or cannot do with it.





2. Being Watched
The cameras are going 24/7, a way to keep track of everyone’s work habits. The only area without a camera is the crew room, the one place where employees are not expected to work. Thefts have occurred in the crew room, but after all, an employee’s possessions are not as important as his labor. I’ve heard rumors the new cameras have sound as well as picture, making our conversations as public as our movements.

1. Folding Burritos

Throughout my short, though illustrious McDonald’s career, I probably folded several thousand burritos. In that time, my soul was endowed with a simple truth: burritos are evil. Please people, I know they’re delicious, but is that steaming pocket of convenient goodness really worth the pain and suffering of your fellow men? Although I was once as guilty as you, I have since repented of my role in creating this most heinous of breakfast foods, and now I’m begging you, citizens of the world, do humanity a favor and just stop ordering them!  

When God Says No

        Well, it’s happened. I got accepted to William and Mary, my dream school, the college I’ve been planning to attend for the past 2 years. I’ve spent the last year fulfilling a transfer agreement with W&M, taking special classes and signing special forms. I drove 5 hours to talk with an academic advisor and I remember asking her, among other things, how much of a guarantee guaranteed admission is. I was crushed when they denied me last year, and I wasn’t about to go through that again, but the advisor assured me all was well. And I guess it was, because I got my acceptance, finally, after a year of frantically trying to prove that they’d made a mistake the first time, that I actually could pass a calculus class, that I was worth their time and effort. It felt good, holding that welcome packet in my hand and knowing I’d done it, proved them wrong and achieved the dream after all, but you know what, I’m not going. I decided 3 months ago to study third world medicine in Australia. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, as are most of my decisions, but it was also a blessed decision. It took me a year to get accepted to William and Mary, a year of 19 credit semesters that I absolutely hated, but it took me 6 weeks from the day I first looked up YWAM to the day I received my acceptance and purchased my plane ticket. It took 4 months for my application to be processed at W&M and 6 hours for my student visa application to be approved. I’d been looking for a job for 2 years, but after receiving my acceptance to YWAM Perth, I found 2 jobs in a week. All signs are pointing to Australia, but I never gave up on my W&M dream. I was planning to defer my admission for a year, but after I received my acceptance, I learned W&M doesn’t allow transfer students to defer. It was another no, every bit as loud and non-negotiable as the first. But you see, that’s the way God has always worked in my life. He lets me have my dreams, assurances that my life is within my control, but when it’s time for those dreams to become reality, the door gets slammed in my face. At first, it feels like my life is over, but then, after I’ve screamed and cried a little, I notice there’s another door. It’s usually a less glamorous, more challenging door, one that was always there, I was just too distracted to see it before. It wasn’t the door I wanted, but it’s the one I have to take, so I do. It felt almost surreal, sending my denial to a school I’ve only ever wanted to accept, even when they didn’t want to accept me, but it also felt exciting. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a plan. I know I will be spending a year in Australia, but I don’t know what I’ll be doing when that year is up. I don’t know if I’ll be going to college, much less which college that will be. I don’t know if I’ll be coming back to my hometown, or even my home country. All I know is God said no to W&M and yes to something bigger, scarier, and ultimately I believe, better. To me, the girl who’s always had a plan, it feels like running in the dark, not knowing where I’m going or what I’ll do when I get there. But I also feel blessed, happy to be told no by a God who knows the plans He has for me. It’s funny, but this no is beginning to feel a lot like a yes, and for the first time, this uncertainty is beginning to feel a lot like freedom.

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
                                                                                            
                                                                                                 ~ Jeremiah 29:11