Project “Get Personal” Movement 1: My Job

Long time no see. Sorry for lack of updates for so many days...fortunately, my experience in the last few days can be easily summarized:

At about 2AM, I drive home from work—everyone's favorite restaurant, McDonald's!—sit in my chair and plan to go to bed "early" for once, but again, waste a few more hours at various places on the net, until I hear birds start chirping outside, or my parents get up, and then I crash into my bed. This describes about 60% of my night-life of this summer so far.

At about 3PM, I wake up, eat whatever I can find in the fridge, and go back to the Golden Arches.

To complete the circle, I should tell you a little about what I do at work. I said in the last paragraph that McDonald's is everyone's favorite restaurant, but I guess that's only close. ;) But even if you don't looooove McDonald's, you would still be interested to read about what I do in my job, don't you? (Actually, what I wrote in next paragraph was very boring even to myself, so feel free to stay out...)

So, you probably know that McDonald's workforce has many components—people who you talk to at the counter, window, people who make the food, etc. I'm typically in charge of cooking hamburger patties, frying chicken and fish. I feel that as many people read this, their respect for me will drop a lot, because "flipping burgers" usually represents a very lowly job. But trust me, this job does have its challenges and requires technique and experience. I put all the items I cook in a "cabinet". As people order food, some other workers take the items and makes them into sandwiches and other things we sell. The hard part is that some of these items can only stay in the cabinet for about 15 minutes, and must be thrown away, so I must observe the business of the restaurant, and even the popularity of individual items at the time, so I don't cook too much or too little. It's still impossible to completely avoid throwing away expired food, or making customers wait because the cabinet becomes empty, but I have to try to minimize these situations.

I am also a "closer", meaning that I stay at the restaurant to clean up, and help prepare for the next day after we close. That's why I often get home so late. Closing is a little more enjoyable than working during opening hours. The latter is often either very stressful because I get a ton of things to do during peak hours, or very boring during slow hours. After we close to customers, everything's predictable, and being able to go home in one or two hours gives me a little more energy to work. But the cleanup also consists of some of the dirtiest tasks. One example is we need to count the number of each type of item we wasted (which we put in a special bucket) during the day. After the lack of attention for a few hours, the wasted meat, poultry, and fish become an ugly, soft, sticky, reeking pile, and I need to go through them and write down the approximate number of each. But having done this a few times, it's not very displeasant any more. After a closing shift, I'm always dirty and tired, but as a closer, my hourly wage is a little higher, so it's worth it...

If you read to this point, thank you for your support. :) Next time, I will write about something I enjoy, and hopefully it will be more enjoyable to you too. Before leaving, I recommend checking out a "simulator" that's very relevant to this post. Thanks to Justin for posting the link!

Tags: McDonald's , job