All of the employees here speak spanish, and most of them live in Mexico, or are from Mexico. This leads to our closing time to be full of "rancheritas" music. Sometimes customers who are ordering from drive-through don't understand the person speaking cause some of us have heavier accent than others.

I get yelled at whenever I try to make things fair. I don't know if this applies everywhere, but giving any kind of refund at our McDonald's is very time consuming, and heavily frowned upon, so we have to try our best to convince the customer not to have one. If the customer got a wrong sandwich, we give them a brand new one. If a mistake is on our fault (such as charging them accidentally for something they didn't want, our managers still tell us to not do a refund), we might give him something for free, or something that is more expensive than whatever money they lost. However, if the customer doesn't notice, I am not allowed to tell them they just lost money, or we gave them a wrong order. Speed is the name of the game here -- chances are the customer won't notice the missing money later on or won't bother to come back to complain about a wrong order.

My store manager gets on our case whenever we don't "suggestive sell." Which means, in my opinion, pushing a customer to buy something they probably don't need or want, in order for McDonald's to raise its profit.

Swing managers often tell me that, instead of saying "what size would you like?," or "is that going to be medium or large?" to say "is that going to be a large?" This little trick, which is also suggestive selling (making something large because the other options aren't even mentioned or considered by the customer), actually works. People often do agree to make a meal large. I don't use it though, because it's the most obvious form of suggestive selling and it makes you look like an ass to the customer if you say it everytime a customer buys something in which they have an option of size.

Leftovers from orders that were never paid, or were wrong, have to be thrown away. This is another rule I call bullshit. I was taught as a kid to never throw food away. I give it away to the next customer -- I'm in drive-through most of the time anyway, none of the managers notice. Did the last customer not pay for that $3.56 large Caramel Mocha that's already made? Oops, oh well. Guess the next customer is going to get to try the most expensive drink on the menu today. I haven't gotten caught yet.

We're being timed -- everywhere, and we get asked "what the hell is wrong with us" by our managers, whenever our timers are high. For example, my timer starts from the moment the customer orders the first item, to the time they pay. In my opinion, this is the most idiotic way of timing us. Not only because this is timing the customer only, but also how long it takes *them* to count their money, or pull out their wallet our of the back of their jeans, or sometimes, car trunks. These timers don't usually determine my performance, which is what they are meant to do in the first place.

So, in conclusion, I'm a bad McDonald's employee. Managers often tell me it's these little stupid things I do that keep me from getting a promotion.

1. "I'm sorry ma'am, I took your order wrong and you were charged one dollar extra. Would you like to purchase something else with that lost dollar or would you like a refund?"
"Oh no, it's fine like that, just one dollar dear. Thanks for being honest."

Manager: "You weren't supposed to say anything about the missing dollar, or even mention the possibility of a refund."

2. "Can I have a number one?"
"Is that going to be medium or large?"
"A medium is fine. Make that with a coke and that will be all."
"Your total's going to be $5.29 on the first window, thank you."

Manager: "What happened to suggestive selling? Offer two apple pies for one dollar at the end of the order, and offer to make the meal large, don't give the customer a choice between medium and large."

I don't listen to my manager's suggestions, so I don't get anywhere in terms of being promoted.

1. (to my manager) "This kid is honest, I've come to this McDonald's before and I usually get ripped off money, but this kid was honest about it. He's a really good employee."

(as they are leaving) "Sad to see a kid like that knows more about the system and is more willing to admit a mistake than a manager who's not willing to give us one dollar back."

2. "Hey kid, thanks for not looking pissed off like the rest of the employees here. You've been the nicest employee I've seen so far."

3. (to my manager) "This boy deserves a promotion, he was a great help with our huge order. Usually it's a pain to make big orders here, but not this time."

4. (girls who I'm hoping were not drunk, they seemed pretty sober. They hand me $3 dollars) "Here you go. We don't want anything else, it's a tip for you."

"But I messed up your order..."

"You were really calm and nice about it. You deserve it, you're like, the best employee ever and deserve a promotion."

(as they drive off, yelling) "You're pretty cute too!"

They're not a lot of compliments, considering I've attended a fuckton of customers all the time I've been working there. But they're nice compliments to have nonetheless. Makes me hate my job a little less.

Why do I hate my job? Because it's profit-driven, not customer-service-driven. We're forced to smile even though we are ripping people off horribly in most sales, sometimes taking more of their money with full knowledge. Our managers sometimes don't plan well ahead (they send people home), and give us a huge workload because of it. Because of that huge workload on few employees, we become slower. People complain, sometimes yell at us, because we're slow. What they don't understand is that I'm usually doing the job by myself that normally requires around four people for it to run fast and smooth.

But nobody said jobs were easy. McDonald's isn't as bad now since I've gotten used to it, but I still hate its guts. Hell, I *used* to hate it. Now I just don't like it. I'm just not loving it.

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