I worked at McDonald’s for almost seven years. That’s right: seven years of fast food employment. About a year ago, I quit to go back to college. There were a lot of things I liked about my job and by the time I left, I was a salary manager and it could have easily been a career.
However, now that I’ve been back in college, I can honestly say I never want to work fast food again. That isn’t a statement against my former employer; I had some good benefits and made decent money. Nor do I have anything bad to say about anyone who works fast food and I don’t think I’m better than people who work in fast food. If you work fast food, you are a better person than I am because there are some things about that job I don’t ever want to experience again.
1. The Grease
There is no feeling like leaving an eight-hour shift in a hot kitchen filled with fryers. You feel too greasy to even be a person. You have to wash your uniform with dawn if you ever want to get that grease smell out.
Well, one feeling does compare. Have you ever spilled 50 pounds of oil on a floor and then had to clean it? An hour in the shower didn’t even make me feel clean. If you ever get home from work and your dog won't stop licking you because you taste and smell like a chicken patty, it is probably time for a new job.
2. The Stress
If you are good at working fast food, you have to be fast. Mistakes will ruin your timer for half-an-hour and throw off the numbers for the whole day. Performing well at fast food is stressful.
Being a manager and making sure everyone else performed well was even more stressful. Spending a week as acting store manager while the store manager was on vacation was the most stressful experience of my entire life. I have never been more anxious than being responsible for 70 crew, 10 managers, and everything that happened in the store. That week was the week I decided to quit.
3. The Hours
I literally just want to work somewhere that closes. If where you work closes, there is always an end in sight. The longest shift I have ever worked was 19 hours. If a place closes every night, that can never happen.
There are other drawbacks, too. For instance, cleaning a store and doing closing procedures is incredibly hard when you have a drive-thru full of drunk people who are mad you are cleaning the milkshake machine. Overnight shifts made me feel crazy after awhile because I never interacted with the normal people who are awake during the day.
4. The Customers
Every fast food customer in the world is not rude or crazy. Many of them are normal, functioning citizens. However, the type of person who has such a lack of manners and social skills that they’d be thrown out of an Applebee’s has no other place to go than McDonald’s.
I have been called cuss words I didn’t even know existed and I’ve had a cash register thrown at me. I’ve also found crack rocks and used pregnancy tests in the bathroom (positive and negative). These types of things are just some examples of the drama that fast food customers bring into my life and I don’t need it.
5. French Fries
As I mentioned in my introduction, I have been away from McDonald’s long enough that I can enjoy french fries again. After working at McDonald’s for so many years, you can simply no longer enjoy them. I went through phases where I would stop eating them for years at a time. They are simply more enjoyable if you can’t quite remember how greasy cleaning a fryer makes you feel.
