Would you like fries with that?

This week our crop of summer interns returns to school, and I've tried to give the intern I was responsible for a good experience, as my mentors gave me many years ago. This was a pretty realistic workplace experience for an engineer and he handled it very well, far beyond his years. He comments that it's quite different from his high school job at a bakery. I should hope so.

Every journey begins with a single step, and many careers begin with a McJob or two before you get to the prestigious stuff. I find these stories fascinating. BigPerson8686 has volunteered to do an "Ask a Fast Food Worker" thread, and we'll do that in a week or two, but it got me thinking about McJobs in general.

I sort of missed out on McJobs, in a way. I'm a computer guy, and my first jobs were indeed non-commissioned barely-above-minimum-wage retail jobs. But they were selling software and computers, back when people who sold such things were expected to actually have a fair bit of technical knowledge about them (before the big box stores shut down all the little boutiques). At the first one, ties were mandatory and coats were recommended.

There were good and bad points to those early jobs. On the good side, it was fun interacting with people, and once I learned the ropes I could do the job in my sleep. Also, when I clocked out, I was done until I got back to work. Nowadays I go home and try to work up the energy to get some work done at home to get caught up. On the downside, buying a cheeseburger and fries cost me an hour's pay before taxes.

Because we were all nerds and half the guys were in their 20s and 30s on commission, there weren't really any shenanigans to report. One of my favorite sites capturing the essence of a pure McJob is this group set up by some of the summer lifeguards at Walden Pond in Massachusetts. They describe the experience thusly:

Spoiler

We all know working at Walden is the shit. Especially being a lifeguard. This group is for everyone who loves Walden, all the crazy people who go there and who understand:
we all party like animals
we smoke weed...including the supervisors
nobody from concord actually goes there to swim
there are no trash cans at the beach...carry in carry out BITCH
the bathrooms are upstairs...and no you cant use the handicapped bathroom
if youve ever been asked the stupidest questions. EVER.
floatation devices arent allowed, but hate telling people to take them out of the pond
youve heard "whered the beach go??" 5 million times
kids must be clothed
...and potty trained
you know the crazy lady who collects mushrooms and occasionally flips out because she thinks if mice can eat them, she can too
you know not to swim after a few weeks of peak season and you feel the need to shower after a safety check
taking the board out is the SHIT, and you get to tan your back side
the park workers do way more work and get paid less
sleeping in the back room is key
being hungover is expected
...throwing up in the handicap bathroom is extra points
the state police all know we smoke weed bc "they see those phish stickers" on our cars
TAKING THE BOAT OUT. YA KNOW.
gotten complained about for driving the boat too fast and/or jumping off
diving w/fins and masks
you love getting paid to work out
we all know whats really going on with denise and pete
terri can roll a blunt with 1 hand
we love thunder!
youve never had to save anyone
youve flipped the polaris
youve crashed a gator
youve gone through a day and heard no english spoken on the beach
the park closes at sunset....right.
making fun of patrons never gets old
you know walden attracts creepers! and peepers!
youve gotten a date with a patron
youve had a crush on a camp counselor/wanted to steal a cute camper
you never really see the need to go up to the second chair, or the first chair for that matter...you can see everyone from first aid
you enjoy watching the park workers paint the same places over and over again
you always volunteer to drive to dunkin donuts
you enjoy being half naked and having a bathing suit as a uniform
you get taxed up the asshole from the state of massachusetts
the pond path is 1.7 miles (sometimes more if it's flooded) of beautifulness
swimming the mile to the other side and back is awesome/really hard


WE LOVE WALDEN POND!

FOCUS: What McJobs did you have before you started your career in earnest? What were the best parts of those McJobs? What were the worst?

 

- Worked in maintenance (painting and landscaping, nothing skilled like carpentry) for my first 2 summers in college. I think I got dumber by listening to the guys who were in their 40's that were still there because they were too stupid to ditch this $10/hour no benefit gig and get a union job. I didn't party with any of them, but apparently a lot of these guys were drunk on the job and most of them had DUIs. My favorite quote from my tenure there - as we pass by an open field surrounded by trees (so there was not much visibility of the field from the road) one guy says "that looks like a great place to rape somebody." Real classy.

- I consider my first career out of college in the call center a McJob. It paid well enough (I was raking in around 42 - 45k in salary + OT + bonuses in my third year and it was in a low cost of living town) but good god did that suck. Taking each call was like playing Russian roulette, were you going to get lucky with an empty chamber and get the nice person asking for help signing up for health care or were you getting the nasty person with a ridiculous entitlement complex that just lost their job and wants somebody's head? Also we had our "idle" time tracked which basically meant a very big chunk of our performance reviews were based on how many bathroom breaks we take and how many times we get up to get water or some other shit. As you can probably guess smokers (thankfully I'm not one) usually got terrible bonuses. I had more freedom in middle school.

The worst part is that it pays well enough to keep people there, but doesn't really build useful experience to apply to other jobs. People get use to the 40k plus income lifestyle and will deny offers from other companies for entry level jobs that pay a grand or two less but will lead to huge promotions and raises down the line. You end up with a lot of college grads in their mid thirties that never took the risk to leave and now have another 30 - 40 years of answering phones and having their piss breaks tracked before they can retire.

On the plus side, most of my department were party animals in their early 20's and we would go out for and do shots on a lot of lunch breaks (and subsequently get bitched out for being 2 minutes late coming back), meet at the bar after work a lot and invited each other over for a bunch of house parties. I'm still friends with a lot of them and luckily most of them have made it out of there now.

 

I had a couple different McJob type jobs in high school, and waited tables through college, but delivering pizza definitely fits this thread the best. I started delivering almost as soon as I got a car. It was great, despite the lack of self respect and the fact that my car always smelled faintly of pizza. I worked at a local place, not a chain, and the hours weren't nearly as bad as working in restaurants. I easily cleared $20/hour cash under the table, which was fantastic considering my job was to drive around in my car listening to music.

Most people have food delivered because they are lazy and hungry. A few do it because they are too weird to interact with the rest of society. One day, I come in a few minutes early for my shift and print out a few delivery slips and start filling the hot bags and my manager/the cook gives me a weird look. He's a weird Greek so I don't think anything more of it and am on my way. The last of my deliveries is to a small apartment building. I ring the buzzer and a kid answers and tells me to come up. I knock at the door, and the kid opens. Normal people answer the door at least mostly clothed. This kid is maybe 13, and is standing at the door in his boxers - fully erect. I'm a bit stunned. I tell him what he owes, he hands me some cash and I hand him the pizza. He closes the door.

Motherfucker. Not only did he answer the door naked, but I forgot to count the cash and he shorted me. I ring the bell again because fucked if I'm going to be out a few bucks because of some boner kid. He opens the door, still in his boxers, but with his dick out now. I get the rest of the money and drive back to the pizza shop. When I walk in I tell the manager there's no way we're delivering to that address again. He starts cackling and yells, "Ahaha was the fucking kid naked again?"

The other delivery guy tells me the kid has been doing this on deliveries for a while now, I've just been lucky enough to avoid him. A week or two later, the next time this guy goes to deliver a pizza to that address, he tells the kid on the intercom that he won't sell him the pizza unless he has pants on. The kid never calls our pizza place again, so I guess he had a thing for pizza guys, not our shitty pizza.

 

My first job at 16 was working as a sandwich artist at Subway. That job sucked like you wouldn't believe. You never EVER manage to get the smell of mustard out of your hands and clothes, the asshole franchise owners paid us less than minimum wage, and perhaps most importantly, I was TERRIBLE at this job. I was really slow in making the sandwiches because I tried to make them like I would want them, and people hated opening after I closed because I sucked at cleaning the place up.

It took me almost 12 years after that jobn before I was able to walk into a subway and not want to retch from the smell.

 

My first job was a McJob, I worked at a local Arby's.

Pros- Any time they were open at night and the sexual harassing day manager wasn't, I could drop in sober, drunk, or high and walk into the back and make my own sandwiches. I could also hook friends with me up as well with whatever. Jamocha shakes were my crack, I'd have at least two a day.

Cons- I was one of the few guys working so anything have to do with outside work usually fell to me, including unloading the trucks. What came in those trucks singlehandedly made me vow never to work again in a fast food restaurant.

That famous roast beef comes in a forty pound box. Inside this box are two frozen twenty pound slabs of beef. Before these can be slow cooked in the oven and then sliced, there is a procedure that has to be done, and that procedure is called fatrubbing.

Basically you take a twenty pound slab, place it under hot water, and then you have to rub the outer layer of fat off the slab. This layer is usually about half an inch thick. By the time you are done with both slabs it looks like you successfully gave a hand job to an elephant and had him cum on your hands.

 

I worked in a kitchen at an upscale restaurant after high school. I worked the morning shift, so most of what I did was prep work and washing dishes.

Nothing about the work was particularly great, but it was enjoyable to have a job where you're physically active and can see the product of your work. Definitely better than working in big law, where I really had no idea how my work fit in to everything else going on, and usually didn't even understand the client's business.

The only part that really sucked about working in a kitchen was that I didn't have any training in food prep, so I kinda sucked (mostly was just slow, not incompetent).

 

Wait, those jobs aren't in India yet? Just wait. Believe it or not, there are a lot of young lawyers falling into a similar trap now working for Document Review temp agencies. They make semi-decent money (at least for Chicago) since they rake it in when they can get overtime. I know of lawyers in their seventh and eighth year who are still grinding it out for these agencies. The problem is they develop no skills doing this. It's really a trap.

More on focus-- Right out of college I sold Apple computers in London in the early 90's. Thanks to creative work visa manipulation, we didn't have to pay UK taxes, so we were a steal. We also worked like dogs (50-60 hours a week) compared to the Brits. It was fun, but it was definitely a McJob-- we were selling MacIntosh computers that Apple would unload onto the European market a year after they had been introduced into the US. I remember drinking a lot and sharing a 1 bedroom apartment with four people. It was pretty funny.

 

I worked at a gas station for a summer back in high school. I wouldn't ever want to do it again, but at the time it was a pretty solid summer job.

A friend of mine also worked there on most of the days, so we would routinely fuck around on the job all day. Our friends would come by, get $0.10 of gas and then hang out for the next 20 or 30 minutes until somebody noticed or a bunch of customers showed up and got impatient. And after the owner left for the night we would go on the computer in the office whenever there weren't any customers. After I discovered his, umm.. bizarre taste in pornography one night, I could never look at the guy the same way.

As far as cons, the only real downside was coming home smelling like gas. I don't mind the smell at all but a number of people would comment on it if I ran into them before I could shower. On the plus side, we were outside for the majority of the day, and the station had a roof so we stayed dry in the rain. It also gave plenty of opportunities to have 3 or 4 minute conversations with complete strangers so I became alot better at making mindless small talk. And having an endless parade of girls to hit on all day was never a bad thing either.

 

We'll see, it's still a BIG industry standard in that line of work to have Americans in all client facing roles. But they are starting to outsource call centers to the south where they can pay less in salary.

They have outsourced most of the jobs where people actually do the processing and analysis to India, but none of the big dogs in the field want to be the first to cut costs (well cut THAT cost) when it comes to customer service.

 

My first job was making ice cream in the basement of a really popular place in my town. It was probably the most fun job I've ever had. I never had to deal with customers or work the late summer hours serving ice cream to people lined up out the door. The best part? I got to eat everything fresh out of the machine, you know, to test its quality. Most days, I would walk in the back, go down stairs, flip on the Best of Van Morrison (the only good CD he had in the shop) and make the necessary batches for the day, never once with any interruption from anyone. It was wonderfully peaceful.

After a little while, my boss trusted me to try my hand at making my own flavors. My first was Mint-Mocha with a Raspberry and Fudge Ribbon. Later, a marshmallow ribbon was added as well. The ice cream was made with real coffee and just a little bit of some amazing Italian mint concentrate that would clear your sinuses if you put your nose near the top of the jar. It was incredible.

When I first presented it to my boss, he basically told me I was retarded and that it was going to suck. When he tasted it, he told me to make another batch so we could sell it upstairs. After the first day, 2 gallons of it were gone.

The worst part of that job was definitely cracking the oreos...by hand. My boss believed that every bite of the cookies and cream ice cream should have 1/4 of an oreo in it, so putting a bunch in a bag and smashing them with a mallet wouldn't do. He'd go to BJ's or Costco and get a dozen of these giant boxes of oreos with about 20 tubes in them and I'd spend a whole afternoon crack-cracking oreos, by hand, and tossing them into this bottomless fucking container that took forever to fill. I eventually mastered it by cracking three and four at a time. When I was done, I'd have oreo cookie dust crammed so far underneath my fingernails that it'd be there for days. I would eat all of the toppings that we had--mainly the Reese's pieces M&M's--but I never touched those fucking oreos.

I was laid off in December after a really slow fall led to my boss closing the shop for good. I worked as a bus boy after that, which was terrible compared to the wonderland of ice cream I had become accustomed to.

 

I worked at McDonald's when I was 16. There is nothing good about working there. The pay is comically bad, you usually work less than 18 hours a week, and you get written up for "not being cheery enough". Who the fuck could be cheery there? Sure, I worked with a few hot chicks, but I would rather have my daughter sell meth to kids younger than her than have her work there.

Fuck that fucking place.

 

One of my favorite jobs was working in construction when I was 18, my first summer back from college. I was a "carpenter's assistant," I basically did all the odd jobs that didn't require extensive training.

Work started at 8 and I was usually sweating balls by 8:30, many aspects of the job were exhausting (e.g. digging a 4' deep, 30' long trench in a gravel driveway in order to lay down electrical wiring... oh yeah and the electrician is coming at noon so you better get moving), and I developed respiratory problems that lingered for almost six months after that job ended due to inhaling so much dust.

But, goddamn if I didn't love that job. I got to work with my hands, I saw the fruits of my labor develop day by day, and the people I worked with were generally pretty cool. I would never work in that industry again, but it was a great experience. I developed a good work ethic (being clever might help with cramming before a final exam but it doesn't build a fence), learned some good skills, and got paid to spend my days outdoors.

I've had a handful of other shitty jobs but that one was the best. Last summer I was waiting tables in a high-end restaurant and all I can say is the restaurant industry is a fucked up place, especially in higher-end establishments.

 

My job requires me to wear many hats.

I do the photography for the website and catalog, and the image processing. I also maintain our email servers, do repairs, and input on designs.

But I do have a part of my job that is more or less a "McJob". Doing tech support. Luckily these days I do it much less, but it is honestly one of the worst things you can imagine. Any kind of job where you interact with customers is a McJob in my book. What makes it worse is when they are fucking stupid/

You would think that with the products we put out, you would attract an educated clientèle. Not exactly. Sure, I get the occasional guy who blows me away with his knowledge, but most of the people are so fucking ignorant you wouldn't believe it. There are rednecks abound, with incredibly hard to understand accents, (I have found that North Carolina seems to be the worst)

They have no idea how to open up the instruction manual, and the amount of racism that I hear is atrocious. I had a guy once tell me he didn't like Astronomy magazine because it was too Jewish. I have heard the n word multiple times just casually thrown out in a phone call. Not to mention all the white pride emails that get forwarded to us because we are on their email list, and so they just click FWD:ALL.

I once dealt with a woman for 20 minutes telling her all she needed to do was take off one part of her item, hold it in her hand, spin the mount 180 degrees, and put the tube back on, and not to flip the tube at all, and it wouldn't end up being mounted upside down. She kept telling me it would end up upside-down no matter what, and that I wasn't listening to her because she was black and a woman. So I walked her through it again, and this was the result:

Woman:"The tube is upside-down"
Kuhjäger:"Did you turn the tube over before attaching it, which I told you not to do?"
Woman: "Yes"
Kuhjäger: "Then stop flipping it over before you put it on"
Woman: "I don't like your attitude. I want to speak to your manager"

Sigh.

 

I had a literal McJob. I started at McDonalds at 15, was a manager by 17, and worked there until I got shitcanned at 19. I've mentioned it before, but I was a very angry person.

The job sucked when I became a manager. The main change was that I was A) in charge, and B) had to take orders and deal with customers. The first part wasn't a big deal, usually. The second part was stressful as fuck. God forbid someone leave pickles on a burger when they said no pickles. It was never good enough to just take the sandwich back and give them a new one in a matter of about 30 seconds. Fuck that, they were going to fucking SCREAM at me. We're talking totally irrational anger over a fucking fast food hamburger. One mother fucker threw a big mac, in its box, and hit me in the face. It was all I could do not to jump the counter and beat him into oblivion. Instead I went to the freezer and punched a few boxes.

My only requirement as a manager was that food got made quickly and correctly, and that shit was done by the end of their shift. If that meant they sat around and bullshitted with friends for 3 hours and then did all their cleaning in the last 15 minutes, I didn't care, The only time I'd yell at employees is when they were dragging ass or taking smoke breaks during rushes, and I'd have to explain that for every customer that yelled at me for their burger being fucked up, I'd yell at them for fucking it up. Basically, I asked the absolute bare minimum from the crew when I was a manager. I also let them have free food, but I always thought it was retarded that McDonalds charged employees for their break meals anyway.

The best story from this job, however, was a friend of mine. He was a fellow manager, and completely socially inept when it came to women. I was working with him and another girl at closing, and the two of them were semi-flirting all night. As I was counting the drawers down after we closed, he and she disappeared for about 20 minutes. Then he strolls in and sits next to me with a big shit-eating grin. I ask what is up...

"I totally fucked her just now."

Wait, what?

He said she was in the women's room cleaning, and he went in to check on her. He said one thing led to another, and they wound up fucking right there on the floor. I asked him where she was, and I'll never forget his answer:

"She's still mopping. That place was a mess."

I couldn't look at her with a straight face for a good two months. To top it all off, he was a virgin. Forever, he'll be able to say that his first time was on the bathroom floor of a fucking McDonalds.

Christ, I could tell stories about that job for weeks.

PS: I got fired for punching the fry-hop (a large plastic bin that dispensed frozen fries into the baskets) and screaming 'GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!" at the top of my lungs when my little brother, who was a crew member, refused to make an order for a customer that he had fucked up. It was either punch the fry-hop, or punch him in the face. Either way, a apparently scared a little girl who saw me, and her mom called corporate headquarters to complain. I was fired the next day. Getting fired was easily the best thing to ever, ever happen to me. It prompted me to get my shit together and finally go away to college, instead of staying at home and going to the local commuter college.

 

At the age of 16, I was a host, yes a male host, at a very notorious breakfast chain that I refuse to mention because I developed a personal hatred towards everything related to said restaurant.

Now being a host isn't exactly the hardest job by any means.. Except when you're the only host working and the place gets a 30+ person waiting list on weekends. I also cleaned tables in between seating people because the asshole servers were too lazy to do it themselves (I made no tips and the only reason I bus'd tables was to avoid the constant bitching of senior citizens about the slow wait). I only worked for about 6 hours but it was pretty difficult by myself.

I made the mistake of calling some grease ball guy an asshole because he decided it would benefit him somehow by telling my manager how poorly of a job I was doing. He basically lied to my manager. It's sad because I almost prided myself in how hard I worked, which led to me being fired.

 

Like Frank, I worked the call-centre mines for a dark, soul-sucking period in my last year of Uni. The company sold mobile phones aimed at the extremely poor end of the market, which meant that every month, the 2-3 days immediately after the bills got sent out would consist of mostly uneducated, mostly rude, mostly drunk customers ringing up and screaming abuse at me. I never understood the drunk callers - I've been drunk a lot, and not once have I thought "now would be a fine time to do those domestic errands I've been delaying". Anyway, that was tiresome, and the ridiculous monitoring of your time was worse. We had 45 seconds once every 2 hours to use the bathroom. Any longer and you got a write-up. Back literally 1 second late from lunch? Write-up. (The phones tracked when you clocked in, so they actually timed you to the second).

The interesting part of this job is how I lost it. I was a typical Uni student, used to waking up about 11am. This job started at 5:45am, and it took me about 1 hour 20 in travel time to get there. So, I was constantly, constantly underslept. The only way I could get to work on time and be 'cheerful' and 'make calling B a highlight of our customer's day' was to take Adderal. (Called Dexamphetamine here, but I think they are your adderal). Lots and lots and lots of adderall. I'd eat about 10-15 during the course of the day, which would stop me sleeping that night, so I'd have more the next day, and so on. Now, adderal seriously fucks with your emotional stability...

After the first fortnight of working there, they didn't pay me. They told me it was a scheduling error, and I'd be payed next week. Next week they told me it must be my bank, and my bank denied any funds being sent to the account, and that it must be my employer. This went on for another week. The next pay cycle came and went, and I still didn't get paid. I'd been getting up at 3am for 6 weeks to take abuse from fuckwits for free. I hadn't had a full nights sleep in a month and half. I fucking lost it. I stormed out to lunch with a good friend of mine who also worked there, ranting about 'firebombing' and 'nuclear war' and 'murderous rampage'. Like I said, adderall isn't ideal for peace and tranquility. Anyway, it turns out the GM of the company was behind me and freaked out. As soon as I got back from lunch, I was told to go upstairs to the general manager's office, where I was immediately 'let go', albeit with an extra month's severance pay, presumably as 'don't come and in gun us all down' insurance. A fine start to my working career!

Incidentally, the whole pay thing was caused by a clerk mistyping an 8 as a 7.

 

I stood by the side of the road waving a sign at passing traffic for Dominos. Sometimes I had to wear a blue tracksuit and a giant styrophome Domino. In the tropics. In summer.

I worked my way up to phone bitch and dough maker for Domino's then left to be a glassy at a nightclub frequented by the visiting US navy. Then a glassy at a strip bar. Then I worked as a coffee bitch at a coffee shop. I fucking love working with computers. My first couple of jobs were as an office junior and then as a call center bitch - but shit work with a computer beats the absolute fuck out of hospitality.

 

My best McJob was working in one of the little ice cream joints in my hometown, which was a knockoff of Coldstone. I loved it because I worked with my friends, got all the free ice cream I could eat, and the owners had absolutely no idea how to run a business, so they thought it was perfectly fine to let a bunch of 18 year olds be in charge of our store while they hung out at the main one a few towns away. (On the other hand, the owners had absolutely no idea how to run a business, so the worst part was having to deal with them.)

My worst McJob is a tie between all the other ones. I've had shitty luck with part-time jobs. The only other one I had longer than a few months was at Blockbuster, my senior year of college. It was not the worst job by far, but it was definitely bad. The pro was that I got free movie rentals, and there was one guy who I really enjoyed working with. The con was everything else. All of my coworkers were in their late twenties or early thirties, and they clearly hated themselves for working at Blockbuster at that point in their lives, so there was a bizarre amount of drama. I amused myself by playing all the sides and maybe slightly manipulating it every now and then, which is kind of awful, I know, but I couldn't help it. Everyone assumed I was on their side, so I hear everything.They were a pretty pathetic bunch. It was like being in the high school cafeteria again, only this time we were wearing uniforms. Shudder. Anyway, that part was juicy, but I couldn't take it. Our store was being shut down, and I quit two weeks before the closing date because I could not stand to spend another minute in there.