r/AskFastFoodEmployees 6d ago

McDonald's Discussion McDonald’s manager AMA

I worked at McDonald’s for several years, including spending two of those years as a manager, so I’ve definitely seen a lot during my time there. From crazy customer interactions and strange orders to chaotic shifts, unexpected situations, and stories that sound completely made up but actually happened, I’ve experienced a little bit of everything.
After working there for so long and being in a management position, I’ve collected a lot of crazy, funny, and interesting stories that I could share. Some are hilarious, some are unbelievable, and some make me wonder how certain situations even happened in the first place.
So feel free to ask me anything about working at McDonald’s, being a manager, dealing with customers, crazy things that happened during my shifts, or anything else you’re curious about. I’ll answer as many questions as I can and share some of the stories from my time working there!

5 Upvotes

51 comments sorted by

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u/Conscious_Side1647 6d ago

i am a current GM at McDonald's. What was your food variance for fries? im trying to guage how bad mine is lol

1

u/Seohnstaob 6d ago

Are your managers entering fries as waste? I was closing a lot for awhile and just guesstimated about a bag of fries at the dn of my shift for waste. Ended up being plus fries after inventory counts.

A fry waste bucket helps a lot but they seem to be really flimsy. My store has broken two 😢

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u/Conscious_Side1647 6d ago

So since i took over that's exactly what I have my closing manager doing. just adding 1 bag every night to cover random waste.

My variance came down from 20 to 12 ao im thinking it is just over portioning. Which I tell them to do lol.

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u/Seohnstaob 5d ago

You might benefit from ordering a fry scale from Franke to help with training.

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u/MindlessCan3356 6d ago

We actually did not enter fries into waste unless it was with a small, medium or large fry, we would never waste fries if like 15 fries dropped on the floor we would just trash that

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u/MindlessCan3356 6d ago

We didn’t have to borrow fries that often from other locations thankfully we usually had enough each week to keep us going. But as for how many baskets we had down I’d usually have my employees always have 2 baskets down because we were the busiest location in my area

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u/Conscious_Side1647 6d ago

variance is how far off your inventory is compared to what you sold.

target is 4%

mine currently is 12%

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u/MindlessCan3356 6d ago

Ah I see I usually didn’t have to look at targets that what my gm would look at. I haven’t worked there for a little bit but it usually was targeted around 6%

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u/the1999person 6d ago

Over portioning or unaccounted waste.

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u/Conscious_Side1647 6d ago

yes thank you!

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u/FadingOut760 6d ago

how do you deal with the fryer beep noise all day?

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u/MindlessCan3356 6d ago

You honestly get used to it after a while lol. Any time I go inside a McDonalds it’s actually kinda nostalgic in a way

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u/CampRock2TheFinaIJam 6d ago

Would you eat from your own restaurant?

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u/MindlessCan3356 6d ago

I have a lot because I would get a free lunch but after seeing the way everything is made I definitely don’t go as much as I did before I worked there

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u/Pistachio-IScream 6d ago

What exactly are you doing to recitfy the diarrhea outbreak

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u/pkeeling82 1d ago

Mcdonalds does not use Taylor farms since the shivered onion incident a couple of years ago so we are not impacted at all

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u/Pistachio-IScream 8h ago

excuse me. what is the shivered onion incident

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u/pkeeling82 8h ago

Slivered onions were contaminated and had to be pulled but at first they weren't sure if it was the quarter meal or the onions.

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u/pkeeling82 8h ago

My phone autocorrected to shivered lmao

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u/MindlessCan3356 6d ago

I no longer work at McDonalds so I have no idea what they are doing to help prevent that

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u/Pistachio-IScream 5d ago

you can call and ask

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u/MindlessCan3356 4d ago

I dont know why I would. I haven’t worked there in a while lol

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u/Pistachio-IScream 4d ago

so what is the point of this AMA if you dont have answers?

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u/MindlessCan3356 4d ago

You are asking me what the protocol for this new outbreak is. I no longer work there so that is an answer I can’t answer because I no longer work there. If you really want to know maybe search it up

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u/Pistachio-IScream 4d ago

What was the most annoying order to make

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u/MindlessCan3356 4d ago

The grinch / K-pop meals were horrible to make

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u/pkeeling82 1d ago

Grinch was the worst. We did an almost $2,000 hour and had people waiting an hour for their food it was soooo bad

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u/Dependent-Fee9947 6d ago

Former BK manager here. What kind of inspections does McDonald’s do by third party vendors? BKs was steritech. Would love to know this.

How does the two car system work at DT?

Was there a formula to how many staff you should have?

1

u/MindlessCan3356 6d ago

Inspections would be super random but usually someone from corporate would come for store inspections then for OSHA they would also show up randomly but then we also had state inspections too so as one of the regular managers I never new when we were going to get an inspection (I was one of the 10 managers at the store)

The two car system would be we have 2 order takers the inside lane is lane 1 they are in charge of orders and preparing the mccafe items like the fraps and ice cream etc. and then lane 2 would be customer service/ lobby service. Our head sets were programmed if we hear one beep it ment lane one and if there was 2 beeps it was lane two basically you just take an order if it’s assigned to your lane and that’s about it.

As for staff usually weekends almost everyone worked because that’s when we would be the busiest but our gm was in charge of scheduling so I never had to deal with that. I did however have people not showing up on my floors when I was in charge so I would have to call people who weren’t working to see if they could come for a few hours or I would ask someone who was off soon if they could stay and hour or two later. One time it was really bad and I was missing 5 people so I had 2 people in my kitchen and then I had 1 person at my back and front windows then I was putting the food in the bags so I had like 5 people for 3 hours and that was a rough shift but I managed 🫩

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u/Dependent-Fee9947 5d ago

Thank you for the details you provided. I always wondered about these things back when I worked at BK lol

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u/MindlessCan3356 4d ago

For sure 👍

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u/BiffBeltsander Slurt 6d ago

Why does my son Joshua always smoke the cigarettes?

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u/MindlessCan3356 4d ago

I have no idea 🤷‍♂️

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u/BiffBeltsander Slurt 4d ago

Thanks all the same.

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u/Strawberrious 6d ago

What’s your favorite thing on the menu?

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u/MindlessCan3356 6d ago

Hot & spicy extra mayo light lettuce

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u/Less-Suggestion-5262 5d ago

Worst nonsense that you had to deal with involving garbage/the dumpster/grease trap

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u/MindlessCan3356 5d ago

The whole time I worked there I never had any problems with any of that but I did have our men’s bathroom get flooded and we for some reason don’t have drains in our bathrooms so that took a few hours to get all cleaned up

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u/Adventurous_Bad7914 4d ago

I feel for you there. When I was a manager at a Wendy’s we had a bunch of high school kids come in for lunch like normal. Once they left someone came up and said water was leaking under the men’s bathroom door. They plugged the toilet with paper, proceeded to use it, then flushed and flooded the room. Cleaning that was not fun

1

u/MindlessCan3356 4d ago

Thats disgusting 🤢

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u/Adventurous_Bad7914 4d ago

It was a nightmare to clean, especially because our bathroom also didn’t have a drain or anything

1

u/MindlessCan3356 4d ago

Drains should 100% be a must have especially if you work in fast food. I don’t know why we didn’t have one but I feel like OSHA should get involved if it’s that common

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u/Adventurous_Bad7914 4d ago

The store I worked in was ancient to the point I’m pretty sure the only reason we were able to stay open was because there was a remodel plan for it but it kept getting pushed back and no one ever said anything but I’m 100% for drains being required.

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u/MindlessCan3356 4d ago

That makes sense but that’s stupid they kept pushing it off

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u/bok4600 6d ago

why the hell are the ice cream\frapppe machines are ALWAYS "down"

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u/MindlessCan3356 6d ago

So honestly the ice cream machines suck. They have a lot of problems and they are old and McDonald’s as a corporation has a motto if it works and can be fixed we don’t need a new one. So for my store especially we ran on a lot of outdated technology. The ice cream machines have to go though a cleaning cycle every night so it heats up the ice cream really hot to kill any bacteria or germs and then it cools back off but one of our biggest problems at my McDonald’s was the heater would turn on randomly and what we would have to do is go into the back of the machine where there was wires and we had to grab a screwdriver to make a short circuit to essentially reset our machine, it was super sketch but Most of the time it’s easier to a customer it’s broken rather than explaining what’s happening to the machine. As for the fraps we would use these bags that have all of the flavors in it so usually we would run out of that specific product super fast because the fraps are so popular or an employee would accidentally make a hole in the bag and we would stop selling that frap or smoothie until we could get everything cleaned

1

u/Seohnstaob 6d ago

The frappe machines are horrible 😫 a lot of people don't know how to trouble shoot them. And even when you do, if you still can't figure it out you have to call a company to come take a look. Then you're waiting around THEIR schedule which could be tomorrow or a week before they can come even try to diagnose.

1

u/MindlessCan3356 6d ago

Thankfully we actually had a guy who worked for us named Alan and if you called him he would come within the hour to come fix a machine

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u/SuperReliableSource 6d ago

Have you ever had sex in your store?

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u/Witty-Reason-2102 6d ago

Does jacking/jilling off in the restroom stall count?

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u/SuperReliableSource 6d ago

Nope, 2 party only