READING: CLASSIFICATION

My Secret Life on the McJob: Fast Food Managers

JERRY NEWMAN

Jerry Newman is a professor of management at the State University of New York–Buffalo and coauthor of the textbook Compensation, tenth edition (2010). He has also worked as a business consultant at AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, RJR Nabisco, and McDonald’s. This selection is from My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons in Leadership Guaranteed to Supersize Any Management Style (2007), which Newman wrote after working at various fast-food restaurants to learn about their operation and management.

I thought all my fast food stores would be pretty similar. They weren’t. Some stores made employees wear name tags, going as far as sending people home if they repeatedly didn’t wear their name tags, while other stores didn’t seem to care. In some stores crews socialized after work, but in others they barely talked to each other, even during work. Even though every chain had strict rules about every facet of food production and customer interaction, how employees were treated was part of an individual store culture, and this varied from store to store. These differences could often be traced to the managers’ values and practices and how consistently they were applied both by the managers and by their sensei, much more so than any edicts from headquarters. The best-run store I worked at was [a] Burger King; the worst-run store was also a Burger King. If corporate rules had a controlling impact, shouldn’t stores have been much more similar? At one McDonald’s the employees were extremely friendly; at another the tension between groups was palpable. The differences, I think, can be traced to the managers. The following is a sampler of the types of managers I encountered. Only the last group, performance managers, was good at finding a sensei and developing consistent people practices.

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THE TOXIC MANAGER

Most new employees learn through feedback. When you’re first learning a job, there’s relatively little ego involvement in feedback; good managers seem to know this and in early days of employment are quick to point out better ways of doing a task. [Toxic] managers, though, use sarcasm or disrespectful comments to indicate when they are unhappy with your work. One of the worst offenders I ran into was the store manager at Arby’s, who admitted that the main reason he was hiring me was to change the store culture. He said he was tired of employees who were vulgar and disrespectful, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that the role model for their behavior was actually the manager himself — Don. His attitude and style set the tone for everyone else in his store. Almost as bad, the key individual with the necessary attributes to be a sensei shared Don’s disregard for the feelings of others. Don, in particular, didn’t confine his wrath to “bad” employees. Bill, a diligent long-timer, messed up a coupon order. A customer had an entertainment book coupon for one Value Meal free with the purchase of another. There was a labyrinth of steps to complete some of the discounts correctly. When Bill made the error, it was right before the end of Don’s shift, and Don tore into him, saying loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Well, I’m leaving before Bill can make my life any more miserable.” It didn’t take long to infect others with this lack of respect for employees.

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THE MECHANICAL MANAGER

The most common type of manager I encountered was the Mechanical Manager, who was for the most part either an assistant manager or a shift manager, not a full store manager. You could spot the Mechanical Managers from across the room — they did their jobs, day after day, as if fast food was slow death. They didn’t want to be there, and they were just going through the motions. They typically had gotten their jobs because they were reliable crew members and had put in enough time that some reward was needed to keep them working. A promotion has a certain finality, though — it makes you confront reality: Is this what I want out of life? Most say “No,” and that’s probably why I didn’t see very many store managers who were mechanical. Before most store managers had reached that level (one store manager told me it was a ten-year journey), those who weren’t interested in fast food as a lifetime career had moved on to other career pursuits. While looking for other opportunities, though, they did what was necessary to get by. Luis at McDonald’s was the perfect example.

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In my first McDonald’s experience I made myself a grid showing all of the sandwiches and their ingredients. After a day of having instructions blasted at me, I needed a visual training aid to finally put things together. I shared this grid with Luis on my third day, expecting he might already have training materials like this (as was the case at Wendy’s) or that he could use it to train other visual learners. As I handed Luis the Excel spreadsheet, I watched his face and saw no reaction. None. He told me he’d leave it for Kris, the store manager. Clearly he saw the value in it — he didn’t toss it, after all — but a reinforcing response for my initiative required a level of involvement he didn’t or couldn’t muster.

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THE RELATIONSHIP MANAGER

The Relationship Manager was a relatively rare breed in my experience. James was the prototype. He led by building relationships and demonstrating that he cared about our destinies — hard to do when it seemed like every week someone was leaving and another person was coming on board. From the first day, James was very different from what I was used to. When I first met him for my job interview, he was fifteen minutes late because he was out picking up an employee whose car had broken down. I never saw any other manager pick up or take home a crew member who had transportation problems. In fact, at one store I watched Mary, an older worker teetering on the edge of poverty, sit in a booth out front for two hours waiting for her husband to pick her up after his shift at a Sam’s Club. As I came to learn, this kindness wasn’t unusual for James. And in being kind, James created a culture that was much more friendly and supportive than that in many of the other fast food places I had experienced. Even the way James responded to my quitting was refreshing. With my back problems becoming increasingly worse, I called James to tell him that I was quitting and dreaded leaving him in the lurch. But he was amazingly kind, telling me to take care of myself and forcefully telling me to pick up my check.

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THE PERFORMANCE MANAGER

It’s easy to spot the Performance Manager. Here relationships are still important, but now they serve as a means to ensure performance. Through word or deed she very quickly lets you know what is expected. I like this. No ambiguity, no doubt about what it takes to make the grade. The best at this was Kris, who, it seemed to me, watched for slackers much more closely than did the managers at other fast food places. She told me during the interview that I would be watching DVDs my first day. She also mentioned that one of the new people had taken three to four bathroom breaks while watching the videos, which was an excessive number, she thought. She also commented that she might be losing some people because she thought they were slower than they should be. I got the message: She would be watching my work and looking to see if I was going to goof off. My experience in other places was that you got fired for only two things: not showing up and insubordinate behavior. Clearly she was adding a third reason — poor performance. Good for her!

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Kris’s watchful eye extended beyond bathroom breaks. I found out the hard way that taking breaks, even unpaid ones, wasn’t allowed unless legally required. Apparently in New York State, you’re not entitled to a break until after five hours of work. So when I asked Kris for a break before the appointed time, she answered with an emphatic “No.” Kris’s message was clearly that we do our jobs by the book, no exceptions.

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Over time at this Burger King I began to notice that Kris wasn’t a taskmaster all the time. Sure, during busy times she was prone to exhort the staff to work faster. And she didn’t tolerate leaning (remember, “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean”). But this attitude relaxed a bit during slower times, and it especially relaxed for the better workers like Daniel, Eric, and Craig, three of the fastest guns on the sandwich assembly board.

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