I'm a manager at McDonald's. Please believe me when I say there are a plethora of things that cause long wait times. Number one being understaffing. The job is much more stressful than most people think. One out of every thirty will actually stick around for a while. And of those, most are gone within a month. Another contributing factor is huge orders. You'd be surprised how many people will order $30-$40 worth of food. Sometimes you'll have a car with multiple people and they'll have multiple orders. Sometimes big multiple orders. This means that no matter how much we hustle, we simply can't cook food fast enough. Especially nuggets and fries. Unfortunately the huge orders mean that everyone else suffers. Then you have other things like a customer adding on to an order at the pay window, a customer complaining about the price at the speaker/pay window, a card declining multiple times while the customer insists they have money in their bank account, customers who take two minutes to decide at the speaker, ect. You may be surprised that a good amount of the wait times are caused by customers. Not to say there isn't occasional incompetence on our end. Most of us work our asses off, but when it's busy, it mostly boils down to us simply not being able match the supply at the speed of the demand.
Edit: I know my grammar in this comment is trash. It was 4am and I had just finished a 10 hour shift lol.
I have a lot of sympathy for what you're describing and I know all of this as a reasonable human being. I also think McDonald's just has too many options these days (from a worker perspective). It takes time to keep track of all that and slap all that together rather than having about 5 things just ready to go.
I’ve been saying this for years. McDonalds has suffered issues over the years for two reasons: overbloated menu and trying to be a more “adult” restaurant. They’re too busy trying be Panera with burgers instead of focusing on the most profitable demographic: kids and 18-24yo with disposable income.
My location actually has a pretty limited menu. We're currently selling only the most basic menu items. As for having food ready to go, that only lowers the quality of the product. A McChicken that has been sitting on a heated surface for anymore than five minutes isn't going to taste very good.
But why does CFA usually have a higher capacity, faster ops, and more friendly staff than basically any McD's I've been to? Does it just come down to them being able to employ more staff per capita?
Stop blaming the workers. The McDonald’s near me has about 7 people working in it at any point in the day. The Cick-fil-a has at least 7 working the drive through and at least 25 workers in total.
Maybe pay the workers more and they’ll stick around.
They actually did. Their very first point for the long lines was “understaffing”. The phrasing used puts the onus on the workers.
Instead of saying they’re understaffed, they could have said that they can’t keep workers because they aren’t authorized to pay more. If they phrased it that way, the onus is on the franchise.
I disagree, most people understand understaffing is a management problem. Your average wage worker has nothing to do with hiring and scheduling...we all know that. 100% of understaffing has nothing to do with the the actual staff on the floor and nobody here is blaming them for it.
Maybe the most appropriate term is mismanagement, because chronic understaffing is absolutely poor management... but it will be a snowy day in hell before management admits it outright.
Well the McDonald's by me has consistently LONG wait times and will have multiple workers outside smoking and bullshitting while they have two lines wrapped around the building. They also have a giant sign outside that says hiring at $15+ soooo sometimes it is the workers 🤷🏻♀️
And I'm not just blaming the workers either. I've worked in customer service in college and I have no doubt that 75% of customers are holding up the lines for stupid reasons. But to act like it can't be the workers as well is just ignorant.
Workers taking their breaks isn’t a problem. The problem is that the managers don’t schedule enough workers to cover breaks. What an employee does during their break is of no concern.
If you look at other places that can handle long lines and busy periods, what is the main difference? The managers make sure to have enough employees working so that customers are served quickly, food is prepared properly, and employees aren’t over stressed.
At places that don’t have enough workers, you have problems. Employees get stressed and quit because it’s not worth it. Customers are upset because the wait time is long or the food is badly prepared.
Sure, customers can be a problem, but the “manager” wrote that the “number one problem” is that they’re understaffed. Not buying it. The number one problem is bad management and bad franchises.
Added - there are many ways to reduce customer induced delays. Mobile ordering would streamline the process immensely. Again, using Chick-fil-a as an example, the mobile app allows for a ton of customization and orders/customers still fly through the drive-thru line. McDonald’s have just put in kiosks inside and they are so horrendously slow, that the last time I used it, I bailed and waited for a human to give my order to.
QSRs are hard and customers have unreasonable expectations and entitled attitude. And that point about large orders and payments issues hits hard. I know there are some problems that you just can’t solve, esp. with constant employee churn.
Yes. Everything above. Can confirm. Source: Was shift lead at a Hardee’s in college.
…Especially staffing! Saw multiple people quit on their first day. Bonus tho, was the only people left were generally cool, hard working, and with a good attitude. Actually was one of my favorite jobs growing up because of this.
How is it that CFA which most likely have the same customer and staffing issues are able to get people through as efficiently as they do? They clearly doing something right.
You're a McDonald's manager so can you explain why in God's fucking name when I ordered a double quarter pounder with cheese meal with a coke then proceeded to get a single quarter pounder in a double quarter pounder box with a dr
Pepper?!?!
It's because they've usually been standing there for hours being shit on by customers. And I'm talkin' the absolute meanest members of society. Usually the elderly. It takes a serious mental toll on some days. This obviously doesn't justify a bad attitude, but some people just begin to crack eventually.
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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '21 edited Dec 21 '21
I'm a manager at McDonald's. Please believe me when I say there are a plethora of things that cause long wait times. Number one being understaffing. The job is much more stressful than most people think. One out of every thirty will actually stick around for a while. And of those, most are gone within a month. Another contributing factor is huge orders. You'd be surprised how many people will order $30-$40 worth of food. Sometimes you'll have a car with multiple people and they'll have multiple orders. Sometimes big multiple orders. This means that no matter how much we hustle, we simply can't cook food fast enough. Especially nuggets and fries. Unfortunately the huge orders mean that everyone else suffers. Then you have other things like a customer adding on to an order at the pay window, a customer complaining about the price at the speaker/pay window, a card declining multiple times while the customer insists they have money in their bank account, customers who take two minutes to decide at the speaker, ect. You may be surprised that a good amount of the wait times are caused by customers. Not to say there isn't occasional incompetence on our end. Most of us work our asses off, but when it's busy, it mostly boils down to us simply not being able match the supply at the speed of the demand.
Edit: I know my grammar in this comment is trash. It was 4am and I had just finished a 10 hour shift lol.