I thought the minimum wage was $5.35. I sputtered that she could not pay that low and she took my ignorance for negotiation. I accepted the counteroffer of $5.50, red face and all.
We know why I took the job—I was writing a book. But in my time at Mickey D’s I saw others accept the offer at similar wages. Why would people stay here when down the road, less than a mile away, was a Wendy’s offering a dollar more an hour? On the surface, labor economists would call this illogical. Part of the answer links to this store’s ability to create social ties. When I sat down for my job interview one of the crew members came over and offered me a soda—no higher paying store attempted to forge a social relationship this quickly. On my first day of work, less than five minutes into the form-completion process, a worker close to my demographic (i.e., old) proactively sought me out and talked about the three jobs he had. This job, he declared, was his favorite. Real nice people, he noted.
Moments later I was watching a DVD, the sole purpose of which was to identify the many ways in which McDonald’s was a fun place to work. Every other DVD I saw across the seven stores I worked in focused almost exclusively on skills train- ing and harassment no-no’s. This DVD offered no training, just a perspective on why I should work for Ronald McDonald.
This store also worked hard to make sure it could accommodate my specific needs. In the QSR sector hours of work are an important currency. If I cannot get and keep the hours I want, I will go to a store that is more flexible. This McDonald’s was a corporate store using a unique (at least in my experience) software program requiring me to answer three questions: (1) what days did I want to work per week, (2) how many hours per day, and (3) during what timeframe. I got the hours I wanted. Other stores had managers develop schedules with far less satisfactory results. By being flexible and trying to accommodate my preferred work schedule, this store promoted systems that increased the chances that I would “fit.”
Burger King 1
Of the seven stores I worked in, only two of my interviews lasted more than 10 minutes. Most were under five minutes. My best manager interviewed me for more than an hour. She admitted that her goal was to see if I would fit in with the existing culture. Fit to her was not about a fit between her skill needs and my skill profile. In low-barrier jobs this is not typically an issue. Rather she wanted to make sure that what mattered to me, my values and interests, coincided with those of her workers. Her crew got along well together and she did not want to spoil a team that had an enviable performance record (one of the top-rated stores in the northeast and with turnover hovering at just about 100 percent—very low for the QSR sector). I found out much later that I passed her scrutiny because it was evident that I was proud to be working in fast food and that I had a sense of humor that enjoyed give-and-take joking. This, she noted proudly, was a key characteristic of the people on her team.
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Everything that Kris did, conveyed that she took our jobs seriously and viewed us as a team. She was heavily involved in my training, devoting more time than any other manager I encountered to giving me feedback and acted as a sounding board in my first days on the job. When she “handed me off ” to a crew member for further training I already felt a bond with her. A manager’s time is a valuable asset, and I knew that she had expended more time than was typical in prior jobs to help me weather the first days.
Kris also knew how to have fun. When a particularly grueling lunch rush was over she was one of the first to joke about some of the customers and their odd demands. And if a hacky sack happened to fly through the air in a brief game of hacky tag, well, she was conveniently looking the other way. The group who worked in this store knew when to work, and enjoyed each other’s company when time permitted. Kris guarded this culture by hiring only people who fit, and nurturing them through the training process. This emphasis on the social side, approached differently in McDonald’s than in this Burger King, nevertheless emphasized building social networks and enjoying each other.
Krystal
Krystal is a medium-sized chain located in the southeast with a business model much like White Castle in the midwest. I was scheduled for an interview with James at 3 p.m. James was 10 minutes late, rushing in while apologizing that he had to act as chauffeur to a crew member with car problems. Over the course of the next two days I found that this impromptu favor to a crew member was classic James behavior. Crew members informed me that James regularly worked unin- terrupted 24 hour shifts. These weekly occurrences were the unavoidable outcome of trying to make sure his workers all get exactly the shifts they wanted. Someone had to pay for this flexibility, and James willingly assumed the burden.
It was my third day and I was in the walk-in refrigerator getting pickles.
I dropped the container and pickle juice flew everywhere. Fifteen minutes later, pickle juice cleaned up, I emerged to what seemed an empty store. There were no employees. There were no customers. I wondered, was Stephen King at work?
Had a virus felled everyone and I had survived because of the pickle juice anti- dote? As I walked to the front of the store I glanced out of the drive thru win- dow. The entire missing crew was gathered around one of the cars, smoking and drinking sodas. Laughter flowed freely. Later I asked James what was going on.
These “smoke breaks” were a regular part of James’s strategy to keep workers
bonded around a death metal band member who reveled in shocking people with his language and behavior. Because he was a superb employee with several years’
tenure, the store manager put up with his sometimes borderline behavior. But the cadre attached to him was another matter. They all attempted to imitate his behav- ior, with sometimes hugely coarse outcomes. The profanity-laced language and sexual innuendo were textbook classics of a hostile work environment. The manager had warned these workers, but he was reluctant to terminate anyone because all of them might have exited at once. The cost of this indecision, though, was high. New employees endured a mild mix of initiation rights, usually centered on sarcastic critiques of mistakes we made in the first days. On my first day working I was put on the front counter. I mistakenly referred to a chicken fillet sandwich order as a “chicken filly.” The group erupted into laughter: “what’s a chicken filly? Are we serving horse sandwiches here? Nayyyyyyy,” the wittiest of them said. I was mortified, and not the least bit amused. Later, a young female was subjected to similar rituals. After enduring them she whispered to me: “Is this all there is?” I interpreted this as a question about life addressed to someone who had eaten several slices. I was not prepared to answer such soul-searching ques- tions in the middle of a lunch rush. Nor was I likely to bond with a group of males who could drive a teenager to such a desperate search for meaning.
McDonald’s 2
The crew in this store was about evenly divided between Hispanic and white crew members. Hispanics had all the sandwich assembly jobs and the maintenance jobs. Only one of these workers appeared to speak fluent English. The white workforce occupied all the jobs interacting with customers—front counter, drive thru, and runners (carrying food from bins to pack into bags or place on trays).
The two groups were separated not only by language, but also by the barriers of technology. Warmer and holding bins, drink dispensers, and heating lamps made it difficult for the two groups to converse even if the language barriers were not prevalent. Further reducing the ability to interact was a store manager who was uneasy in her role. She had not yet been to Hamburger University to receive managerial training. She admitted in a moment of nerves that she was scheduled to go the next week and she was very concerned about her ability to measure up.
She also was not very good at her job! With this single exception most of the managers and assistants tended to be amongst the best workers in the store. They were fast sandwich assemblers, and adept at packing orders into bags or onto trays quickly. Sara was none of these things. For example, the runner usually is expect- ed to fill drink orders and take meal items and place them into sacks. Sara regularly would get behind and angrily tell the crew on register that she needed help filling drink orders. This, of course, slowed down order-taking—a necessary outcome if Sara was to avoid getting even further behind. Sara’s inability to work as quickly as those she managed made for a lack of credibility and little respect.
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Her anger also further widened the social gap created by language and technolo- gy. Because she could go from benign to ballistic in a matter of minutes, most people did their jobs and avoided conversations that were not job-related.
Burger King 2
I had my worst employment experience here. I walked into the store around 3 p.m., a good time to find harried managers with a moment of free time to conduct an interview. The first words from the shift supervisor as he sat down to interview me were: “You don’t want to work here!” Shocked that I might have misheard him I said “What?” He reiterated “You don’t want to work here. It’s a terrible place to work.” Rubbing my hands gleefully at the thought of all these data points, I quick- ly accepted the job that was offered less than five minutes later. My first day of work was a Monday. Even though I worked the same shift as the store manager, I had no idea who she was. This continued through the third day. People approached me, barraging me with conflicting advice on how to do my job—none of them was Angela. She was, I was informed, one of the women up front. The design of fast food restaurants makes it, intentionally I think, difficult for customers to see the workers in the back sandwich assembly area. Equally, though, the technology barriers (warming lights, fry bins, drink dispensers, etc.) made it difficult to figure which of the three women were Angela. None wore name tags. In fact no one wore name tags. Through the third day I was referred to as “Hey You.” On the fourth day my work area was underneath the central part of a leaking roof—the inevitable outcome of a flat roof combined with a heavy storm the night before.
Worried that the floor was getting slippery, I put down a cloth to soak up the water. Not five minutes later I heard a booming voice say “Pick that up.” I coun- tered by explaining how this condition was a workers’ compensation claim waiting to happen, and was about to explain OSHA requirements when I felt a jab in the back and heard a crew member behind me say “don’t say another word.
She fired someone last week for less than what you’re doing.” I quickly shut up, but I was angry. I deduced that I had finally met Angela, and it left me wishing I had not.
Two people in the store were in Angela’s good graces—her sister and her best friend. Everyone else was treated as replaceable units expected to do their jobs without complaint or interaction. On one occasion the regional manager came to the store. It was a busy Friday and he rallied the crew to explain that drive times (a vital metric in fast food, measuring time from order-placed to order-filled at drive thru windows) were below acceptable levels and exhort us to work faster. As
regional manager would let us know—if our efforts had paid off. Did we come together as a team to cut drive times? The regional manager went to the manager’s office, conferred with Angela about the drive times showing on the computer screen in front of them, walked out of her office, and exited by the back door. Not a word to the minions. I took this as yet another sign that we were not valued.
Nothing embedded here!
On what turned out to be my last day, I received a policy-prohibited cell phone call from my wife. I found that my daughter had to have a surgery with potentially serious consequences. I told the manager, losing a battle to fight back tears. She was nonresponsive to my emotional state, asking only if I wanted a leave of absence or if I was quitting. Until that moment I had intended to return. The cold- ness of her response, though, prompted an angry “I’m quitting.”
SUMMARY
I do not believe that turnover in these stores was caused by money issues. Most stores paid similar amounts and offered increases on equivalent time schedules. As anecdotal evidence, one of the highest paying stores, my second Burger King, had 500 percent turnover. The other Burger King, part of the same corporation and paying identical wages, had turnover of just over 100 percent—about one-fifth that of the other store. I think a key difference between these two stores, and probably between the first set of three stores and the latter set, was the level of success in building a strong social environment where individual needs were attended to and friendships flourished. My first Burger King experience best exemplifies this. The manager selected me for fit with the personalities of crew members. She took no chances leaving my early socialization to others—most of my early training came from her. Despite being very focused on achieving good metrics, she knew how to have fun when lunch rush was over and she knew when to turn her back and let good-natured games prevail. Krystal and my first McDonald’s also focused on cre- ating camaraderie amongst crew members. The Krystal manager actually asked me if I smoked. Only later did I find out that he liked his crew to all break at once, usually in the parking lot, and usually over a cigarette.
Conversely, in my worst store I was referred to as “Hey You.” Even though I had a name tag, it was too much of a bother to learn my name. After all, if history was any predictor, I would be gone before my name could be learned. This depressing view was most subscribed to by the store manager, a woman who spent time with only two crew members—her sister and her best friend. In my Arby’s experience and in my second McDonald’s, language and technology barriers further contributed to social distancing. Not understanding Spanish and being uncomfortable with profanity-laced conversations both added to social barriers and reduced embeddedness. The result was turnover.
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REFERENCES
Allen, D. G., “Do Organizational Socialization Tactics Influence Newcomer Embeddedness and Turnover?,” Journal of Management, vol. 32, no. 2, 2006, pp. 237–256.
Holtom, B. C., Mitchell, T. R. and Lee, T. W., “Increasing Human and Social Capital by Applying Job Embeddedness Theory,” Organizational Dynamics, vol. 35, no. 4, 2006, pp. 316–331.
Milkovich, G. and Newman, J., Compensation, 9th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
Mitchell, T., Holtom, B., Lee, T., Sablynski, C. and Erez, M., “Why People Stay:
Using Job Embeddedness to Predict Voluntary Turnover,” Academy of Management Journal, 2001.
Newman, J., My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter Guaranteed to Supersize any Management Style. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007.
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