Mike's Completely Painless Visit to McDonald's

When I was going to McDonald's to place my order for this experiment, I thought back to my own days when I was a teenager working at McDonald's near where I grew up in Staten Island.
The experiences I had at my McDonald's were different from those of most other McDonald's alumni I have spoken to who worked at other locations. Our original owner went bankrupt and the McDonald's parent corporation assumed control of the franchise. It is rare for McDonald’s Corporation to own their restaurants, but in our case they had to do so until a new owner could be found. Top managers were relocated to Staten Island from other cities to run the restaurant and brought with them higher standards and more attention to detail than one would normally see at a McDonald's.
My experience working there has made me very interested over the years in seeing how different McDonald's restaurants are run. At some, like mine, managers run a tight ship. You can always hear, "If you can lean, you can clean!" or "We don't pay you guys to socialize, get back to work!" and my favorite, managers who would shout, “Don’t wait, do!” At others, the staff is slower and less focused and seem to be more interested in chatting than in getting orders out quickly and accurately. So, this was the perspective I went in with when I went to McDonald’s to complete this assignment.
I work in Nutley, NJ and went to the nearest McDonald’s in Belleville, NJ for lunch shortly before noon on Thursday, April 2, 2009. There was an extremely long line owing to a group of students from the local high school and nurses from a local hospital which meant the wait was almost 13 minutes. I noticed that there were only 2 registers open and both were manned by employees in their teens who seemed unsure of themselves and who had to continuously ask for clarification on orders. Just as I finally got to the front of the line, a manager who appeared to be around 40 years old opened another register and asked if she could take my order. I walked up and said, “I would like a small fries, well done with no salt and a regular hamburger with four pickles and can I please have the receipt?” She asked, “Would you like anything to drink?” and I said no. She said, “That will be $2.02. Is this to go?” and as I handed her a twenty and answered yes, she turned over her shoulder and shouted, “Guys! That grill order for the hamburger, give me 4 pickles exactly!”
She waited for a beat and then asked, “Got that?”
“Hamburger, 4 pickles, thank you!” was the reply from the grill area.
At this point, she handed me my change and wheeled around towards the French fries area. There was a basket of fries that had been removed to drain but was not yet put into the fry warmer. She put that basket of fries back into the oil and cleared the French fry bin by putting the fries that were in there into large-size fry boxes and placing them under the heat lamps. She used a damp towel to wipe down the fry bin and then got two paper tray liners and laid them face-down in order to make sure there would be no salt on my fries. She let the fries cook for about another sixty seconds, she took them out of the oil, shook them and dumped them onto the paper she had laid out. She put some of the fries into a small-size paper fry bag, put that into a to-go bag, picked up the burger that had been put onto the counter behind the register with the “grill slip” taped to it and put that into the bag, folded it over and handed it all to me along with the receipt.
The entire transaction took less than three minutes and was completed correctly: the fries were well done with no salt (by the way, fries are awful this way) and the burger had exactly four pickles.The management process I witnessed was very interesting because I got to see it done The Right Way. I do not think that it would have been the same case if I had gone to one of the younger non-management staff at the other registers. The most important thing was that she was clear on what I wanted and made it happen as soon as she got the order in. She was totally clear on the fact that I wanted four pickles and related that fact to the grill staff. She also made sure that they acknowledged that they also understood exactly what I wanted, which showed me that they were well trained in their procedure, requiring positive acknowledgement on any requests in order to minimize misunderstandings. I was amazed at how quickly she got my fries done. She never second-guessed what she needed to do, just methodically and quickly got each step done and got my whole order to me in less than three minutes.
If I was asked to improve efficiency in McDonald’s, I would make sure that their training stressed the fact that in each job the ultimate goal is to get good food to customers quickly. Then I would use the manager I saw at the Belleville, NJ McDonald’s as a model from which we can improve the procedures for other restaurants. I would want to learn how she gets her staff to respond to her in the manner they do and to find out why she handled my special-order fries the way she did. I would then determine whether staff at the registers is capable of duplicating her work and if not, see what we can do to get them trained on the same procedures she followed. Once we get that figured out, we would be able to roll out that the same training to staff at other McDonald’s restaurants so they can do the same things.

Mike's DiSC evaluation

My results indicated that my orientation is towards Influence/Dominance. I think that the test got it right and I don't wish I were another type: my personal opinion is that rather than trying to become another type, one should find what their natural type is and work at maximizing their effectiveness while playing to their natural strengths.
It would probably be pretty instructive to learn what management "type" someone is to better understand where they are coming from. That way you can be better prepared for their actions and their management style and know what to expect when working with them. These are the same reasons why I think that this would also help in personal situations.
If I could choose the people I would be stranded with on our frozen survival scenario, I would likely choose a Dominant/Influence leader who was knowledgeable and would understand what would need to be done to survive. In a scenario like this, it would be important to have someone who could get everyone on the same page quickly and effectively. Steadiness and Conscientiousness would not be as important if our lives were on the line.