McDonald's Meltdown

Since departing a period of regular employment that could loosely be called a career, I’ve experienced a broad assortment of income sources. It’s usually a mix of employment, self-employment, and gig work. Times can be leaner or more flush. I experienced a particularly lean patch when I was living in Northeast England recently. After applying for many dozens of jobs, one place hired me: McDonald’s. I had not put any thought at all into the application. I still remember it: It was a late-night work spree, probably close to midnight, and I nihilistically decided to apply for every single job on Indeed in the town I lived in, whether I had the slightest interest in it or not. 

The first obstacle to taking the job was psychological. When I received the offer of employment, my mind flooded with old preconceptions and negative stereotypes. In the welfare-unfriendly environment where I had grown up in the United States, McDonald’s was often held up as the lowest possible job in existence. It was offered as a scathing indictment: Rather than being on welfare, someone could “just work at McDonald’s.” I had hardly ever even eaten at McDonald’s. In our health food-eating household, it was barely considered food. It was certainly something that should not be eaten other than as a last, somewhat shameful resort. After accepting the job offer, it took several weeks for my internalized snobbery to subside. 

In reality, I quickly found that two characteristics rose to prominence in the job:

People at McDonald’s work unbelievably hard. This is not some cushy office job where you can sit down, be paid more than minimum wage, and glance at your phone occasionally during working hours. I know from experience that many office jobs can be unbearably stressful. However, this job is hard physical labor, without cessation for even a moment. Never again will I fail to be in awe of people who do these jobs. 

The other important point is that every single employee and manager I met at the restaurant (which was considered small, employing approximately 70 people) was nice. All of them, all the time, throughout the duration of my employment. I witnessed literally no personal ill will at any time. This was a far cry from the relentless, misery-driven backstabbing of my previous legal secretarial career. 

Unfortunately, other aspects were highly challenging for me. The job is a sensory nightmare. Lights are bright, music is loud, and people constantly talk to you, both employees and customers. People speak when it is simply not necessary. One employee, who was clearly trying to be helpful, verbally told me which drinks to retrieve at the exact same time that I was reading that information off the order slip. He looked stunned when I somewhat hysterically told him my brain did not work like that, and I could either read OR listen, but not both. Having a single focus is also not an option. You are expected to do the primary task, then a secondary one, then a few more after that. Presumably, the objective is to ensure that you will never, ever have a fleeting moment of not doing something. 

One morning, I was at the drinks station during breakfast. The morning time is somewhat slow in this restaurant. It is the only time of day it isn’t mobbed. It was still busy, of course, enough to keep you steadily moving at all times. But it stands out in my mind because I can remember thinking, oh, this isn’t too bad. This feels manageable. 

The happiness was short-lived. One of the crew trainers (below the four or so levels of management, but still above a crew member) approached me with the all-too-familiar e-learning tablet. It was encased in a thick, rubbery case, sticky with constant use. The screen lay beneath layers of greasy fingerprints, and there was a soggy loop on the back with which to hold it. Sure enough, I was assigned a new e-learning module. Feeling hopeful, but trying to sound casual, I said, 

“Should I just go into the crew room to do this?” He answered quickly.

“No, you can just do it out here on the shop floor.” He went on to clarify that any restaurant work took priority; I was to fit in the e-learning during any pauses, which were, in fact, nonexistent. Somehow, I managed to get the module done, and pass, whilst suppressing the onset of tears.

The Problem of the Sauces

Handing food out the drive-thru window for a few hours really provides a close-up study of human behavior, at least in that limited context. 

To make a sweeping generalization, people in Britain don’t like to impose. There is a politeness and a desire not to be a bother. There is also a terrific thriftiness, a trait especially well developed in the Northeast. Until recently, food outlets like McDonald’s charged for the plastic tubs of sauces. What those facts together mean is that people remain silent about sauces during the entire ordering, paying, and serving processes. Then, when they are just driving away, and you are already starting to focus on the next customer, they say, 

“Could I have some tomato sauce, please?” I would suppress my fury and hand them two tubs of sauce. Two, never one, to reinforce the notion that these items are free and abundant. Meaning, they can ask for them sooner. 

We were supposed to ask every customer if they wanted sauce. But after a string of ten said no, it was extremely tempting to stop asking. Of course, as soon as you did not ask, someone would have a sauce issue past your window, thereby revealing that you had been negligent in your sauce duty while they were at your window. 

Shortcomings always come back to the employee. Once, one of the higher-up managers took a bag of food to the customer waiting in “Pull Forward” - the spot where people wait for food that wasn’t ready at the previous (your) window. On his way back from Pull Forward, he looked at me and said pointedly, 

“Make sure you ask people if they want any sauces BEFORE they go to Pull Forward.” I refrained from suggesting that we should instead launch a comprehensive educational campaign so that customers would know how to obtain sauces correctly. 

The job in general fanned the flames of my misanthropy. My aversion to human beings is visceral, rather than volitional, and it is not optional. When I have a chance to get used to people, I often find them to be perfectly fine. There are many people in my life whom I love very much; but I have to get past the initial resistance. The phenomenon is sort of like a non-Newtonian liquid, such as cornstarch and water. A substance, under pressure, acts like a solid and presents a resistant surface. But when pressure is released, it acts like a liquid and stops resisting. Unfortunately, the relentless environment at McDonald’s rarely presented an opportunity for me to get past the resistant solid phase. 

The worst was “Click n Serve.” I was shocked that this offering was still in place after the pandemic. One parks their car, orders through an app on their phone, then waits for their food to be brought to their parking stall. The very existence of “Click n Serve” annoyed me, even without sauce complications. The customers using this mechanism were apparently too lazy to either walk into the restaurant or operate their vehicle around the drive-through lane. Worst of all, it involved walking through the jam-packed restaurant out to the parking stalls. I would steadfastly avoid eye contact in the sea of sullen faces.

The job stress increased rapidly for me. At the beginning, the stress on my body was brutal. I experienced pains that were both dramatic and variable. Feet and shins were big problems from the outset, then knees and hips. Wrists were not far behind, followed by the lower back. And the fatigue. Far beyond normal fatigue, I often lost the day after a shift due to needing to nap all day. After weeks of these multiple points of pain, the situation finally leveled out when I bought special shoes, wore industrial-strength compression stockings, and only worked 5-hour shifts, never two days in a row. I ruthlessly overhauled my diet, removing all sugar and increasing my intake of protein, antioxidants, and electrolytes.

Mentally and in terms of sensory overload, things got very bad. After two months of employment, tasks were no longer meted out at a pace where you could assimilate them individually. From the moment you arrived until the moment you left, it was a barrage of tasks, questions, corrections, sounds, and faces. The corrections, in particular, grated. They are completely necessary in such a regulated, procedure-based environment, but the constant pings felt like someone poking me with a stick multiple times every hour. 

At points of very intense stress, I don’t always have complete control over my body. It feels like I have too much energy, as if there is too much electricity running through too small a circuit. I have experienced this phenomenon several times in high-stress situations.

On one fateful shift, as the tension built up, I lost this kinetic control. French fries sprayed all over the floor as I filled the paper sleeves excessively vigorously, unable to tone down my movements. I had been working with another manager for at least an hour, during which time she had nagged me relentlessly to press the serve-off button at the drive-through. The speed at which the serve-off button is pressed affects the restaurant stats for the franchise owner, so management really, really cares about the serve-off button. I had experienced this nagging from virtually every manager at every shift where I had worked the drive-through window, so I knew to press it as fast as humanly possible. Despite my finger being squarely on the button, this manager bounced gently against the fryers and said, 

“Serve off… Serve off… Serve off…” over and over again. Even as my own nerves were fraying exponentially, I thought she seemed slightly unhinged. 

A moment later, she corrected me about something else in the same way that had become so familiar. I don’t even remember what it was now. It could have been that I prepared an order in a slightly incorrect sequence, or that I had violated some other procedural detail. As I passed behind her to get to another station, I found each of my hands on her upper arms, which I patted firmly three times while saying in a somewhat deranged, singsong tone, 

“I do EVERYTHING wrong!” Even as I was doing it, neon letters flashed in my mind: STOP TOUCHING HER. But it was too late to undo my action. In the current age, I knew I had crossed a line. 

It took another hour or two, but sure enough, I was called into the manager's office. She explained that by touching her, I had not maintained a Safe and Inclusive Environment. She added that she was personally very upset by my touching her. As the meeting wore on, the two months of stress that had been building up inside of me started to tumble out. The floodgates opened: I sobbed that I was being reprimanded constantly, I was sure I was going to be fired, I felt my attendance was a problem, but no one had called me on it, the customers were always miserable, I wasn’t sure I could take it anymore, etc. My crying became heavier and heavier, the sobs deeper and deeper. I felt it was going on too long, but it had taken on a life of its own; I couldn’t stop it. 

There is nothing wrong with letting the emotions out and opening up. But I again felt I was not fully in control of my behavior. There was a sort of split in my consciousness: Part of me was relieved to be heard, but I also felt like it was going on a lot longer than necessary. I was just repeating myself over and over again. I felt stuck in this completely devastated state, unable to break out and recover. 

Do all people from abusive backgrounds do this? Put themselves forward as a sacrificial offering? Watch it all unfold in horrifying detail, but be unable to stop it? This is what it had come to. After this meltdown, I had to leave the shift early, as I was unable to regain any emotional stability. Later, I walked up the hill to go home, carrying a plastic bag full of my work shoes and a dozen snot-soaked napkins. 

I can only have compassion for myself, just as I would have compassion for anyone else in that situation. After years of self-awareness work, I had an idea what was coming and at what point there was no return. But I found myself in a state of being able to observe the progression, but not alter it. All you can do is try to catch it earlier next time, with love and kindness. Exiting the circumstances earlier is an excellent way of handling it, but that is not always an option in the inflexible world of employment. Sometimes compassion is all you have. 

I went on to work there for a few more months before quitting. Doing so put me under considerable financial strain, at least for a while. Unfortunately, this job was not the first time an impassable conflict between my well-being and employment forced me to let go of the latter. That has led to some difficult and at times alarming circumstances. Ultimately, to me, mental and physical health cannot be replaced or repaired as easily as money. The world is often incredibly harsh for those outside a norm. Perhaps one day, such stark choices will no longer be necessary.