Page 220 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

succeed. Many of the items that today are ready-to-serve then
required manual preparation by the crew. We were in a fishbowl,
in the old red-and-white style buildings designed to let the pub-
lic see just what went on behind the scenes in the kitchen. There
were even benches on the outside so that customers could sit
and watch the crew at work, and see how clean our operation
was—an important mission at a time when some were skeptical
about how good a 15-cent hamburger really was.
Crew jobs at McDonald’s have long been dismissed as menial
jobs, but in reality, these employees had the opportunity to grow
into the system and move up. The system is designed to spot
hardworking talent, from the moment of hire. Work hard, and
someone will notice. Work hard, and there will be a potential
opportunity. So I made the conscious effort to perform at my
very best, even though I knew very little about making ham-
burgers, let alone how to handle a busy lunch crowd.
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“Hustle!” Ralph, my manager, shouted this command reg-
ularly. He was a man of few words, but hustle was definitely
one of them. Anytime Ralph shouted “Hustle!” we sprung into
action, literally running from station to station, serving the cus-
tomers. Each job depended on the other and collectively per-
sonified teamwork. If one worker did not keep up, inevitably
a backlog would result, causing lines to sometimes stretch out
to the street—a definite taboo. As the newcomer to the team,
I was fairly intimidated. What if I could not keep up? I had
images of that I Love Lucy episode, where Lucy works at a
candy factory but falls behind in production. How embarrass-
ing it would be to let the team down, especially in front of all
the customers!
I listened carefully to my assigned trainer, the “star” bun man
in the store, awed by his peers for his ability to keep up with
demand, no matter how big the lunch rush. I strove to place the
buns gently on the grill—no thumbprints on the crowns! —and