You’re in the way!

Tonight was our first “McTeacher Night” in which some of the teachers in our school got to work at the local McDonalds.  I wasn’t sure going into it what it was going to be like, but it turned out to be super fun.  When we walked in the lines were already super long, so we got thrown right into the thick of it. We had a choice to work either on the registers, or being food callers.  I have seen new workers struggle with the register, so naturally I chose to work in back!

My two wonderful teacher partners and I split up our duties rather successfully.  Two of us were in charge of the shakes, ice cream cones, sundaes, and the dreaded McFlurries.  We had a great time filling up the shakes and ice cream cones, those weren’t too bad.  We also had to fill a ton of the little kiddy cones since they were free to all the kids. The McFlurries were not as easy however. That little mixer is not the easiest thing to control, but my partner and I finally got the hang of it.

There were a couple of really cool takeaways from this experience for me. The first one is seeing how many families showed up for this event. It was super cool to see them watch their teachers back there serving them.  They looked like they were having a really great time, and that was what this was all about. The second takeaway that I had from this is the workers from this McDonalds.  From the management down, they were all so gracious to us.  I know for them we were totally in the way, and probably made their job even harder, but they took us under their wing, stayed patient with us, and taught us how to do everything.  There was one manager that really stuck out to me.  He was so encouraging to all of his staff, constantly complimenting them, and reinforcing how great they were doing.  It was really cool to see that side of it. As a customer, you expect them to get your food to you really fast, and when they don’t, or if they make a small mistake, you get frustrated.  Being there really showed me how crazy and chaotic it can get when they are busy, so it enlightened me to how hard these guys really work.

Overall, this was supposed to be just a fundraiser for our school.  It actually turned out to be much more than that for me.  It was cool to hear the manager tell us that usually from 4:00-5:00 they usually make around $300.  Today they made $800! I actually didn’t want to leave when the time was up, I wanted to stay and keep working those McFlurries!