Maccas Monday - Attack of the Killer Truck of Doom!

When i was working at McDonalds, I was consistently given the "Walkers" shift. This amounts to accepting a delivery of stock, rotating the stock that's already stored in the freezers and other stock areas, organising it into a logical order, and putting it away neatly. I was given this shift often, because I was apparently quite good at it.

I suppose all that time playing Tetris paid off somehow.

Aside from the usual woes of the delivery, such as management ordering more stock than is physically possible to fit on the shelves while still following legal regulations as far as safe stack heights are concerned, one particular delivery sticks in my mind far more than the others. Though simultaneously, far less as well.

The delivery had been taken, and all the boxes counted up. It turns out that we were missing about four boxes of tatsoi lettuce - the "fancy" (read extra leafy so they can get away with putting less on a burger) lettuce used for the crispy chcken burgers (and the Angus burgers). The delivery driver, Tony, decided that we should check the other stores' orders on the truck. Sometimes the idiots who put the stock on the truck mix the orders up.

I went to assist him in taking a look. The back door on the truck was a strange kind of latch (which I'd seen before on my father's truck), where there was a lever in a holder. Raise the lever and pull it outwards to open the truck door. Unfortunately for me, the lever got stuck in the holder, so I started hitting it, to make it move upwards, and therefore open the door.

With my amazingly bad luck, the lever finally flew upwards. It also flew outwards, straight into my nose, knocking my backwards a few steps, and sending my glasses flying a few meters away. After retrieving my eyes, I realised that my nose was bleeding, quite heavily. I (somehow) calmly acquired some paper towel, and proceeded to sit in the crew room, plugging my nose with it to wait for it to stop.

Then I woke up, on the floor, with a co-worker's crotch in my face. When he realised I was awake, he hurriedly moved (I think... uh hope? that he was simply laying me down properly, but from an awkward angle) to reveal about 12 more faces standing around. My first question was "Why are you teabagging me?", which was quickly followed by "Where am I?"

About 15 minutes later, an ambulance arrived. The lady from the ambo woke me up (I had passed out again, by this point) and tried to move me. I then woke up again, to a lecture along the lines of "If you do that again, I will leave you here". Apparently, I had passed out again, and almost hit her in the face! Apparently, she took this matter personally... because I was totally in control of my actions at this point -.-

Eventually, they got me to the hospital, where I awaited a doctor. Five hours later, I saw a doctor, who determined that I had a mild concussion, and had somehow not broken any bones. If the lever had hit me a little to the right, I would have broken my nose. Left? Cheekbone. up would have been glasses/eyes, and any lower and I would have lost teeth. I was amazingly lucky.

A few days later, I was back on the job - the next shift being taking the delivery again.

A few weeks later, the regional manager took me aside, and blasted me for attempting to help the truck driver. Apparently its not my job to help people who are helping me do my job. Yet another reason why McDonald's is a trap!

And for the record, our lettuce wasn't on the truck.

McMonday - The Goggles do Nothing!

One long, late night working in the trenches at McDonalds was made even longer by the face that it was extremely quiet. We had just made the transition from closing at midnight to being open 24 hours a day, and most of the customer peon types nearby were still unaware of this fact - which made the late shift quite highly sought after, by combining a lack of effort required to get through the night, as well as extra payment due to being after midnight.

Sweet, sweet time and a half.

However, the quiet shift inevitably made the time feel slower (as it does). It was made to feel even longer by the stupidity of those around me.

At one stage, I had gone to the front counter (no danger of bumping into customers - at that stage we were running the drive through only as our 24 hour option) to grab a drink (while it was quiet, it was still exceedingly warm in the kitchen, since there are grills and toasters everywhere). While I was there, I was stopped by one of the front area serving girls, who wanted to have a little chat with me. Well, I say chat, but I actually mean she wanted to ask me questions while I answered out of politeness. It may sound rude, but I had talked to her at length before, and found that, really, she had the IQ of a peanut. You will come to this realisation in a moment.

So, the usual "When do you finish tonight? When did you start? How's your sister?" (?!?) questions began. Once they were over, she asked me what seemed to be a much more pressing question.

"Why do you wear glasses all the time?"

Prepare to see this image a LOT in the McMonday posts...

I couldn't believe my ears! Here I am at work, speaking to one of the, admittedly not so intellectually inclined people at work. Sure, its McDonalds, and I don't expect people to be super geniuses (I only expect that of myself, and fall quite short), but basic day to day life things like people wearing glasses to bolster poor eyesight is something she should have picked up on in her twenty-something years of existence (she's actually older than me). Whether she learn from school, tv, or just by being around people...

I actually had to explain to her, that I couldn't see very well naturally, and that the devices known as "glasses" allowed me to see as well as normal people. Her follow up question, was much, much more worrying.

"Do you wear them when you go to bed?"

Really? I mean... really?

By this point, I was no longer able to answer her - it was the last thing I had expected. After stumbling over the "Oh shit! I didn't realise people could possibly be this stupid" response that was stuck in my head, I literally couldn't answer her. Another crew member heard this exchange, and jumped in with "Yes, if someone robs him then he needs to be able to identify the burglar". Almost as mind boggling as the question itself!

A lot of the time, when I tell this story, people tell me that I should have said "Yes, so that my dreams are in focus". A missed opportunity, if ever I've seen one.

My glasses are a topic that comes up in casual conversation occasionally. Usually its along the lines of "How much can you see without them? How badly would I see if I looked through them?" and then ends with people trying them on ("I look smart! S-M-R-T! OH CRAP I CAN'T SEE WHAT IS THIS WIZARDRY?!?"), and hurting their eyes because it unfocuses things for them. However, this occurrence stuck in my mind as a shining example of why we really should just remove the warning labels from everything and let Darwinism run its course.

Stories from McDonalds - SCIENCE!

Every workplace has a token idiot. Well, most workplaces do. My one doesn't... unless that idiot is me. Which I suppose is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to come to, though I sure hope not!

Anyway, my point is that my prior workplace - McDonalds, is utterly full of them. Full enough that I have quite a bunch of stories I find quite amusing from when I used to work there, so I thought I would share a few of them, beginning with today's post.

One of the shifts I was consistently subjected to while working there was known as "Walkers", which was taking the delivery off the truck and putting the stock away in a neat and orderly fashion. I quite enjoyed this shift, since it did not require me to be in uniform, and was a great way to get away from the bustle and heat of the kitchen, as well as other crew members that cause me no end of torture.

Well, except for one - since Walkers was a two person job (as well as the truck driver, but he really doesn't do much after throwing the boxes of stock at us). Quite often I had a rare good crew member with me to help. Of course, I occasionally had idiots too.

On this particular shift, all was going well enough. The freezer had been unloaded, but was woefully overstocked as per usual. The dry stock, which lives in a room temperature stockroom rather than a fridge or freezer, was also unloaded, and we were up to simply putting the stuff away and rotating it (so that food gets used before the use by dates - contrary to popular belief McDonalds actually does follow most food safety laws).

We were unpacking the bottles of flavouring for the coffees - for some reason we had fancy flavourings for the coffees in the McCafe of our store. As you would expect, these boxes contained bottles of the syrup. These bottles had lids on them, as one would also expect.

For some reason, my crew member took the bottle, turned it upside down, and was amazed when the lid prevented the syrup from pouring out. He was amazed enough that he called out to me (I was in the hallway getting another box) to get my attention, and when I appeared, he exclaimed "LOOK! Science!"

And all I could wish for was that he had GLADoS' vision of science imprinted upon him, and he go and scientifically discover the height that he could safely jump from without spilling the dust that was contained by his skull all over the concrete.