A Desire for McChickens at Five in the Morning

In 2013, after spending nearly two years living and volunteering abroad in Israel, I moved back to the United States, settling into the state of Washington. About a week or so after settling in and getting used to the time zone, I got a job at my local McDonald's. While it wasn't a job I necessarily wanted to spend the rest of my life doing, I did enjoy aspects of it (plus it was the first job I could get, I needed to replenish my bank account, and would work there for a total of six months until I started working at Home Depot) and people praised my customer service skills. In fact, I even earned an Employee of the Month award; it would have been nice if my managers had actually told me that I had earned it, instead of me finding out during my break by seeing my name plainly on a print-out in the break-room, but I digress.



Anyway, I mostly worked as a cashier, barely doing any actually cooking aside from heating up French fries and hash browns, along with making coffee. I often worked a shift that began at three in the morning, where I would would work the drive-thru. I met some really interesting people who went through the McDonald's drive-thru line at three in the morning; in all honestly many of them were probably stoners who had a sudden hankering for multiple Big Macs.

One customer in particular who came through the drive-thru a couple hours into my shift will probably always stick in my memory. Here's an approximation of the dialogue that happened.

Me: Good morning! Welcome to McDonald's! How may I help you?

Customer: Yeah man! Hey, I'd like six McChicken sandwiches and a Coke please?

(awkward pause)

Me: I'm sorry sir, but we're not serving McChickens right now. We do have a wide variety of breakfast items though.

Customer: Wait, what? There's no McChickens?

Me: No sir. But we do have some delicious sausage burritos.

Customer: But this is McDonald's? Shouldn't there be McChickens?

Me: I'm sorry sir, but we're not selling McChickens at the moment.

Customer: Now, hold on dude. This is a McDonald's. Shouldn't McChickens be sold here at McDonald's? Like... dude... that's not right man. It sounds so unfair and... unjust.

Me: Sir, it's five in the morning. We're only selling breakfast foods at the moment.

(awkward pause)

Customer: Ohhhh... I can't believe it's five in the morning already. Lost track of time dude! My bad! Okay now, let's see...

I'm kind of glad that I went through the experience (and basically trial by fire) of working at McDonald's. I did learn some things (mostly about customer service and working with people), although it's not a job I would be to excited to go back to.

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