During 2002, I was hired to work at a McDonald's in Lake Charles, LA. Residents of the city will know which one it is by the fact that it is near the mall.However, the owner and the workers were very irresponsible and did not follow correct procedures at that restaurant. I'll simply referto the manager as K and the assistant manager as J. Then there wereworkers.
When I was hired,I had made it clearly known that I have scoliosis and cannot engage in heavy labor. I also wrote that I could not do janitorial jobs due to my scoliosis. The owner looked at this as if it were just fine. I explained that at times I will have to sit down and some days there will be more times than others because it depends on how my back is feeling.
The first thing that happens is that I go to the office to pick up my uniform. They insist that I can wear pants that are too small for me. To them,since I am short, I can obviously wear pants that have a waist that is two inches smaller than my own waist. I could not do anything but take the pants they insisted on giving me. They gave me a shirt and no name tag.
I report to work the first day. They tell me that I am scheduled to work two hours for three days as those are my training days. I am perfectly fine with this.
The first day, a Monday, they have a worker show me how to clean the lobby area and the bathrooms. I'm not upset because I figure that this is just part of my training. It is not a big deal whatsoever. I figure that allthe workers at McDonald's need to know how to do every job. Doingthese things together, the job gets done fairly quickly and I'm toldthat we are done for the day. I feel confident in knowing how toclean the restaurant, though I figure that this will not be my mainjob as I have given sufficient notice about my scoliosis.
The next day, a Wednesday, I come to work and they have a fit about the name tag missing. I ask if they'd actually give me the name tag and they finally do. I'm wearing my uniform with the correct shoes they gave me, too. So, I wait and they just stare at me. Then J tells me to get to work. I start by wiping the tables, taking the clean cloths out of the bucket of clean water and then putting the dirty cloths in the bucket of dirty water and used clothes. The buckets, however, are not labeled. I was just told that one sits on one side and one sits on the other. Of course, I also have to clean the tables.
Like any sensible person, I go to the back and look at the labels on the spray bottles.I find one that says it is cleaner and I take that and start to wipe the tables. J comes up to me and scolds me, "You can't use that!" She takes me back and says that the dark red liquid is degreaser and the light pink liquid is cleaner and then there's some water. I look at the rack and realize that none of the spray bottles are labeled with the correct thing they are holding. I wonder how hard it could possibly be to fill the spray bottles with the correct liquids as this mistake would not be made if they had done so. I continue then with the cleaner and wipe off the tables.
An older gentleman was sitting at one of the tables. He accidentally spilled his drink and while other employees were not doing work and could have helped him, they ignored him. Instead of one of the other employees helping him, I am the one to help him clean up the drink and pick up his cup once I see that this has happened. I feel bad that he had to wait as another employee that saw this happen (there were once again employees standing at a customer free counter or ignoring customers) rather than waiting for me to see that this had happened. He was onthe opposite side of the restaurant from where I was cleaning.
I then go and clean the toilets and the bathrooms. Of course, by then, my back was hurting. I was going to start sweeping and mopping, but I am interrupted by J to say that I need to put more cups near the soda fountain. I simply tell her that I do not know where the cups are located. Instead of her showing me where the cups are located, she tells me that they are back in the storage room and just points.
I have to go back there and stretch above my head and pull them down. It did not matter that I was much shorter than the shelving. She did not care and insisted that this was my job. I finally manage to put the cups outand get myself a drink.
Then I have to sweep and mop the floors. I go to get the broom and sweeping is difficult.It is always difficult to use a broom that is taller than I am. They wouldn't agree to getting me a decent sized broom. This is obviously hurting my back, but they do not care about that.
I manage to sweep the floors without too much of a problem. The manager is coming and by that time, I am emptying the trash cans. That task wasn't too difficult. However, J was watching me suspiciously the whole time I was working.
Once I empty the trash cans, I go get the mop to mop the floors. The mop is extremely heavy and it is hard for me to hold the mop. The mop is also taller than I am, but the people at McDonald's did not care about this,either. While I am mopping J comes up to me and insists that I am mopping the floor incorrectly. She grabs the mop from my hands and says that I should mop the floor by moving the mop in this certain circular direction.
She then puts the mop back in my hands and moves my arms in the way that she wants me to mop. I am not able to mop the floor in the exact manner that she wants me to mop, so she continues this until she seems to think she has satisfactorily gotten me to move the mop the exact way that she wants me to move it. I finish mopping the floors and clock out for the day.
Then comes the third time of working, a Friday. I once again wait to be trained by somebody, but this does not happen. Instead, they want me to clean yet again. I go to get some of the cloths out of the bucket. I reach into the bucket that is supposedly the clean bucket and I get a handful of nasty water. I drop the cloth and go wash my hands. I thenget a clean cloth and wipe the tables.
I go through the whole routine again, always being interrupted for some reason because somebody is convinced that I'm doing something incorrectly. I watch as my "coworkers" stand behind the counter and talk. I watch as some of them sit in booths and eat meals. I even watch one stand in front of the counter eating chicken nuggets from a Happy Meal and ignore the rest of the customers.
The next day is Saturday and I am scheduled to work all day long. I figure that they are going to train me then. When I woke that day, I was so sore that I literally could not move, but I manage to stretch and get out of bed. I thought about calling in and not going, but I decide that I am going to have a good work ethic and get there. However, I have to have my mom drive me into work because I am in such pain that I am literally in tears from all of it. I can barely move or even walk. My mom has to talk to K, who is expecting me to come in and be able to clean yet again. K says that maybe I could work the fries. When she is informed that I was never trained behind the counter, she acts surprised, but she had been there every time I was there for what was supposed to be training as well. She knew that I had no been trained to do any work with food or at the drive-thru.
She says to go home and I say that maybe I could come back around noon and watch to learn some more about how to work in the restaurant. She refuses and tells me that they'll be in touch with me about when I can work again.
I wait for a few weeks and they never call to tell me when I can work again. It gets extremely irritating. Then, one morning, at 5am, they call my cellphone. It not only wakes me, but also my mother. They tell me that I was supposed to go and open the store. I tell them that I had only requested to work after my classes and that I do not have a key to the store, but that if I really needed to be there, I could go there before classes start. They then say, "Oh, sorry, there's another Bridget that works at this store. She's supposed to open this morning."
I am obviously not happy about the whole situation. I was told by many other managers of McDonald's around the country that I should sue this McDonald's and should report them to OSHA. However, I had never done that. For awhile, I did look for a lawyer who took pro bono cases as there was no way I could afford a lawyer. I never found one, though.
I never received a paycheck from McDonald's. I was never paid for my work and just kept the uniform and shoes that they gave me.
When I went to the McDonald's office to be taken off the payroll since they were not paying me, the lady there was extremely ignorant. She asked me, "Do you want to be taken off the breakfast rolls in the morning?"
If I had even had a chance to work with the food, the whole experience may have been better. So, I learned that the privately owned McDonald's are biased and treat most of their employees like dirt. That's the truth about those restaurants. Don't think otherwise just because you see the majority of workers getting along. Pay attention to the one or two who are working and not with the others. Most likely they are being shunned by the rest of the workers and managers and the assistant managers.
My sister called the restaurant one time to see what would happen if she asked for me. Whoever answered the phone told her, "She's not with us anymore" like I wasn't alive. She didn't say something like, "She doesn't work here anymore" or "she's been let go."
Even months after this happened, I was at a different McDonald’s in a nearby city and J walked into that McDonald’s as I was getting food with my grandpa. She gave me a very dirty look as if I should not even be in a different McDonald’s because she was involved with a McDonald’s restaurant.
I’ve not boycotted McDonald’s, though. However, I do not go to that McDonald’s. I go to the one that is across from the local campus. They are nice there and I hope the employees are and always have been treated better. I get the feeling that the ones at the same location arestill not treated well because of how they treat customers.