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What Should I Do? My First Job?
Behind.the.curtains
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I'm 18, just turned 18... So far i have a job at mcdonalds.. my first job.. it's only my 5th or 6th day working there but i get screamed at a lot. i feel like i cant do anything right.. is that normal when you first start even after a week? i dont wanna get fired. i need the money for a car. and i worked all last week, 8 hr shifts. but this week i only worked today 6 hrs and tomorrow and then sunday... i feel like its because i suck. should i be taking it personally? or is that most likely just the schedule? i want more hours but im afraid to ask since i suck.. and i dont know how either? help??
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It's hard to say what's going on. It's somewhat normal for that type of job to be weird on hours, and for you to have more hours when you are training.
Who is screaming at you? Customers? To be expected, customers are dicks. Don't take it personal, be polite and friendly no matter what the customer is like (it helps calm down the angry ones). Management? That's a different story, they should know how to treat employees better and show them what they are doing wrong, but some don't do that.
Just try to determine what you are doing wrong and fix it. Talk to and seek help from coworkers (learn who is receptive to helping and who isn't). Have good work ethic. Try your best to be happy while at work (and I know that's hard to do working fast food).
Tough it out. Over time you can get a better feel for the job.
Also, be friendly with your coworkers. Make conversation. Be a good part of the team and your experience there will be smooth.
Scheduling is hard.
First jobs are tough, and it's not surprising at all that you need a lot of help. Like Tomanta says, if it's customers, DO NOT TAKE IT PERSONALLY. They might just be having a crap day, and while it doesn't excuse their attitude, don't let it destroy your day.
If it's a manager or co-workers doing the shouting, there might be some pre-existing toxicity there. Some working environments are not always rainbows and kittens, and you might be walking into a situation that has been brewing for months or years.
My advise to you would be Tomanta's. Take criticism (no matter how harsh) and break it down into something you can fix.
For example, what you might hear: "HOLY S***, LIGHTNING MCQUEEN, you call that a Big Mac?! I'd have done a better job throwing it from across the room!"
What you should take from it: "Presentation can make the difference between a customer enjoying their meal quietly, and coming up to disrupt every other employee from their work to complain about their food. Nobody is fast at first, but concentrate on getting it right, and the speed will come with time. 30 seconds faster on the line isn't worth it if someone has to spend 5 minutes dealing with an upset customer."
As far as hours worked, it's way too early to tell if they are cutting hours intentionally, or if they just legitimately need you less this week than last. Training is typically more time consuming, so they will usually assign you more time early on. Again, don't take it personally, just weather the storm and keep your head up. See what happens, because you don't have any control over the scheduling.
Edit: Also I know when you first get hired they'll have you come in for training, maybe this is why you only have a few hours still, but I am not absolutely positive that all McDonalds.
Nobody should be getting yelled at period. By customers and especially not management. I started a new job where I saw, immediately, everyone getting yelled at even though they were working their asses off. I knew it was just a matter of time before I started getting the same treatment. So I anticipated it. Like clockwork, the manager stormed in and started yelling at me. It still caught me off guard, but I thought about it, remained calm, and resolved to confront him. So when he was passing by me, I gently put my hand on his shoulder, and said, in a calm voice, "Don't ever yell at me again." He looked ashamed, apologized, and said it was because it got really stressful at work. I said, "That's no excuse."
The next day I was over an hour late to work (my bad, I'm not a great employee) and the manager left a voicemail saying he needed to talk to me. I thought it was to fire me, but he said "Don't worry about being late, I just want to say I'm sorry." And he never yelled at me again. So things immediately improved, and he was even yelling at other people less. My coworkers literally couldn't believe it, and it's because everyone was always too scared to stand up to him.
Even so, there was still this pattern of aggression directed from the managers, to the assistant managers, down to the employees, and when the managers got stressed, it filtered down to me and the coworkers. There were a couple days where, independently, I heard two coworkers say they were about to quit because no matter how hard they worked, they were still getting harassed and yelled at. This caused us to feel frustrated at each other, and that sucks because we're trying to be a team. I knew I could confront the manager independently about this, but I thought, "This dude needs all of us. If we all confront him, he'll be scared that we'll quit if he keeps treating us like shit." So, I got the guys on board and we all left while things were calming down at work and requested to speak to him. I said, "Nobody should ever get yelled at, ever, and when we always get harassed when we're trying to do a good job for you it's just disruptive and harder to focus. I want to do a good job, and we all feel bad enough when we make mistakes." And when he defended his anger, justifying it as a means of motivation, I didn't back down. He said, "Fine, we'll try it your way."
He was furious and humiliated at the time, and the other guys felt defeated and felt bitter for trusting me but that because they're literally noobs. Because guess what? Overnight, the place got calm as fuck. No more yelling. It's a totally different place. The other guys don't even like me really, but one of them came up to me today and said, "Dude, I've gotta hand it to you this is a totally different place because of you. And you didn't just stand up for yourself, it's helped everyone." Part of it is the I know the manager thought a lot about what I said and realized it was true. He's not a bad guy, and I told him I thought as much.
So fuck getting yelled at. One thing about people who are kind of bullies is, sometimes they don't see it in themselves until somebody points it out. Don't make it personal - don't be insulting, be stern, be willing to accept consequences of your actions (even getting fired if you feel strongly enough). If you're a girl, know that you have the strength to stand up for yourself even though you might not feel like it. It might take time to develop the skill, but people instinctively respect courage.
*Edit - with the hours, work up the nerve to express yourself and tell manager you need the money and you'll work hard to be a good employee.
You are going to get yelled at. It's how kitchens work. If you don't like that environment, find a job outside of food service.
Otherwise, yeah dude it's just 1st job things plus food service culture. Not having a roaring kitchen manager / chef is so rare, it's mythological.
If the goal is to not get yelled at, I'd probably avoid this one too, at least the customer facing part.
Nah, retail deals with a lot of ass hats, but it's very rare (or at least it was in my years behind a register) to have one actually yell at you (the big exception is working the customer service or returns desk). That said, there are lots of positions in the retail world that don't deal directly with customers for most of the time, or are limited to specific customers. If you can find a specialty store that's hiring (when was the last time you heard a yelling customer in a Bath and Body Works?) or a night stocking position, or working at the sporting goods desk filling out fishing licenses you can probably avoid ass hat customers. Avoid, if at all possible, positions in Layaway or the customer service desk or any kind of toy department. Customer service desk is self explanatory, people there are pissed off to start. Layaway and Toy departments both become very specific flavors of hell for the months of November, December and January, and that's a fourth of the year.
If you live in a safe neighbor hood, gas station attendant can be a great job. Especially with most of them going prepay or pay at the pump, most of the IN-A-RUSH customers don't even come in. Good experience in every part of a retail environment. From cleaning to register to inventory and stocking. You'll get some pissy customers (Monday mornings are an especially painful time, for obvious reasons) but keep the coffee fresh and the hot dogs rolling and keep reminding yourself that even the worst customers will typically be gone in a minute.
That shit cray.
All my retail experience has been in clothing stores where we didn't have special desks for this, we had to deal with it ourselves. That might be the difference, because I know I have someone yelling at me at least every other week for refusing to return their shit that's clearly been worn or their 200 day old purchase.
I suppose all jobs have their own unique flavors of crap that you have to deal with though.
Here's the trailer NSFW
McDonalds is a hectic place. I can imagine it being loud and stressful. Having worked fast food when I was 16-18, the customers can and will get shitty and your managers will be stressed out. Your coworkers prob wont have much patience for fucking up but will chill out the longer you are there.
Id say hang in there and give yourself a chance to learn and get better. It will help you learn how to work in a fast paced and stressful environment.
With hours, sure you can ask for more. May be better to wait til you have a better handle on your job though.
thank you Sacrilicious, for sharing that story! i really liked it.. maybe i can be like you one day..
and thank you BouwsT, thats kinda exactly what i get.. but it's "you wrapped this wrong" or "this doesnt go on there!" but they wont say it to me most of the time theyll say it to someone else workiing on the table with me..
or (and what i got yesterday!!) "youre not calling trays (of foods) and taking them out (of the cabinets)" and i am!! or ill leave it there for half a second to wrap a sandwich and someone on side 1 (or 2) will scream at me about the trays and the one time i took a tray out and put it on top of the cabinet like the coworker on the other side said to do.. and somethin fell on her and she started screaming about it.. i said sorry like 8 times. but she was still yellin about it to other people.
I have a year left to college yet, still in high school for one last year..
but again, thank you to everyone!! you were all so helpful!!
thank you for not bein rude to me.. im really clueless with this type of thing.
i have another question too..? how does "romance" or whatever work in the workplace..? cuz i see it and i get "comments" at times and everyone kinda left me alone and says to the one guy that im all his or whatever.. but he has a kid and a girlfriend..?
2) You are a human being. Nobody owns you. If there are people at your job who are literally haggling with each other over the right to woo you, like they are hunting wildlife or something, then those people are incredibly immature and misogynistic. They're probably very young, so maybe they will grow and learn out of it, but in terms of romance I would recommend staying away from people who think this way. If you want to be in a relationship with someone there are plenty of people out there, even your own age, who don't think of you as an object and set off giant red warning flags before you even go on a date.
3) I do not want to stereotype someone, but given that he actively participated in #2, works in fast food, already has a kid, and is also already in a relationship (or can't maintain the boundaries clear enough that people don't realize he's not in a relationship), then you probably want to stay away from this guy, too.
4) Not every interaction with people is always going to be about you. In fact, much of the time it won't be. Like, it could just be that Jim got cut off while driving to work, and he's still pissed off about it, so he's taking it out on everyone else. You probably do this a lot, too, you just don't realize it. Hopefully as you get older and start working better jobs, these situations should happen less and less. At the very least, if you feel like you are being threatened, or you do not like the way you are being spoken to, it is entirely appropriate for you to stand up for yourself as long as you are polite about it, and not just yelling back to escalate things. People should not be yelling at you at your job unless they have to (such as when it is really loud). Unfortunately many people are in situations where they are desperate for a job, so they take whatever abuse is thrown their way because they need the money. Hopefully you are not in that kind of situation, but even if you are, I want to be clear that getting yelled at is not appropriate and should not be considered normal. Whatever they are saying is likely much more about them than it is about you. Not being able to wrap a hamburger to someone else's exacting specifications is not grounds to call you a worthless human being. It's just a task at a job. If they are willing to freak out that much about it, then they clearly have their own issues and their opinion isn't worth valuing anyway. You are not this job, and you are not the opinion of some random person at a fast food joint.
Workplace romances, generally, work out very poorly. And just so we're clear: Just cause someone says you're theirs doesn't at all mean you are. That's your decision to make, not some other guy or the staff's.
This just went from annoying first job to potentially very messed up situation in like 25 words.
Workplaces romances...don't. Just don't if you can at all help it. It almost never works out well.
This sounds pretty par for the course as far as kitchens go. In that 1) if you aren't doing it right, in the system the kitchen runs on, you are just making extra work for someone else or backing somewhere else up and 2) you dropped something on her and you're the god damn FuckingNewGuy, you are going to hear about it. This might also apply to some of the ''comments'' you reference below, kitchens tend to have a culture of being somewhat...crass.
'all his' as in "dibs" or 'all his' as in and there is no way to ask this without sounding mean "no one else will touch that, it's all yours buddy". Both are fucked up things to say, but in very different ways.
Also aside from that situation, I think people are being a little too strenuous against workplace romances because they are adults with careers. You are a teenager working a McJob-literally in this case.
The grocery store I worked at in HS-which was staffed by probably 60+% HS or college students- was basically full of people dating and hooking up with each other, or trying desperately to at least, yay hormones!. I know of no disasters occurring because of it(and actually 2 marriages all be it many years down the line). It doesn't really matter if Jake frying burgers is upset at Sally working drive through, on the 5 hours a week their schedules overlap. So imo, do what you want, enjoy life, be safe- you're only that fun combination of young and stupid for so long- and DON'T DO ANYTHING IN THE WALK IN COOLER! that's gross.
You really can't take it personally, because even if you're the one who screwed up, there's a better than even chance the guy yelling at you isn't actually sure you are.
i will add one thing about hours
your hours were reduced probably because they saw you were very new and need time to get up to speed
you shouldn't panic until they start giving you entire weeks where you either aren't scheduled or only get 4-8 hours
not being scheduled for long periods of time is entry-level for "we want to fire you but we're chickens so we'd prefer if you just quit"
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other