/ck/ - Food & Cooking

[Anonymous No.5525916]

I have a question for those who work or have worked at a McDonald's restaurant.

One of the things I really dislike is the seemingly recent inconsistencies regarding the portions of shredded iceberg lettuce in McChicken and Big Mac sandwiches. I first noticed it around the first or second week of April and it seems to be getting worse.

How do McDonald's employees portion out the iceberg lettuce? Do they have a specific scooping instrument that ensures consistent dispensing or do they simply use their hands? I cannot imagine the latter, especially from a restaurant known for their consistent food quality.

For a recent example, yesterday I purchased a McChicken combo with a Diet Coke and a bacon cheeseburger on the side and there was so much iceberg lettuce in the McChicken that it had overflowed into the wrapper and I actually had to use two napkins to remove the excess. I also ended up removing the majority of the McChicken mayonnaise sauce, but luckily I had asked for extra packets to apply to my French fries and the bacon cheeseburger.

Today, I ordered a Big Mac sandwich (no combo) and a chicken wrap. The Big Mac sandwich has very little iceberg lettuce while the chicken wrap had a noticeably above average amount.

Does McDonald's allot different amounts of iceberg lettuce per sandwich, or is it simply according to the training and subjective judgement of the worker? Can one ask for whole iceberg lettuce leaves instead of shredded iceberg lettuce, or would that be considered too finicky by the staff? I think that whole leaves would be texturally superior on a McChicken but I would prefer the shredded version on a chicken wrap or Big Mac.

Thank you.

[Anonymous No.5525946]

I worked at McDonald's during summers from
>2008
to
>2011
We had no scooping device for the lettuce. It was just eyeballed. It depends on who is making the food. Sometimes, especially during peak periods, there would be one or two people on the second side, assembling sandwiches. While the orders would come up on both sides, if one side saw that the other side needed a particular item made, one side would make it for the other side, in order to get the customer the food faster. Different initiators portioning the lettuce may be the cause of your uneven lettuce amount.
Or, the person just didn't give a fuck about distributing a uniform amount.
Hope this helps.

[Anonymous No.5525947]

>>5525916
>used to work at mcdicks
>its just a pinch of shredded iceberg lettuce, enough to cover the meat
>deal with it, fag

i expect this is copypasta so sage

[Anonymous No.5525960]

>>5525947

It's another one of those "trying to roleplay as Fatty McAutism" posts.

[Anonymous No.5525968]

like

of all the things you could bitch about related to mcdonald's

you pick the amount of lettuce on the burgers

really

[Anonymous No.5525978]

>>5525916
They use no measuring instruments, they just takea pinch that looks like the training video and put it on. For details sake, the training video says there needs to 15 mls of lettuce, or one regular sundae lid size full (I dunno about if USA uses the same size sundae lids, but I'm talking Australia's sundaes here). For all burgers it ought to be the same, but maybe a bit less for the smaller burgers. It just needs to look right.

Employees have a 15 second goal to complete your burger. No longer than 45 seconds per burger, but thats kinda lame. You may have gotten some lazy grill staff, or maybe a cheapass area manager. I know our one would cut costs in ANYTHING. ie when there was a new promotion on that had something like $1 frozen sodas he'd never put the sign up even though he had to. Ice cream cones were all made 1 swirl less, and none filled inside the cup.
Etc etc... less lettuce was something our area manager would have totally done, but I wasnt a grill person so i wouldnt know for sure.

[Anonymous No.5525986]

>>5525978
Also all lettuce is pre-shred to save space and time.
Unless theres a special burger come out and they use romaine lettuce or some shit, you can ask to swap it out.. for 50 cents extra, bitch!

[Anonymous No.5525988]

>>5525946
here
>>5525978
mentions the sundae lid. I forgot that sometimes plebs would use sundae lids to distribute lettuce evenly at the US McDonald's I used to work at. It slowed production down a lot, though.

[Anonymous No.5525992]

>>5525960

It's another one of those non-informative shitposts.

[Anonymous No.5526005]

>>5525988
Yeah, noobs would do it at first too but they were expected to grow out of it after the first week, otherwise expect to never get rostered ever again

[Anonymous No.5526083]

>>5525946
>>5525978
Thanks for the information. It is rather surprising that McDonald's would not dispense consistent amounts of lettuce; the tomatoes and onions seem to be pretty uniform.

I cannot see how a significant amount of money can be saved by cutting down on lettuce, but if you extrapolate it over the year I suppose it would be feasible. That is incredible to make an ice cream cone with one less swirl and none in the cup, I am glad I have not come across such a franchise.

Are the condiments dispensed accurately or do you just use a squirt bottle and judge it by you eye? What do they tell you in training with respect to condiments (e.g.: "2 swirls of ketchup")?

Thanks again.

[Anonymous No.5526093]

>>5526083
The tomatoes come pre-sliced. Onions are not.
The condiments are dispensed with dispensers, except for the butter and breakfast sauce. Each condiment goes into a different dispenser that dispenses a different amount of condiment.

[Anonymous No.5526102]

>>5526083
Oh, and the barbecue sauce, honey mustard and ranch sauce for the wraps are not uniformly distributed either.

[Anonymous No.5526103]

>>5526083
The bottles that squirt ketchup/etc are not like the squirt bottles you buy in the store, they're designed to dispense even amounts each time. The brand that makes is call Portion-Easy or something which always dispenses like 10 ml or something of sauce at a time. I cant remember how much for the sauce exactly, I didnt really care since unlike the lettuce which you had to judge, the dispenser does it for you.. The grill guy just squirts 2 squirts and its always the perfect portion. If you ask for "light" then they only squirt once. Want only a quarter of the amounth? Only press the Portion-easy half way instead of a full portion. Difficult, no?

[Anonymous No.5526115]

>>5526102
Because its a wrap. You're not just aiming at the bun, you're havind to squeeze it down the wrap. You handle one of those dispensers, not only are they bulky and inconvenient to be artistic with, but they're tedious to do more than just squirt laterally.

Honestly, you'll need to spend a month in a McDonalds grill to understand how shit just cant be done uniformly like a conveyor belt when you have sweatly acne ridden 15 year old boys making your burger.
And you're a stupid cunt if you're expecting things to be perfect by even the most talented 15 year old who'll be swapped for another employee within less than a year due to high turnover. I dare you to make 300 burgers a day perfect in under 25 seconds. You wont be able to do it.
Why not just buy a frozen hamburger from your favourite production line?

[Anonymous No.5526118]

>>5526115
When we had the Big Mac snack wrap, we used the regular mac sauce gun for that. I was glad to see that menu item go.

[Anonymous No.5526126]

>>5526118
The wraps in terrible where a shit to make.
Not only did they slow down the production line, but they clogged up the drive thru too. Our best guys couldnt even get them to shove down the boxes before we had to force them to wait in the park if they had to do 2+ wraps per order and the guy was on his own.

Fuck using that clunky Big Mac sauce gun on a tiny little wrap.

[Anonymous No.5526130]

>McDonald's two days in a row
>Amerifat

[Anonymous No.5526132]

>>5525916
>McChicken combo with a Diet Coke and a bacon cheeseburger on the side

[Anonymous No.5526137]

>>5526132
i'm never sure if its more because they're really lazy or because they're really ashamed that obeselords use the drive through. they're obviously not dressed for going somewhere in a rush

[Anonymous No.5526143]

>>5526132
>>5526137
I can't use a drive-thru anymore after working at McDonald's

[Anonymous No.5526148]

>>5526143
Why not?

[Anonymous No.5526149]

>>5526093
>. Each condiment goes into a different dispenser that dispenses a different amount of condiment.
Interesting, I wonder what the ratios are?

[Anonymous No.5526152]

>>5526148
Lets just say we do stuff to their food.
If anyone comes into the restaurant and doesn't tip enough then they eat bad things too

[Anonymous No.5526153]

>>5526118
I kind of liked the Big Mac snack wrap.

>>5526126
>>5526103
>>5526093
It is interesting to hear about the "behind the line" McDonald's stuff. It's so polished and consistent, I wondered about the training and the little things like that.

[Anonymous No.5526154]

>>5526152
I dont live in a tipping country

[Anonymous No.5526155]

>>5526152
>lowqualitybait.nexus

[Anonymous No.5526160]

>>5526148
It's a flawed system. You can't get your food until the person in front of you does, unless the restaurant makes them pull ahead. Also, something terrible could happen, like someone running out of gas in there (it happened, fucking stupid woman).
Plus, on the rare occasion that I'd be in the drive-thru, I was appalled at the average mass of the clientèle. It was much, much higher on average than the average walk-in customer.

[Anonymous No.5526161]

>>5526153
Employers like to hire you more if you came from a McDonalds than a Burger King. Their training is famous.
You can also get certifications and scholarships for free and stuff, just for havinfg worked in McDs.

[Anonymous No.5526162]

>>5526160
>It was much, much higher on average than the average walk-in customer.
Now that you mention it, whenever I walk into a McDonald's the people don't seem that fat. I can see this.

[Anonymous No.5526168]

>>5526160
One time our till systerm died in the middle of a line up of 4 cars. Not the worst, but there were cars trapped for 15 (?) minutes just waiting for the douche at the front who refused to move til the till was fixed.

[Anonymous No.5526169]

>>5526161
For what it's worth, I now work for a big tech company, and my only previous employment experience was tech support for my college (a state school not known for its computer science program) and McDonald's.

[Anonymous No.5526170]

>>5526154
you still should tip when it comes to food, think about it...
On hot days we used to walk around with the frozen burgers in our underwear. Even the managers did it.
All those burgers were eaten by people.
And that was before anyone even pissed us off.

[Anonymous No.5526303]

>>5526170
>we're spineless degenerates
>better give us money we don't deserve AFTER we've fucked with your food or we'll continue to be spineless degenerates
>which we would have done anyway
Eat my dick you low class blue collar sack of shit

[Anonymous No.5526305]

>>5526303

second. There's a reason these people do this kind of stuff. Pure idiocy.

[Anonymous No.5526309]

>>5526160
>Also, something terrible could happen, like someone running out of gas in there (it happened, fucking stupid woman).

If that's the worst thing that happens, you're luckier than the crew at my local McDonald's. A car's engine caught fire in their drive-through a couple of summers ago, stalling out the vehicle while it was pulled up to the pickup window. Unable to move the car, the driver bailed out and the fire spread to the building, eventually burning it to the ground. I happened to be stuck in traffic within sight of the building at the time and used to have a nice video of a flaming McDonald's on my phone.

[Anonymous No.5526310]

>>5526303
>Eat my dick
oh the ironing. do you know how much bodily fluids, cleaning chemicals and other shit you have already eaten in your food? Sometimes we used to have competitions to see who could taint the most food in the most appalling ways.

[Anonymous No.5526317]

>>5526305
There's a cure to it, it's called tipping.

[Anonymous No.5526318]

>>5526310
>look what a big tough idiot drop out working in food service I am
>you're scared now, huh faggot?
Joke's on you, dipshit, I don't eat eat in your shit factories

[Anonymous No.5526324]

>>5526170
This may be your store, but nobody did that at my store.

[Anonymous No.5526328]

>>5526318
>implying you have never been to a large fast food restaurant
now you're just lying

[Anonymous No.5526336]

>>5526324
Yeah we were pretty good at it and it really helped to pass the time.
The funny thing is i am sure some of the customers must have seen some of the stuff happen but there were never any consequences to this day.
I have spoken to a lot of other people who have worked at various similar places and they all had the same kind of stories too.
Good times :^)

[Anonymous No.5526380]

what kind of burger is this and where can i get one
it looks so fucking good