So long as you don't feel like you are selling your soul to work in a place like McDonalds, there is nothing really wrong with milking them for training and cash - it's just another employment contract. But after seeing that documentary I will never eat McD's again and will avoid the other places unless I am desperate for a fat-salt-sugar-dead-chick-flat-forest fix. I hope their sales fall through the floor and if I make one bit of different to their P&L then that is satisfaction enough. Where there's smoke there's fire and they are probably all as bad as eachother. I might use their toilets though - as someone else wrote, they are very clean most of the time!If you're only 15, hopefully by the time you're in uni and then out in the workforce-at-large I hope we'll have shaped a society where the exloitation of all workers (long hours, unequal pay and conditions, take-work-home and and pyramid sell at night to pay the mortage) has suffered a fatal backlash. Keep standing up for yourself and don't let any employer brainwash you or make you work in unsafe conditions, no matter where you end up. Maybe there'll also be a groundswell against the bigger issues like environmental damage and animal cruelty and we'll be part of a species that regenerates its environment instead of parasitising it. (is that a word?)
And while I'm on a soap-box...
McD's would be the tip of the iceberg. I am fairly new as a white-collar worker in an Australian public sector organisation - and let me say that is almost as frightening as the big wide world of fast moving consumer goods.
Everyday I come into contact with adults who can no longer think for themselves, who seem to experience inertia when it comes to doing anything that would require actual brain function. Is this helplessness something that the public service has done to them, have they done it to themselves or did they arrive that way? Did they just get comfortable with mediocrity and retire on the job? Am I wrong and are they just screwing the system and carrying on perfectly normal, functional lives when they leave the building?
I say run your own agenda, play the games they want you to play for as long as you are still getting a life outside work, and leave while you can still smile after a long shift or a nasty customer.
The two places that had still had credence amongst my friends for work-related training (entry-level workers) in very the late 80's were McDonalds and MyerGrace Stores (my personal choice for the six steps of selling and the early nineties mantra of Total Customer Satisfaction is the Only Thing that Matters!!! - the customers, staff and their relatives had a great time stealing stock and returning it for a refund.) Everyone I knew said that the training was great at McD's but they cut your hours when you hit the adult wage. If the training is still good, I would take everything they can give you - uniforms, training, customer service skills, the lot.
Take the money and run to to a company who gives a toss.
