People who work at McDonald's are stupid.

I used to eat fast food a lot. Before I came to China it comprised the majority of my weekly diet. McDonald's, Wendy's, A&W, Burger King, Pizza.. I was lazy and I liked hamburgers and pizza.

McDonald's was the easiest to eat because in my city they were everywhere. There was a McDonald's across the street from another one so you didn't have to make a left turn to go eat it. People are THAT desperate for their food. I usually didn't enjoy going to McDonald's because the people who work there are, as the title of the post suggests, really really stupid.

As a teenager I found out I could ensure I got a fresh hamburger by asking for something special. Fifteen years ago during the lunch rush McDonald's would make a lot of their popular burgers before people ordered them so sometimes, like the fries now, you'd get a cold burger. To ensure myself a fresh hamburger every time I would ask for it with no onions. This meant they would make it then and I'd get a fresh burger (I used the word fresh lightly because I am talking about McDonald's after all).

However, despite the fact that this would be put into the computer the guy in the back would appear to miss the big * STOP * and put onions on my burger anyway. Now this didn't really bother me as I was accomplishing the goal I'd set out: a fresh burger, but I always wondered if they truly were stupid or if it was a flaw in the system.

When I was 27 years of age I would find the answer to this question. I got a job at McDonald's because it was 9 months before I left for China and I wasn't sure I wanted to be unemployed (as it turns out, I did). I thought this would be a great chance to discover just how difficult it is to make hamburgers at McDonald's.

The short of it is that it's easy. The computer clearly displays what the special requests are for the food and the cook is supposed to leave the order up until he finishes making it. But this is where it seems to all go wrong. Cooks who are in a hurry will quickly read the orders and then clear them after they place the papers on the board, making 3 or 5 hamburgers at once like a robot. This is done with very little thought as they recognize the colors of the papers and simply make the food by memory. This becomes a problem when one of those five orders have a special request that the cook quickly flies through and doesn't pay attention to.

Having worked at McDonald's I can tell you that the system in place is functional but the cooks that I worked with (and I extend this to all cooks, since the problem exists everywhere) just don't pay attention. Some of them hated their jobs, some of them were drunk, and others were pot-heads. Whatever the reason it's important to state that the system is not the problem, it's the cooks.

In China I've been to McDonald's a few times. The cooks here do it properly. In a place where job security is rare and there is a ton of competition even at a job like McDonald's you can't afford to make mistakes. Cooks read the orders carefully and ensure they make the food right. I've yet to have a mistake in my order, though I admit I've had McDonald's less than 10 times in the last year and the year before it was about 250 - so the test is skewed. But I've watched the cooks here and they don't clear the board right away, they do it how you're supposed to do it.

I have no sympathy or patience for someone who doesn't do their job properly. It doesn't matter if you're lazy, tired, depressed, recently infected with Hepatitis or just plain stupid. Do a good job or kill yourself. I want my hamburgers made right every time.