Day 216 - 06 02 96 - Page 14
DAY 216
1 assistant manageress called Nami who was there for a
2 while. The hierarchy system goes store manager, first
3 assistant, second assistant, then trainee managers. She
4 was a second, and she had not been with the company for a
5 long time and we got on well and she said, 'If you have any
6 sense you will go into floor management' which is the next
7 step up from crew. You get paid per hour and you get to
8 choose whichever hours you want, and if you do not feel
9 like coming in there is not that much hassle of having to
10 fill in sick pay forms, etc. So she was trying to persuade
11 me against going into salary. She said, 'You'll go as
12 floor manager if you've got any sense.' She really
13 regretted going salary. So to start off I really wanted to
14 be floor manager because she said it was going to be a good
15 deal, so she was going to be put through the floor manager
16 exam. But I got told a week before that I had a floor
17 manager's exam next week and I failed on my maths,
18 I think. About 8 months after that the trainee said, 'Go
19 salaried and you'll be all right.' You have to take an
20 exam, pass that, you're trainee manager, take another exam
21 and you're second assistant manager, and then you work ....
22 this is in the store, all the training with all the
23 managers who've done it before and can give you the benefit
24 of their experience. So I was second assistant in
25 Swiss Cottage for a year. Promotion depends on how
26 competent you are. Some people are lucky. There are a few
27 guys who are really top notchers who just happen to be in
28 the right place at the right time. Other people's
29 impressions are that they're no better than anyone else, it
30 is just that they went to a store and things happened at
31 the store while they were there which might not have had
32 anything to do with them, but it meant that they got
33 noticed and got moved up quicker than anyone else. There
34 is a few guys as well, a couple of Indian, black managers
35 who talk about a few of the top notchers being a bit
36 racist, but I have never had anything, no one has ever held
37 my colour against me. As far as I can see McDonald's says
38 it is an equal opportunities employer and I think it really
39 is.
40
41 "I've been to Hamburger University four or five times. You
42 do different courses every so often. To develop their
43 managers they send them off on different courses, starting
44 with a basic operations course, and then four or five
45 months after that they send you on an intermediate, this is
46 while you are second assistant. A couple of years after
47 that when you have been first assistant for a couple of
48 years or you're a store manager, they send you on an
49 advanced operations course. People teaching, not from the
50 US, are ex-store managers, ex-supervisors, district
51 managers, etc. It's 9 to 5 in Head Office which is a
52 definite advantage over the shifts of normal restaurant
53 work.
54
55 "Yesterday morning I started 7 o'clock and I went home at
56 2 o'clock, returned at 12 to do a stock take and I've been
57 here ever since. Now it's 1.30 in the afternoon. I am
58 falling asleep. In a week I was doing 75 to 80 hours a
59 week. On salary you get paid for 40 hours.
60
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