McLeanDeluxe

Sure. I was working for an McDonald's Operator. This operator was a very, very long time operator. We're talking about knew Ray Kroc during the early years. He has a younger wife, who has a son. The son works for them in a manager capacity. A lowly manager (they know better than to go any higher with him). This young man (sort of) is a sociopath. I say that without reservation. I say that knowing the term is overused, misused, tossed about.

He sleeps with anything and anyone he can. Usually, this isn't a huge, huge deal. The owners are very involved in their stores, they sort of try to hold him in check (mom's an enable, step-dad/owner deals with it because of mom. Think Cersei, GoT style, and I don't really exaggerate).
Well, he meets this single mom who works for them(she's 18, he's 28) and they sleep together. Despite having a kid at an early age, the girl is not stupid and is getting her stuff together. She does, however, date him, bang him, realizes he's nuts, breaks up. He goes off the deep end. He's not used to this behavior at all, and goes crazy that someone is not playing by his rules in his backyard. You know those super blatant sexual harassment videos everyone has to see? The one's where you think "no one is that stupid, maybe 30 years ago, sure, but no one actually does those things so...blatantly". Every damned one, and I kid you not. Texting, calling, stalking, cutting her hours, sending her home 5 minutes after she's arrived at work. It was terrible. I talk to mamma owner; she says back off, she'll handle. Ok. It gets worse. Two weeks later, I talk to mamma owner; she says back off, she'll handle. Ok.

The girl is coming to me crying every day. The girl won't just quit (she does need the job, and this is when unemployment was bad. Even McDs is better than nothing). And mom wants her gone.

Mamma owner starts harassing her - with the son. I can't tell you how sick to your stomach you get when you see this. I just can't. I advise mom - "As your store manager(I'm right below her in whatever authority level this farce had), I advise you to transfer her to your other store, away from your son. You are in a bad legal way with this".
Mom doesn't like this advice (or me, really, we butted heads.., and she's not the type to be ok with that). She refuses, tells me to fire her.

The girl come's to a manager for advice. That manager advised her to talk to a lawyer.

Her lawyer and I sat down. I wasn't going to lie for people like them(perhaps lie for better, people, but not for people like them).

Girl won the case. I'm not sure what she got; a decent settlement, I'm sure. The owners have quite a bit of wealthy, 50 million or so, I was told. I stayed out of it after talking to her lawyer and haven't talked to her in four years. Just seemed wiser.

There's a lot of disdain. I enjoyed aspects of the job; I was very good at it. I had kids. I needed money. They always paid me just enough to not flee, worked me hard enough to not have the energy to go looking, and, frankly, I didn't (and sometimes still don't) know how to find something better.

My bosses have always known I hated the job. Always.

I work in retail now because it's not so bad, and because I'm a single father. I'm almost 40; my youngest is now 16. Is it too late to find something else, is it too late to run? Am I now stuck in this forever?

I did several other things, but never gained enough skillz to do anything else. I did attend a university for about 4 years. It wasn't enough to get my degree; I'm about 80 hours in with a 3.9 GPA. I moved, so I just established residency and am about to start a state school. Wish me luck.

If you have the option to leave, do so. I didn't feel I had that option with a family. Maybe I did.

My lord. Weird. Well. Ok. I walked in on two employees having sex in the bathroom. I asked them to remember to stock the lids, and I left. Oh, having to do a disciplinary on that. Why didn't they at least close the stall?

Ever seen one of those huge McD's clamshell grills? I watched a manager plug one in (fucking huge voltage) standing in a huge puddle of water. She went to the hospital. You can't protect some people.

I was in work one day and large woman began speaking in tongues to the lord. She ran around for about 20 minutes doing this. It was incredible. Meanwhile all the customers are staring at me like I'm supposed to jump this woman and hold her down or something.

Appalling? A manager, who was besties with the owner, dated a 15 year old girl for 4 years (she didn't remain 15 for all of those years, though) and it was pretty much ok. He was 28? I think?

Sad? I watched one of my closest mentors go blind, another have heart attack after heart attack (and the owners would get pissed at him because he'd leave early when he'd have chest pains). I watched a friend who had been in the industry for 30 years die on the floor in the grill. She was a great person. It hurt.

I've been the Hamburglar.

This made me laugh so terribly. McDonald's University in Oak Brook was an interesting experience. My disdain follows to that degree. But everyone I show it to cracks up, so I did get that out of it.

Unionize. It's needed. I support it. There are aspects I wouldn't like, I bet, but the overall gains would be worth it. There are many, many arguments "paramedics only make 12 bucks an hour and they save lives". But my thought is that if you are willing to work, why shouldn't you be able to live? We aren't all suited to do more, but can all contribute, and we shouldn't piss on those who are willing to contrinute.

In my time there was no anti-union training. But I worked in a southern state. I had the right to work! Unions aren't going to have a shot. McDs does have their anti-union squads, but I've never met anyone from them.