Reflection Paper Assignment

Last summer I worked for McDonald’s Corporation as a member of the crew. My responsibilities as a crewmember included learning a wide variety of order taking and Point-of-Sale operations, sandwich preparations, stocking of supplies, drive-thru order management, and fried food preparation. I developed customer service and teamwork skills by interfacing with customers and my crew. Although I resented the job at the time due to the physical strain and mental exhaustion after a single shift, I look back on the experience now and appreciate the unique opportunity to work as a crewmember for an international fast food chain restaurant. The main lesson I took out of the experience was the importance of working in teams. McDonald’s depends on teams to operate efficiently and therefore the objective of my analysis is to evaluate the effectiveness of teams in a fast food restaurant such as McDonald’s.

A regular customer at McDonald’s ordering his daily cup of coffee with precisely three sugars and two creams along with a hash brown, is most likely clueless with regards as to what happens inside the McDonald’s restaurant to get his order correct, complete, and delivered in a timely manner. Undoubtedly he observes numerous employees hustling around frantically in their identical uniforms, blue visors, and headsets, but does not understand the complex process happening right before his eyes. McDonald’s restaurants are absolutely dependent on the use of teams because it facilitates the fast food operations process.

For example, each restaurant has a grill team, a drive-thru team, a front counter team, and a runner team. While I am not able to go into every detail of the process, I will say that communication was crucial when working in a team and especially a fast-paced restaurant such as McDonald’s. Similar to a sport where players need to communicate their intentions and actions with fellow teammates, McDonald’s employees need to do the...