Warning: Column may cause you to develop fry guy envy
I cringe whenever I hear jokes about people who earn a living in fast-food restaurants. About half of the U.S. work force gets paid by the hour, yet our society seems to regard any employee obligated to wear a paper hat or hairnet and ask, "Do you want fries with that?" as a target for ridicule and mocking.
"Actually, I really don't (get upset at those jokes) because this is what pays my bills," says Nidia Flores, 37, a swing manager working Monday's busy lunch hour at the McDonald's restaurant in Hinsdale. "I love my job. I love coming to work - The benefits I get are beautiful."
The benefits given hourly workers under the Golden Arches could turn lots of white-collar workers green with envy these days. In an economy when professionals have seen cuts in everything from paid time off to health insurance to 401(k) benefits to their very jobs, the hourly employees at McDonald's have a supersized bundle of bennies that just earned the company a spot among Working Mother magazine's list of the Best Companies for Hourly Workers.
After 30 days on the job, a McDonald's crew member qualifies for a health insurance package that includes vision and dental, free physicals, well-baby care and vaccinations. After 1,000 hours on the job, any McDonald's employee older than 21 can contribute to a 401(k) program that includes a generous company match.
McDonald's offers a 12-week, 50 percent-pay maternity leave, child-care discounts, adoption benefits, help with college costs and a paid, eight-week sabbatical every 10 years.
Yet, some people still mock people who make fries for a living.
"I've worked for McDonald's for 30 years and it used to bother me," admits Danitra Barnett, who still remembers her first day on the job at a McDonald's in Detroit.
"I started on French fries on a Friday afternoon, a very busy Friday afternoon," says Barnett. She learned how to make shakes and man the counter. She learned how to manage the restaurant, then manage a bunch of restaurants. She got married, had three kids and switched career paths, all while still at McDonald's.
"McDonald's provides you the opportunity for your career to evolve and change with you," says Barnett, 49, who now is a vice president of human resources for McDonald's USA and works in the company's plush corporate campus in Oak Brook.
Half the corporate employees, including people such as McDonald's Corp. CEO Jim Skinner, started in a restaurant, says Ashlee Yingling, a McDonald's spokeswoman.
A single mom who commutes to Hinsdale from Chicago, Flores says she's loving the opportunity to move up the corporate ladder. She's used her benefits to help take classes at Wheaton College and hopes to be a salaried manager soon.
"I never pictured myself working at a McDonald's, but I needed a job," says Flores, who notes that she has better benefits and more opportunities for advancement than many professionals. Her managers gave her the flex time and off hours she needed to care for her daughter. McDonald's career consultants have her on a path.
"They don't only work with you with your hours, they give you that confidence where they believe in you," Flores says. "They let us know you are capable of that and more."
She will step off that corporate ladder momentarily this fall for the first time in 10 years to enjoy one of those perks - her first paid, two-month sabbatical.
"My daughter's going to start kindergarten," Flores says. "So I can take her and pick her up from kindergarten."