Managing a McDonald's is an unforgiving job. I was baptized by fire into running my McDonald's. It all started on a normal day. Normal except for the fact that by bosses were having a heated discussion, and they decided that the best place to have it wasn't in front of the crew, but instead outside the restaurant. This initially was not a problem, I could run the store about 45 minutes most times, before I started losing control of it.
The McDonald's approved way to run the floor, involves much planning, and a bit of flexibility in the execution. Since I did not have a plan to run the floor, flexibility was all that I had to rest on. At first I maintained the floor established by one of my bosses, but as time passed I hadto start modifying the positioning of my people because it was approaching four o'clock, one of the major shift changes of the day.
During the maintenance of the floor that was left for me, the store had degraded, under my unrefined management skills. I need to reorganize the floor, everything had started running out, employee stamina, shake mix, even my patience with my fellow managers who were outside arguing. They had left me alone supervising a group of people not much older than me, knowing full well that I was not fully qualified to run the store.
But, I realized, that I was the manager. This was the situation that I had been working towards, except in a less hectic fashion. I first had a crew person cover the immediate position I was holding, and then examined my schedule, the bible of a McDonald's manager, after a few minutes, I had created the plan to return the store to its proper condition, the one that Ray Kroc had instilled into McDonald's.
Eventually the arguing managers ended their discussion, and were impressed by the leadership that I had displayed in wrangling the reins of the store, and they were pleased by the fact that it had not self-destructed in their absence.