Here’s why you should reconsider eating McDonald’s all-day breakfast

Ever since McDonald’s switched to all day breakfast, fans of the breakfast menu have been in all-day breakfast heaven. But some employees have different feelings about it. They’ve been dealing with an increased workload, because they have an entire extra menu they have to work with all day long. That means double the amount of preparation and cleaning without an increase in pay.

In fact, several McDonald’s employees are venting their frustration about the increased workload in a Reddit thread titled “Maccas employees: How do you manage all-day breakfast?”

The thread began when Australian user Jonzay posted this message of frustration.

“When I used to work at Maccas, there simply wasn’t enough space in the back area for all the breakfast equipment and reg menu products at the same time. The egg cooker took up most of the space in the deli and the muffin toasters took up the space used by the bun stands.

On top of that, having to clean the grill and change the settings every time you switched between 10:1/4:1 and sausage meat would be a nightmare and would take up way too much time unless you had a much higher buffer of cooked meat than you should.”

Jonzay then posed this question to fellow Macca (as McDonald’s is called in Australia) employees: “Current employees at all-day breakfast Maccas stores: How do you manage it without falling behind?” The changes all-day breakfast has created for McDonald’s employees are definitely unwelcome by many. Hundreds of other employees have been venting their frustrations on the thread.

User Itsbishi explained what 10:1/4:1 means (because to non Macca employees, the numbers are confusing). “Meat sizes. 10-1 is the cheeseburger patties and 4-1 is the quarter pounder sized ones. It stands for 10 patties to 1 pound and 4 patties to one pound.”

At some restaurants, it sounds like there just aren’t enough employees to get the increased workload completed without creating a mob of angry customers.

“Don’t McD’s headquarters know that they’ve got staff doing 2-3 people’s jobs at once?” User bitchwizzard wrote. “It’s depressing seeing a staff running between a job in the middle of a line of people with no help. People are just so angry at the person, and nobody can help them. All because they were trying to cut staff costs.”

User Famous_felix expressed concern about the turnover rate, and the frustration is clear based on the choice words used along the way.

“I wish maccas would just go back to cheap and simple stuff. Always changing the menu and trying to be ‘a little bit fancy’ just means its harder to make sure there are trained people in the kitchen. Turnover for the past few years has been crazy because who the fuck wants to work for shit pay and then expect to pull miracles out of their ass and still get shouted at.”

An interesting solution to the grill problem was offered by user xyrgh.

“It’d probably make more business sense to do all day burgers and all day breakfast. At least there would be no chopping/changing of grills and equipment … the permanent fit out could accommodate it, but I’m sure it would mean a bunch of maccas would need renovations, again.”

User Edified001 thinks the switch to all day breakfast has made employees lazy because of the extra work they’re asked to do.

“Let me tell you, as a crew trainer, you have people who are too lazy to change the grill settings, people who don’t even clean the grill because [they’re] ‘too busy to clean’ every time I ask. Eggs would be used from transition to changeover to afternoon. When the manager asks crew to put it in the waste bin, they talk back and argue it’s wasting food (because they can’t be bothered to cook another run of eggs). Honestly, all day breakfast isn’t the greatest idea. I can see where they’re coming from, to offer people who can’t make it before 10:30, or tourists from overseas who want to have breakfast. But it makes people lazy. Sure, there’s less washup, but it’s at the cost of a more crowded, messier kitchen.”

We can understand why employees are frustrated. As happy as customers have been about all day breakfast, a more crowded, messier kitchen and greater workload doesn’t sound like an environment anyone would want to work in — especially without an increase in pay.