As a senior at one of the restaurants I was hauled off to a regional meeting one Thursday a couple of months ago to discuss the direction of the business.
Now nine hours on my feet is not always my idea of fun, but when presented with that or a regional meeting, the feet win!!!
And what was the flavour of this meeting.......... the franchising of restaurants! Happy days.
Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't officially the theme of the meeting, but see what you make of the following:
- Franchised Restaurant Management teams were invited to what is traditionally a Company owned (McOpCo - long story) only meeting.
- When discussing business performance, we were shown the best and worst of McOpCo Restaurants, but only the best franchised restaurants. We ALL spotted that little piece of spin, but didn't say anything for fear of being put in a restaurant on the franchise list!
Our regional team's CV's have now been submitted to 10 Downing Street for roles as spin doctors! Hell with a balanced view like that............
- Ah yes, we were told that, "Franchising isn't a bad thing and should be embraced" in a similar tone that your midwife says, "this won't hurt a bit"
- And the givaway bit, our regional manager telling us that more restaurants were going to be franchised.
A few of us this causes a great deal of concern for, purely for ambition reasons. At the moment the sky is literally the limit with our career prospects with any role from Restaurant Manager up to Chairman of the UK arm of the company in our sights.
But in a franchised environment the limit is set at Restaurant Manager. In that case the Wikipedia definition of McJob would be a lot more accurate than McD would be comfortable with.
And with that potential taken away from us, why would we want to hang around in a dead end job?
