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McDonald's Training To Count For UK Qualifications
by Simon Lord, last updated on 29th July 2009
The focus on youth training schemes by both major parties at the beginning of this election year in New Zealand coincides with a news item from the UK that McDonalds is one of just three commercial organisations awarded the right to offer nationally-recognised qualifications by the British Qualifications & Curriculum Authority.
According to the BBC report , the course will cover everything the 7,000 managers of McDonald's outlets across the country need to know about the day-to-day running of a restaurant. This ranges from basic operational requirements to finances, marketing and human resources and qualifies for credits towards qualifications up to A-level standard.
The news was greeted in some media with scorn, sub-editors reaching for phrases like ‘McDiplomas', ‘McQualifications' and the rather more inspired ‘Big Maccalaureate'. Interestingly, though, most of the better papers gave qualified approval for the scheme. The BBC even ran a feature entitled ‘Everything I Needed to Know I Learned In McDonald's ' by journalist John Hands, who spent three years as a part-timer with McDonald's while at college. Posted on their website, it has attracted over 50 comments from other former employees, the majority of whom were very positive about their experiences and the lessons they had learned.
Many who received their initial training in McDonald's have found it a great benefit in establishing their careers elsewhere. One prominent former pupil is Andrew Card, George Bush's Chief of Staff from 2001-2006, who told the Wall Street Journal Online of his time working at McDonald's in Columbia, ‘I did time at the grill, the fry vat and the counter. I loved the counter job. It was well before computers calculated the tab, so I enjoyed the challenge of adding up the bill before it could be punched on the cash-register buttons. It wasn't long before I became a shift leader and then the night manager. Boy, did I learn how to manage!'
Mr Card's comments come in his review of a wonderful 2006 book called 'My Secret Life On The McJob', in which college professor Jerry Newman went undercover to study different management techniques in the fast food industry through working as an employee. The results make interesting, amusing and sometimes horrifying reading, and offers almost as many lessons as McDonald's training itself.
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