UB professor finds fast-food job is no picnic

By Anne Neville
Updated: 03/12/07 3:23 PM


"That's the lunch rush starting," says Jerry Newman as he spots a line of customers form in a Wendy's close to the University at Buffalo, where Newman is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the School of Management. "You can almost look at the number of people in line and know what time it is."

Newman's knowledge of the ebb and flow of customer demand for fast food isn't limited to an academic study, or even to the view from a table in the dining room where he sits on this winter day. For 14 months, Newman went undercover as a fast-food worker, sweeping floors, making burgers and keeping an eye on the dynamics behind the counter in restaurants from Western New York to Florida.

After he changed the job title on his applications from "university professor" to the less intimidating "college teacher," he snagged short-lived but surprisingly difficult jobs in Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, Arby's and a Southern chain called Krystal.

In his new book, "My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter to Supersize any Management Style," (McGraw Hill, 203 pages, $24.95), Newman says one surprise was, "the McJob isn't McEasy."

The difficulties range from the physical demands of carrying 40-pound boxes and standing for hours over blazing hot grills to the psychological pain caused by what Newman calls "toxic managers."

Newman found it ironic that these toxic managers in the seven places he worked used tactics ranging from shaming to sarcasm, because other parts of the industry are tightly dictated from the top down. "The way they make a sandwich in Biloxi is the way they make a sandwich in Boulder, even down to the number of pickles," Newman said. "They're much more reliable at operations - how you make a burger - than they are at how you make a good employee. There's a horrible inconsistency there, which leads to bad management practices, which lead to turnover, which reduces the quality of customer service and has a bottom-line impact."

So in one restaurant, Newman wrote, the store manager amused her employees by giving lap dances in her office during business hours to favored male workers. In another, the manager didn't even say hello to Newman on his first day - or second, third or fourth.

New respect

To blend in at his new workplaces, Newman said he decided to "downplay my personality and downplay my knowledge." But the few times he did make suggestions, he often found them rejected.

At one Burger King, he suggested to the franchise owner's son that broken burgers be used in chili - a routine Newman had been taught at a nearby Wendy's. But the idea was rebuffed. "He looks at me straight, and says, "We're not allowed to do that because of health code.' Right next door was the Wendy's that I did it at. So he's lying to me. He doesn't want to hear anything that I have to say because I couldn't possibly come up with a good idea."

In his book, Newman describes his co-workers, ranging from the "Survival Worker," living from paycheck to paycheck, to the "Way-Station Worker," who has dreams of a better job. In studying them, he said he learned to appreciate the people who work in fast food.

"I came out of this with a new respect for them," Newman said. "I guess that was the biggest thing I learned in this whole project - perhaps to my shame. I've always been a person who believed this is a meritocracy. If you don't get anywhere in life, it's because you didn't work hard enough. Well, I found all these people working really hard, who were really quite smart, who were looking for a break.

"Everybody thinks [of fast-food workers] as slothful, lazy, not very intelligent people," he said. When he became one of them, he said, "I found the exact opposite."

Since the book's publication, Newman has addressed executives at the headquarters of both McDonald's and Burger King, and will be the keynote speaker at a McDonald's conference in April.

Management styles

Newman said he did find some good managers at the places he worked, and he calls the best "ego architects," who "figure out what is good about a person and what needs to be shored up. The good ones were good at doing this."

To reward workers who are looked down upon by society and earn very little - his wages ranged from $5.50 to $6.50 an hour - the good managers provide praise. "When you're in a fast-food job, you need somebody to tell you you're doing something right," Newman said.

Newman calls the toxic managers "ego undertakers - they find out your weakness, what they can come at you with. My weakness was at my age, I wasn't sure I could do this job. I would get tired faster than other people."

In the book he tells a story about how after he took a very quick break one day, his manager snapped, "Jerry, what was that, about half an hour?" Newman's anger still flashes as he recalls this unfair accusation. "He knows exactly what my weak point is," Newman said.

The toxic manager "figures they can get you to do their jobs by breaking you down, by burying your ego. It's not a terrible model - even Vince Lombardi used to belittle his stars, which got the guy to say, "I'll prove it to you!' But it didn't work for me."

He said he hopes his book becomes required reading for fast-food managers, "so they will realize, "These are really people, these aren't interchangeable cogs.' "