Weâre playing poker next week. On March 11th at 7pm pacific. We play a $50 tournament online and weâll send a link to the game and a zoom. But put it on your calendar now!
Poker Taught Me to Be a Quitter
As poker players we are familiar with the three options presented to us during the game. We can call, raise, or fold.
Whatâs great about poker is that you are training yourself to quit so that you can try again when you have better cards. But what is obviously a bad hand in poker is harder to see in real life, and so we keep on calling and raising and hoping. (Hope is important, which is why in our game one player is always in possession of the Hope Coin.)
Thinking about the call, the raise, and the fold I can imagine just about any situation Iâm in faces a similar choice. Do I hold steady, do I engage fully, or do I step back?
Last week I âstepped backâ from working at McDonaldâs right after I became âOutstanding Crew Member of the Monthâ because I realized my full engagement wasnât going to pay off.
When quitting or walking away itâs hard to not think of it as failure. That is why I love the poker analogy, because folding is usually the right move!
Weâve talked before about being on âtiltâ and how being in a really emotional state can make you act stupid. This is the situation I found myself in at McDonaldâs before I leftâŚ
On Tilt at the Hamburger Restaurant
When I got hired at the hamburger restaurant one of the perks was a discount on the food. It was kind of a tiered system where you get one shift meal for free, anything at the location I worked for 50% off, and 30% off at any other location. I tried pretty hard to not take too much advantage of these because the food at McDonaldâs is poison, but I did purchase over a hundred Sausage and Egg McMuffins with the help of my HBR co-host to donate to Kathrynâs mutual aid group. That was a great use of my discount.
Anyway, those were the rules and they didnât matter to me very much because I tried very hard to bring my own food from home. Unrelated to McDonaldâs one of the projects I have been working on for about two years now started to kind of unravel in a really frustrating way. I canât go into a lot of detail, but from an emotional point of view my blinding optimism kept me from seeing how much this frustration was impacting me. And of course this all came out at McDonaldâsâŚ
I was working on a Sunday and it was pretty slow. I was texting my âBurger Buddiesâ thread with all the folks from HBR on it and telling them about how one my favorite people just promoted to manage and that I also noticed that two of the crew members working seemed to have formed a new romantic relationship, which was very cute. I also found out one of the high school kids didnât get into Stanford, which was a big deal because weâd been talking about it for months! Anyway, it was a normal Sunday at McDonaldâs except that I found myself sneaking out texts while on shift.
Then I sent the following text:
This had happened before. Basically one of the managers takes a list with everyoneâs name on it around and they walk you through the official, but never enforced, policies around food. Some are fine and make sense like you canât get a 40 piece nugget for free. But some are stupid and ignored like you canât ring in your own meal into the register. The reason this is a stupid policy is that as an employee I canât give myself a free or even discounted meal, only a manager can do that. And the managers are busy, so usually for shift meal a person would ring up the order on a register, then go get the manager to promo the meal for them. WHAT AN EFFICIENT USE OF TIME. I was even told once that if you wanted your shift meal on your ten minute break, you could ring it up before you clocked out. Then the manager could promo it and kitchen could make it and you might actually be able to eat it within the ten minutes. That seemed very reasonable and kind to me.
But the new policy was, and we had to sign the document saying we understood and agreed to it, a strict enforcement of the limited options we could have for shift meal (fine, no big deal), a manager had to actually ring up the order (what? thatâs stupid), and a new weird limitation on the 50% off rule. It was new thing like you had to order at least two entrees or two meals or something? Honestly I didnât much care because I try not to eat the food.
But then it started to bother meâŚ
Having us all sign a document that we understood the new policy seemed like a way to punish anyone who was working around it, and yet, everyone was going to work around it because it was stupid. Iâm happy to sign a policy, but make a good policy based on how things actually work, not a bullshit cover so you can selectively enforce the rules. It really started to rile me up.
I want to point how here that while I didnât realize it at the time, I now realize that I was on âtiltâ from the frustrations of feeling jerked around in this other project I was working on. The jerked around feeling was pretty maxed out so this small jerking me around was the proverbial straw that broke the jerking around camelâs back.
When I went on my meal break I walked up to the front where the manager works âthe pass.â The pass is where all the food comes out from the kitchen and is kind of the brain of the whole restaurant. The manager watches the orders, packs special orders, and routes everything to the right place (front counter, drive thru, pickup, etc.). The manager is always busy and lucky for me it was my least favorite manager.
âCan I talk to you about the new food policy?â I asked. He turned to listen to me and I explained that when I was hired the policy was a simple 50% off and now the policy was changed to this complicated system and that didnât seem fair. He explained there had been some people taking advantage and so they were tightening the reins. I said that what happened with other people didnât matter to me, the point was that one of the perks of the working here was being reduced and that wasnât okay with me. He kind of shrugged in a âitâs above my pay gradeâ way and said they can change the food policy at any time. This did not help me calm down. Arbitrary rule changes are like my kryptonite, if kryptonite turns you into a version of the Hulk that hates your boss.
Without any resolution I left and went to eat my lunch. My blood was on a low simmer. The whole thing was pretty dumb, so it was dumb to argue, but it also felt so disrespectful to a team of people who for the most part work much harder than is required to make the restaurant work. Including me!
I was back on my shift and someone came up to take over drive thru and said the manager wanted to see me in the office. My heart rate increased, but not in a âoh no, iâm in trouble way.â No, this felt like the that part in the original gladiator movie where he rubs the dirt on his hands. This was about to turn into a THING and Iâm very good at a THING.
This manager seems to have reviewed his own manual. He says he âunderstandsâ my frustration but then he shows me a freshly printed out official policy where it states a restaurant can choose to allow any form of shift meal policy, discount, or none at all. He seems pleased with himself in that he has âproofâ he was right. I respond that I understand they can change the policy whenever they want but that doing is disrespectful to all the people who work so hard here. I said they can choose to disrespect us, that I understand that is legal, but that it seems like a bad way to manage and lead people. At this he paused.
He stumbled a bit and tried to ask me what I usually bought and why the new policy was a problem. I said it didnât matter. What mattered to me is that I felt like I was being jerked around because someone else abused the rules, and that felt unfair and I didnât like it.
He tried another pivot and said that the policy probably wouldnât last that long. They just needed to make sure everyone got back to doing things this way for a while and then they might go back to the way it was. So I shot back with, âWell, how about this then. Since I donât like the new policy, and it might change back, why donât you take me off the calendar until it the policy comes back.â
Another pause.
He explained it might be awhile. I said that was fine. He paused again, longer this time. I decided to let him off the hook and said, âLook, Iâm pretty riled up right now. Why donât I clock out and go home and I can have a few days calm down.â He agreed to that and I immediately clocked out and left.
After I calmed down and talked to Kathryn I realized that I was taking out my frustration on my dumb manager. And I was doing that because while I was more frustrated with this other stuff happening in my life, my time at McDonaldâs was feeling stagnant.
Folding My McDonaldâs Hand
Having some time to reflect I realized that continuing to work at McDonaldâs was bad pot odds. Staying in the job had a higher cost in terms of hours lost than it compensated me in terms of money made. It also seemed that as time went on my hand wasnât getting any stronger. I got a lot of value out of working there personally and financially when I started. I got more value from working there while doing Hamburger Business Review. But now it seemed like this was a hand that was unlikely to improve.
The situation with the meal policy isnât why I quit. At least not specifically. It did highlight how I was a replaceable part of a machine designed to dish out bad food in high volume. I love the system of the McDonaldâs. While I still look at it in awe, I donât think the product is net good for the world. So I talked to Kathryn and told her I felt like six months was long enough and eventually my shareholders agreed.
The final scene is pretty unbelievable. I was working my last scheduled shift after having told the General Manager I was leaving. I bought coffee for one of my favorite regulars who comes through the drive through every morning. And then, while on my meal break, the GM came in and handed me the Crew Member of the Month plaque, telling me they had already ordered it⌠on my LAST day!
I was moved! I started to feel emotional. I thought I was invisible. I thought no one noticed how when I worked the drive through I worked to back up the fry station and keep the ice topped up in the front. I thought I was invisible and I was working hard at McDonaldâs to make things easier for my co-workers and to treat the customers with a little warmth and respect, even through the drive thru speaker. But someone did notice, and that meant so much to me.
But not enough to not quit. It was still time to fold.
this probably should also be an HBR post, but basically it's how playing poker taught me to quit McDonald's...