Jerry Newman's My Life on the McJob

Just How Tough is Retail?

Apr 11, 2009 Allan Cho

He wanted to find out how a fast food chain works after he was unapologetically offered a second burger after his daughter nearly swallowed a condom.

When management professor Dr. Jerry Newman at University at Buffalo's State University of New York decided to conduct an experiment, he worked at seven stores over 14 months – two McDonalds, two Burger Kings, one Wendy’s, one Arby’s and one Krystal (a fast food chain in the South), with the stores being located all over America, in Michigan, Florida and New York. Newman worked all jobs, grill, register, custodian, and observed and documented experiences first-hand.

Instead, in My Life on the McJob, Newman explores just how tough retail actually can be. Working undercover as a semi-retired professor looking for part-time work, Jerry Newman York explains this in pristine detail as he worked undercover in the lowest rung minimum wage labour world of fast food restaurants to reveal insightful, and at times, disturbing practices in retail culture.

A New Shift in Research

My Secret Life on the McJob is a paradigmatic shift in the field work analysis of systems organizations. Too often social science educators are narrowly confined to questionnaires and quantitative analyses and equally narrowly churning out generic, boring, and unusable data about user statistics. Instead of viewing from the top-down, Newman does the exact opposite.

Jerry Newman turns a stunted methodology of interviewing and statistical analysis on its head by actually doing a personal sacrifice (physical risk included) through experiencing the problems and flaws of organization behaviour and working as a covert fast food worker. What does he discover? The inefficiencies of retail, fast food, and traditional hierarchical management techniques passed down by the Ford Assembly Line era are not working in our globalized, mobile workforce era.

Key takeaways from this book

• Hiring decisions are key to store success and employee retention
• Culture has the strongest impact on workers’ behavior – and managers are in control
• Camaraderie and strong work ethic are a winning combination
• Provide constructive feedback: Gold stars worked in elementary school, still work now
• Recognize job proficiency by make an example of a strong employee
• Offer flexible hours and job security
• Facilitate social interaction – build a social web, make the work-place a fun-place to be
• Advertise opportunities to advance
• Build positive manager/employee relationships

The book is relevant to any organization that has multiple shifts in the course of a day, or that has multiple units within the organization. The biggest problem in multi-unit operations is the inconsistency across time and units. To be great, first you must be consistent. However, because this is not viewed as a business 'sexy' term, it is often unrecognized in the business literature.

Surprising Things

• Fast food is not an easy job
• No forum for employee feedback and unsolicited feedback on operations/best practices is not welcome
• Wide disparities exist across stores – even those with the same name
• Women are better managers
• Recognition is a powerful motivator

What Newman forces us to review about our workplace is that people are important. It's about the people. Good ideas come from the front lines. This applies not only to the retail world, but businesses of any kind.

The copyright of the article Jerry Newman's My Life on the McJob in Reference Books is owned by Allan Cho. Permission to republish Jerry Newman's My Life on the McJob in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Dr. Jerry Newman

Book Cover