“Today I have had enough of the judgmental criticism,” McDonald’s (MCD) employee Mike Waite began a Facebook post on Sunday.
Waite works at a McDonald’s in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he wrote the post to explain why there’s no shame in working at a fast food restaurant. It has since been liked nearly 40,000 times and shared by over 6,000 people, and fellow fast food workers have taken to the comments to share their own stories and experiences.
McDonald’s workers tend to get a bad rap. As Waite addresses in his post, people tend to perceive them as lazy or goalless, having no information about them aside from where they work. “Let me be clear. YES I work at McDonald’s and do it nearly 50 hours a week,” he writes. “Why? Not because I have no aspiration, motivation or intelligence…but for the opposite.” Waite is returning to school in a few months. This job lets him save up and provides him with flexible employment while he studies.
“Every person I work with has a story and every person is working their ass off,” he says. Some are working to become pilots, lawyers, designers, and architects. Others need a job to take care of their families. McDonald’s is appealing to these people because it allows them to save up, and it’s “extremely (extremely) flexible.” For those who want to be in a management position, Waite adds that the company also gives employees opportunity for growth.
“Please just take your preconceptions and be rid of them,” he pleads. “Because I work with some amazing people, and like many of them McDonald’s is not a ‘dead-end’ of my working life but rather part of the beginning.”