As the next chapter of an informal series we began recently with our look at the Supermarket and Grocery Industry, here are another five companies that do not offer the promise of glamour or substantial and rewarding advancement towards any neighbothood within an hour’s drive of Easy Street. But these jobs remain in many ways a pillar of American life – and American working – for many of us. Most of us pass through extremely uncushy jobs early when we’re trying to support our evenings and weekends in high school. For others, including those least-successful scalers of the economy, they can end up offering decades of reliable if rough-edged employment. Taking advantage of Comparably’s wealth of employee-submitted data on the five companies – Burger King, McDonald’s, Subway, Taco Bell and Wendy’s– we’ll take a look at how it is to depend on a fast food company for your livelihood in 2019.
OVERALL CULTURE
Without much serious competition from the four other fast food chains, Wendy’s wins the Overall Culture category with a respectable ‘B’ grade. Taco Bell and McDonald’s compete for second place, with Subway and Burger King not offering much resistance.
Burger King: “I like the Burger King culture. If it isn’t broke don’t mess with it.”
McDonald’s: “Working for a fast food restaurant, it seems you are disrespected and abused by customers on a daily basis.I think that if the pay was better, employees would be willing to accept more.”
Subway: “Store level employees are viewed as easily replaceable and issues brought above the store level are very rarely taken seriously.”
Taco Bell: “The fast pace makes the day go by quickly and make you feel accomplished.”
Wendy’s: “Overall I work in a positive and happy environment. My employer and team are always consistant and communicative.”
CEO & LEADERSHIP
Wendy’s takes another little gold trophy, this time for the way their employees rate their CEO, Todd Penegor. The other four chief execs were rated within three percentage points of each other with grades in the “C” range.
Burger King: “Most people don’t think past the DM. Maybe if there were more questionnaires or surveys available to/for employees, that would change. All we hear about is speeding things up, labor being to high, and we will have more staff soon.”
McDonald’s: “The CEO and the main people in charge are pretty amazing.”
Subway: “Managers need to treat staff like actual human beings, and staff members being affected by this need some kind of help from Subway’s head office.”
Taco Bell: “The overall leadership team is chill but a little unclear in what they want accomplished.”
Wendy’s: “We got to sit down as equals with our leadership and talk about the way the job works.”
COMPENSATION
Wendy’s takes a third win, but nobody working in fast food seems to be particuarly happy with their salaries, from the people manning the cash registers to the office workers at the corporate level. All five chains rated somewhere in the “C” or “D” range, with Burger King bringing up the very rear.
Burger King: “Honestly employees at Burger King do a lot of work. The work load does not equal to the actual pay.”
McDonald’s: “I make more money than unemployment but not enough to eat anything other than McDonald’s.”
Subway: “We all know that anything under twelve dollars an hour is just not a wage that is high enough for this day and age.”
Taco Bell: “I don’t feel undervalued at all. I’m a shift lead for Tacobell. I work hard and for that I am able to make all of my bonuses.”
Wendy’s: “I’m paid $10.00 and can hardly make ends meet without taking on other side gigs and payday loans. The job is stressful.”
PERKS & BENEFITS
Nobody expects much of a compensation and benefits package when working for a fast food place, but such a perponderace of “D” ratings still seems fairly bleak. The fact that McDonald’s managed to win the categy with a C- minus score tells most of the story here.
Burger King: “I feel like we should be offered more benefits, since we are full-time employees for the most part.”
McDonald’s: “They provide medical insurance in certain cases. Free uniforms, free food and drink.”
Subway: “Health & Dental at the General Manager level and for office personnel.”
Taco Bell: “401k, paid vacation time after being employed a year, and a 50% discount for food on days you work.”
Wendy’s: “I haven’t been offered any kind of benefit package.”
DIVERSITY
Diversity seems mostly well-served across the chains as far as the employee ratings go, but with the relatively meager compensation levels offered by the often perk-free jobs themselves, one would not expect to see much evidence of systematic racism behind franchise counters.
Burger King: “In my store, it is mostly African-Americans, really.”
McDonald’s: “I like the diversity and the fast paced work environment.”
Subway: “It’s very diverse.”
Taco Bell: “Diverse. Young, old, African-American, Hispanic and Latino, Asian, white, male, female, etc.”
Wendy’s: “Those who speak Spanish often help our fluently spanish speaking customers with their orders.”
OUTLOOK
Burger King: “It seems the sandwiches that are big sellers are taken away first, which makes for unhappy customers. Taking away both the cookies and the cinnamon rolls was flat out a mistake.”
McDonald’s: “McDonalds has recently started with UberEats, which is doing well. The only difficulties I can think of is with the scheduling. 99 times out of a hundred, you’re not going to get off at your scheduled time.”
Subway:“As long as people want cheap sandwiches made with outdated products it will do ok.”
Taco Bell: “I really likewhen everyone works together to get the job done while having fun at the same time.”
Wendy’s: “Payday is the day I’m at complete happiness.”
While nobody expects any of these five franchises to disappear from the highways and byways of America anytime soon, the level of compensation offered for what is often tiring and thankless work is a severe limiter on the ability of most employees to get personally engaged with the companies or care much about where those companies are headed. In a match made up of companies with very average pay and AWOL cultures, Wendy’s seems to win by default after taking the final trophy in the Outlook category. The other four companies, which all rated within hailing distance of Wendy’s in most categories, were rated as unspectacular and unremarkable at nearly all levels.
