I did one. I won't eat onions. McDonalds puts onions on everything but the chicken nuggets. Some of their shops are special order shops, where I could tell them to hold the onions. I found and did one of them.

There are probably 200 or more McDonalds in my target shopping area. When those shops come out they flood the job board. It is not worth clicking on each one to find the special order shops so I can eat food I don't want (I never eat at McD's) and do a fussy, detailed report with multiple timings for a whopping $5. So I opted out and don't even see them on the job board any more. I wouldn't mind doing the special order shops (I have a friend who has gotten $100 bonuses from them for remote towns) but I just can't stand having to open a gazillion shops to find one I can do.

Actually I'm not sure I'd even do a special order shop for them any more. I've gotten real spoiled by Five Guys and am not too keen on the idea of putting that questionable mystery meat into my mouth now that I know what alternatives are out there. Although for $100 I might take it home to the dogs. (They can't eat onions either, though.)

If this is the shop I'm thinking of, I always found it odd that they do not ask how the food tastes. Seems like they are obsessed with timings, when a simpler timing structure would be more meaningful.

I quit doing them when I kept getting the clarifying question, "what took so long?". WTH... when I shopped there was either no car or merely one car that happened to be ahead. The timing was within a few minutes so the wait was quick. A more appropriate question would be did it seem too long for me, along with submitting the timing. While speed is a factor, would be wiser to concentrate more on improving food quality, texture, taste, ingredients, appearance and the like.

When you have Shoppers taking one bite and throwing it out or to the birds, it says volumes. Volumes that don't get stated in shop reports. But only show up on You Tube, like the burger in the closet with a bite taken out of it that seems petrified after being in there two years! Not even the bread or cheese has mold. Bread is still the cardboard consistency. Their fries don't need a closet since the moment the air gets to them, they go limp and have shrinkage. Lol! Now don't you wish you could write a report like that? ROFLMAO!

Curious one, the report form asks "Was your sandwich fresh, and did it taste good?"

I found that the voice recorder app on my phone works ok with my headset mic so if I have my earbuds in a pocket so I am not rude when ordering it picks up OK nothing great but fine for timings.

Just not worth it!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2014 02:04AM by curiousone.

BBird0701 stated
<Curious one, the report form asks "Was your sandwich fresh, and did it taste good?">

I used to do these years ago, but this company seemed to be such a cheap and slow pay, it was discouraging.

I know BBird, for me it is about the lack of depth of really wanting to know what consumers like or being free to talk about what we dislike. But I haven't done one of those shops in ages because of the really, really low pay and for similar reasons to other posters.

Let's face it there are so many other ff shops with some decent food and not necessarily mystery meat. Many of the other ff places have timings that make sense and are much more concerned about putting out a somewhat quality product for the most part. Many of them are still not understanding trends like, non-GMO, labeling ingredients or calories, gluten-free choices, or that folks want it their way with fresh lettuce, tomato or whatever. If they truly researched what we really want to order and quit putting so much emphasis on timings they might really have a great survey. Learn from the stats, then start to modify the menu and sell more or beat the competition. Timings only really matter when it is causing one to be late getting back to work or excessive delays that show up as bungling the order.

I could care less about getting my meal in 10 seconds or less. It is not unreasonable to get ff in a longer time than that as long as it doesn't go past 5 minutes or so, obviously unless there is a certain length of line. I like real cheese, I like having discernable items like real onions, tomato and lettuce on my burger. I just am not a good candidate for this particular company as their food needs serious help, but they are really not concerned with that.

Just for laughs, I took the test the other day to see what the timings are and what the questions are concerning taste. Even their test does not jive with the number of napkins required in the guidelines and so the test question causes most Shoppers to fail the test since you won't get 100%. It is odd too, that unless you pass this test your ID information cannot get verified, even if you passed other tests for them. Guess they are figure you must do these ff or forget about any other shops.

For those who have iPhone's or some kind of smartphone, if you don't have a digital watch to capture times, try using screenshots of your clock on your phone. I've been doing this for all my shops that require times. It's useful because you can extract both actual and elapsed times.

Tarantado Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For those who have iPhone's or some kind of
> smartphone, if you don't have a digital watch to
> capture times, try using screenshots of your clock
> on your phone. I've been doing this for all my
> shops that require times. It's useful because you
> can extract both actual and elapsed times.

Are you rounding your seconds or just making up how many seconds? They want EXACT timing. Not down to the minute, but down to the second.

scanman1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Tarantado Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > For those who have iPhone's or some kind of
> > smartphone, if you don't have a digital watch
> to
> > capture times, try using screenshots of your
> clock
> > on your phone. I've been doing this for all my
> > shops that require times. It's useful because
> you
> > can extract both actual and elapsed times.
>
> Are you rounding your seconds or just making up
> how many seconds? They want EXACT timing. Not down
> to the minute, but down to the second.

No, I do not round my seconds. When you take a screenshot with the clock icon in the background on your main screen, the seconds hand is shown while the top of the phone shows the time in HH:MM. Granted there'll be a +/- 1 second error when doing this since you can distinguish any smaller than a second.

That's brilliant, actually.

Tarantado Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For those who have iPhone's or some kind of
> smartphone, if you don't have a digital watch to
> capture times, try using screenshots of your clock
> on your phone. I've been doing this for all my
> shops that require times. It's useful because you
> can extract both actual and elapsed times.

Tarantado Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> scanman1 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Tarantado Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> > > For those who have iPhone's or some kind of
> > > smartphone, if you don't have a digital watch
> > to
> > > capture times, try using screenshots of your
> > clock
> > > on your phone. I've been doing this for all
> my
> > > shops that require times. It's useful because
> > you
> > > can extract both actual and elapsed times.
> >
> > Are you rounding your seconds or just making up
> > how many seconds? They want EXACT timing. Not
> down
> > to the minute, but down to the second.
>
> No, I do not round my seconds. When you take a
> screenshot with the clock icon in the background
> on your main screen, the seconds hand is shown
> while the top of the phone shows the time in
> HH:MM. Granted there'll be a +/- 1 second error
> when doing this since you can distinguish any
> smaller than a second.


Oh, and for those who are worried about not seeing the exact second, your iPhone captured the exact time, including seconds, when you look at the file properties of the screenshots.

>
> No, I do not round my seconds. When you take a
> screenshot with the clock icon in the background
> on your main screen, the seconds hand is shown
> while the top of the phone shows the time in
> HH:MM. Granted there'll be a +/- 1 second error
> when doing this since you can distinguish any
> smaller than a second.

There are lots of free apps with HH:MMS for the iPhones. I downloaded two to use various shops. However, for McDonald's, it's easier to use elapse time on my iPhone. The problem with iPhone screenshots is that it flashes and it's pretty obvious.