Hi everybody, today I thought that I would talk about my first day back at work. Due to the coronavirus, ive been furloughed from work for around 3 months which is by far the longest ive gone without working. Furlough for those unaware is where you are temporarily not working for the company, but you’re still hired by them. Thankfully, a government scheme let us still collect 80% of our average earnings over the last year so we can still afford bills and other necessities. Over this period, I have been slowly going crazy with getting bored and staying inside all day so ive been pretty excited to go back to work. However, my first shift was really a roller coaster of insanity hence I thought to make a blog on it.

For those of you that don’t know, at the time of writing this article I work at McDonald’s which is probably one of the busiest fast food chains in the world. KFC opened a few weeks before us and when I saw articles of queues being over an hour long, I became excited as I enjoy the shifts that are complete madness and knew the same queues would come to McDonald’s when we re-opened. When I first came into work at around 11:30, the queue was actually quite small. We had set up four lanes where the McDonald’s car park is to reduce traffic on the roads which actually worked very well. However, when I went on my break at around 4pm, I looked outside and saw complete chaos. My McDonald’s is in a large retail park but currently most of the shops are closed. Our queue went round the outside if the entire retail park, then out the retail park and completely blocking the roundabout outside the retail park. We had around 4-5 staff outside directing customers and they were telling me that the queue was around 40 minutes to an hour. I like a good McDonald’s, but I would definitely not be willing to wait that long just for some “fast” food. As we only had the drive-thru open, we could only serve one customer at a time so I had no idea about how long the queue was until my break as the kitchen worked at the same speed no matter how many cars were waiting.

When we first started work we had to wear facemasks and can I just say, wearing facemasks as got to be the most annoying thing ever. They itch, they make you sweat and are hard to breathe in and wearing them for 9 hours (apart from my break) is a miserable experience. We also have to wear disposable aprons which are just made of a thin plastic which was very unusual. We also had tons of other new procedures such as certain stations not being used, Perspex screens separating people, and having a dedicated person to get stock out so that people don’t need to walk past each other.

For me, the worst part of the shift was my body trying to adjust back to work. By the end of my shift, my legs and back were very painful. It’s strange as I can run for miles and miles easily but standing still or walking makes my legs hurt. I’m assuming they use slightly different muscles. I also had a terrible headache that was from dehydration which was entirely my fault. I didn’t drink enough before work and then I didn’t start drinking water at work until after I got a headache. Luckily after I got home and drunk loads of fluids, my headache eased off. I’m going to order a bottle online so that I can drink a lot before I start work which will be good after cycle in the sun for 3 miles.

I’m writing this the day after my first shift and I have another shift today but its much shorter. My shift today is only 7 hours instead of 9 which is a relief. I’m looking forward to working again and I’m praying that I don’t have to work directing traffic as the weather is dire today.

<3 Jordan