18 ms·

McDonald's temporarily shuts its U.S. offices and prepares layoff notices

45 points by el_duderino 4y ago

etempleton 4y ago
This feels cowardly, like breaking up over the phone.
nostrademons 4y ago
It's starting. Most of the rest of the U.S. thinks the layoffs that have hit the tech sector are because they overextended and made poor decisions during the stimulus-fueled boom. That may be true, but a falling tide grounds all boats. We'll see some big names in the economy do mass layoffs this summer - that's the whole point of the Fed's actions. My marker for when it's time to re-enter the stock market is when an S&P 500 company goes bankrupt.
- 1270018080 4y ago
  Market timing is a fool's errand
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  But is this a true falling tide or simply McDonalds pandering to investors' expectations? That is, look ma, we're so serious and worthy we're laying off people too. Imagine getting paid the big bucks to make such decisions. Bankrupt? Better to look for companies where leadership runs counter to "prevailing conventional wisdom" and actually leads for others to follow.
  - patrickthebold 4y ago
    Great point. The article doesn't mention of McDonalds is profitable. I'd wager it is even without the layoffs. On one hand, doing layoffs may make investors happy, on the other hand if we get a recession because a bunch of profitable companies keep laying everyone off, then maybe that's not so great for investors after all.
    - Fatnino 4y ago
      I think McDonalds stock just did really well. This is surprising to me. It's literally at it all time high.
    - chiefalchemist 4y ago
      I believe that's called The Tragedy of The Commons.
  - rocket_surgeron 4y ago
    McDonald's only made $6,000,000,000+ last year on $23+ billion in revenue at a ~35% profit margin. They reversed the downward trend in revenue (which occurred simultaneously with a tremendous increase in profitability) and bounced back from 2020 magnificently. Their stock price has ONLY roughly doubled in the last five years and their dividend has ONLY doubled in the last 10. Obviously that is not good enough so they're going to lay off a couple thousand people to get that margin up by two points. Pathetic. This is 100% a stock juicing play. I'm willing to bet there's a cadre of executives who all came on at the same time pre-pandemic (during the revenue turnaround) whose options are maturing and the price isn't where they want it to be because of the pandemic. McDonalds is as healthy a company as its food is unhealthy.
    - mehlmao 4y ago
      Executives will destroy lives at random as a show of good will to the capital class. Time to bring back the guillotine.
    - chiefalchemist 4y ago
      My only hope is that one day we have a media staffed by legitimate journalists that would convey such details. It's obviously not illegal. But the more the (consumer) market knows, the better its decisions on where to open their wallets.
- etempleton 4y ago
  We will see. I have no doubt there will be more layoffs, but the pending/potential recession feels like an excuse. McDonalds is plenty profitable.
  - sammalloy 4y ago
    Have you been inside a McDonald’s recently? The prices are outrageous. I don’t see how the average person could afford to eat there.
    - bkjelden 4y ago
      This is true of all restaurants. In fact, I would expect McDonald's to be a beneficiary of this as consumers replace more expensive options with McDonald's.
      - sammalloy 4y ago
        Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just eat at home? A full meal for three people at McDonald’s in my area is around $35.
        bluGill 4y ago
        You have to cook. I'm a good cook, but it takes an hour in the kitchen to prepare and average fast meal. (More or less, some meals are faster, some slower)
        sammalloy 4y ago
        I do meal prep. I have a set of Pyrex food storage containers that I bought at Costco for $20 and change. I do an hour of cooking and it allows me to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three days at a time. It’s hard to imagine what life was like before this.
        bluGill 4y ago
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >but a falling tide grounds all boats. More like the biggest piece of shit on the water is first to sink in the storm. Tech was that POS. But other sectors are gonna feel the storm too. But they'll probably do better because smaller proportions of those industries are running on VC monopoly bucks that go tits up when the fed raises rates.
  - breckenedge 4y ago
    Generally shit floats, but I’ve never observed shit dynamics in a storm.
- evantbyrne 4y ago
  Their stock is up 13% over the past year. Maybe it's just trendy to lay people off right now?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > the U.S. thinks the layoffs that have hit the tech sector are because they overextended and made poor decisions during the stimulus-fueled boom That's part of it. The other is there are categories of American white collar work which have always been bullshit jobs, it's just now okay to eliminate them.
  - hammock 4y ago
    You seem to be saying the same thing
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > seem to be saying the same thing Many companies (mostly tech) increased hiring of all kinds, bullshit or not, during the last years. Those are the excess jobs. Reversing them is the short-term correction. For much longer, corporate America has been staffing up departments which practically do nothing. Eliminating them is the longer-term trend.
      - hammock 4y ago
        Zero interest rate policy means they were the same thing
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > Zero interest rate policy means they were the same thing No, it doesn't, because one of these things pre-dates and was not caused by low rates. (Office Space was released when rates were half a point above where they are now [1].) [1] https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/history-of-federal-funds-rate/ https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/history-of-...
        hammock 4y ago
        Ok what is your evidence that bullshit jobs are being structurally eliminated in a way that is unrelated to interest rate policy?
- lackbeard 4y ago
  Wasn't SVB an S&P 500 company?
CaliforniaKarl 4y ago
> … McDonald’s asked them to work from home from Monday through Wednesday so it can deliver staffing decisions virtually, the report said. That seems kindof scummy: It seems to me that, in general, companies are trying to move away from work-from-home. To use 100% work-from-home, and deliver layoff notices in such a way, strikes me as mean. But maybe McDonald's corporate is a strong work-from-home company? I admit I haven't researched it.
- nebulousthree 4y ago
  Don't have to hire security to escort everyone out if they're already home.
  - wyclif 4y ago
    Also don't have to worry about somebody going postal at the corporate office.
    - thewildginger 4y ago
      This is the real reason, they don't want people to coordinate anything, and they don't want employees spiting the company and leaving with valuable info.
- doktorhladnjak 4y ago
  I assume they, like many large businesses these days, don't really know where their employees are at any given time. Better that everyone is working from home so they can run some orderly layoff process in a consistent manner.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    The pandemic and WFH exposed how little most corporate employees really do and how unnecessary most of them are. I expect a lot of big downsizings will be happening over the next year or two. Why now? It takes a while to turn a big ship.
chiph 4y ago
Could this be fallout from losing the chicken sandwich war? Because the Spicy McCrispy was a big disappointment, being not especially spicy nor crispy.
- code_witch_sam 4y ago
  i absolutely loved McD's spicy crispy chicken sandwich. is spicy mccrispy something different? it was quite a bit spicier than i expected (which is why i loved it probably)
- TMWNN 4y ago
  Let us hope that the veterans of this war are treated better than those who survived the Cola Wars. <https://www.theonion.com/ad-industry-veterans-honored-with-cola-war-memorial-1819564285 https://www.theonion.com/ad-industry-veterans-honored-with-c...>
- vuln 4y ago
  They literally put sauce on a regular one and called it spicy. Terrible.
- perardi 4y ago
  Ah, the Great Chicken Sandwich War. So many lives lost, so many psyches shattered…I fear we’ll be living with the consequences for generations. But nah, I doubt it’s any particular product issue. If it’s not just a matter of goosing the share price, it’s probably due to commodity prices eating into profits.
- jalino23 4y ago
  your comment made me order 4 popeyes chicken sandwich
  - brookside 4y ago
    Popeye's still uses trans fats which seems pretty unconscionable given our current understanding of their effect on cardiovascular risk. https://fastfoodnutrition.org/popeyes/chicken-sandwich https://fastfoodnutrition.org/popeyes/chicken-sandwich https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-cholesterol/in-depth/trans-fat/art-20046114 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-ch...
lumost 4y ago
I am curious at what point concentrated wealth would allow an oligarch to dictate Fed policy through specific company policies. Want the fed to print more money? Lay off a bunch of workers and move a little too much money between banks. Want prices to rise? go on a hiring binge.
- anaganisk 4y ago
  Isn't that already happening? And isn't that what caused all this mess in the economy. Every time Fed wanted to end quantitative easing Wall St threw a hissy fit and they didn't dare to do it.
  - cyanydeez 4y ago
    Also, the fed kept saying employment was too high
    - readthenotes1 4y ago
      and wages and wage growth were too high
  - jjeaff 4y ago
    The markets are certainly too large for any one player to consistently change them. But there is probably a lot of group think going on.
    - Frost1x 4y ago
      It can be interest alignment. If it's in the vested interest of the independent players, you essentially get orchestrated collusion so long as all players follow their interest.
    - hammock 4y ago
      Most of the stock market is held by passive investors. So it takes comparably less to make a difference. In other words the ‘groupthink ’ isn’t think at all
1970-01-01 4y ago
..as the stock hits an all time high. I'm not exactly sure what that means but it sure doesn't mean their food is going to taste any better. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/stock-price-history https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/stoc...
icegreentea2 4y ago
The referenced "January message" was reported on here: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/06/mcdonalds-plans-reorganization-job-cuts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/06/mcdonalds-plans-reorganizati... Summary: Profits and and growth are good (https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-stories/article/Q4-2022-results.html https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-stories/article/...), they plan on speeding up growth, and want to restructure because leadership feels current organization (and "certain initiatives") are holding them back.
drewcoo 4y ago
Interesting. Why now? I knew McDonald's was primarily a real estate company, but are they heavily into office space now? https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estate/ https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estat...
jacknews 4y ago
'McDonald’s asked them to work from home from Monday through Wednesday so it can deliver staffing decisions virtually' wow, too weaselly to fire people face to face.
nathanaldensr 4y ago
I love how scared all these globomegacorps are of their own workforces; they seem to all love closing their physical locations before layoffs now. Still think you're a "family?"
iancmceachern 4y ago
I bet the hamburgler is the culprit
kevmarsden 4y ago
A few comments pointed out McDonald's stock price or recent profit, but underneath the hood, their financials aren't great. Since 2010 their long-term debt has grown from about $10 billion to $35 billion. They currently spend about $1.2 billion/year on interest payments, but over time that will increase substantially as their low interest bonds mature. Here's the recent history of their balance sheet: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/balance-sheet https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/bala...
antibasilisk 4y ago
The west has fallen. Millions must fry.
red-iron-pine 4y ago
> McDonald’s is closing its U.S. corporate offices as it lays off hundreds of workers. > hundreds of workers A chain with 45000 workers or more, and like ~150k worldwide, is shedding a few hundred. My money says it's DEI, and maybe some project / program / marketing / other soft roles. Mostly a non-issue, IMO.

45 points by el_duderino 4y ago

This feels cowardly, like breaking up over the phone.

It's starting. Most of the rest of the U.S. thinks the layoffs that have hit the tech sector are because they overextended and made poor decisions during the stimulus-fueled boom. That may be true, but a falling tide grounds all boats. We'll see some big names in the economy do mass layoffs this summer - that's the whole point of the Fed's actions. My marker for when it's time to re-enter the stock market is when an S&P 500 company goes bankrupt.

1270018080 4y ago
Market timing is a fool's errand
chiefalchemist 4y ago
But is this a true falling tide or simply McDonalds pandering to investors' expectations? That is, look ma, we're so serious and worthy we're laying off people too. Imagine getting paid the big bucks to make such decisions. Bankrupt? Better to look for companies where leadership runs counter to "prevailing conventional wisdom" and actually leads for others to follow.
- patrickthebold 4y ago
  Great point. The article doesn't mention of McDonalds is profitable. I'd wager it is even without the layoffs. On one hand, doing layoffs may make investors happy, on the other hand if we get a recession because a bunch of profitable companies keep laying everyone off, then maybe that's not so great for investors after all.
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    I think McDonalds stock just did really well. This is surprising to me. It's literally at it all time high.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    I believe that's called The Tragedy of The Commons.
- rocket_surgeron 4y ago
  McDonald's only made $6,000,000,000+ last year on $23+ billion in revenue at a ~35% profit margin. They reversed the downward trend in revenue (which occurred simultaneously with a tremendous increase in profitability) and bounced back from 2020 magnificently. Their stock price has ONLY roughly doubled in the last five years and their dividend has ONLY doubled in the last 10. Obviously that is not good enough so they're going to lay off a couple thousand people to get that margin up by two points. Pathetic. This is 100% a stock juicing play. I'm willing to bet there's a cadre of executives who all came on at the same time pre-pandemic (during the revenue turnaround) whose options are maturing and the price isn't where they want it to be because of the pandemic. McDonalds is as healthy a company as its food is unhealthy.
  - mehlmao 4y ago
    Executives will destroy lives at random as a show of good will to the capital class. Time to bring back the guillotine.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    My only hope is that one day we have a media staffed by legitimate journalists that would convey such details. It's obviously not illegal. But the more the (consumer) market knows, the better its decisions on where to open their wallets.
etempleton 4y ago
We will see. I have no doubt there will be more layoffs, but the pending/potential recession feels like an excuse. McDonalds is plenty profitable.
- sammalloy 4y ago
  Have you been inside a McDonald’s recently? The prices are outrageous. I don’t see how the average person could afford to eat there.
  - bkjelden 4y ago
    This is true of all restaurants. In fact, I would expect McDonald's to be a beneficiary of this as consumers replace more expensive options with McDonald's.
    - sammalloy 4y ago
      Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just eat at home? A full meal for three people at McDonald’s in my area is around $35.
      - bluGill 4y ago
        You have to cook. I'm a good cook, but it takes an hour in the kitchen to prepare and average fast meal. (More or less, some meals are faster, some slower)
        sammalloy 4y ago
        I do meal prep. I have a set of Pyrex food storage containers that I bought at Costco for $20 and change. I do an hour of cooking and it allows me to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three days at a time. It’s hard to imagine what life was like before this.
        bluGill 4y ago
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>but a falling tide grounds all boats. More like the biggest piece of shit on the water is first to sink in the storm. Tech was that POS. But other sectors are gonna feel the storm too. But they'll probably do better because smaller proportions of those industries are running on VC monopoly bucks that go tits up when the fed raises rates.
- breckenedge 4y ago
  Generally shit floats, but I’ve never observed shit dynamics in a storm.
evantbyrne 4y ago
Their stock is up 13% over the past year. Maybe it's just trendy to lay people off right now?
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> the U.S. thinks the layoffs that have hit the tech sector are because they overextended and made poor decisions during the stimulus-fueled boom That's part of it. The other is there are categories of American white collar work which have always been bullshit jobs, it's just now okay to eliminate them.
- hammock 4y ago
  You seem to be saying the same thing
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > seem to be saying the same thing Many companies (mostly tech) increased hiring of all kinds, bullshit or not, during the last years. Those are the excess jobs. Reversing them is the short-term correction. For much longer, corporate America has been staffing up departments which practically do nothing. Eliminating them is the longer-term trend.
    - hammock 4y ago
      Zero interest rate policy means they were the same thing
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > Zero interest rate policy means they were the same thing No, it doesn't, because one of these things pre-dates and was not caused by low rates. (Office Space was released when rates were half a point above where they are now [1].) [1] https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/history-of-federal-funds-rate/ https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/history-of-...
        hammock 4y ago
        Ok what is your evidence that bullshit jobs are being structurally eliminated in a way that is unrelated to interest rate policy?
lackbeard 4y ago
Wasn't SVB an S&P 500 company?

CaliforniaKarl 4y ago

> … McDonald’s asked them to work from home from Monday through Wednesday so it can deliver staffing decisions virtually, the report said. That seems kindof scummy: It seems to me that, in general, companies are trying to move away from work-from-home. To use 100% work-from-home, and deliver layoff notices in such a way, strikes me as mean. But maybe McDonald's corporate is a strong work-from-home company? I admit I haven't researched it.

nebulousthree 4y ago
Don't have to hire security to escort everyone out if they're already home.
- wyclif 4y ago
  Also don't have to worry about somebody going postal at the corporate office.
  - thewildginger 4y ago
    This is the real reason, they don't want people to coordinate anything, and they don't want employees spiting the company and leaving with valuable info.
doktorhladnjak 4y ago
I assume they, like many large businesses these days, don't really know where their employees are at any given time. Better that everyone is working from home so they can run some orderly layoff process in a consistent manner.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  The pandemic and WFH exposed how little most corporate employees really do and how unnecessary most of them are. I expect a lot of big downsizings will be happening over the next year or two. Why now? It takes a while to turn a big ship.

chiph 4y ago

Could this be fallout from losing the chicken sandwich war? Because the Spicy McCrispy was a big disappointment, being not especially spicy nor crispy.

code_witch_sam 4y ago
i absolutely loved McD's spicy crispy chicken sandwich. is spicy mccrispy something different? it was quite a bit spicier than i expected (which is why i loved it probably)
TMWNN 4y ago
Let us hope that the veterans of this war are treated better than those who survived the Cola Wars. <https://www.theonion.com/ad-industry-veterans-honored-with-cola-war-memorial-1819564285 https://www.theonion.com/ad-industry-veterans-honored-with-c...>
vuln 4y ago
They literally put sauce on a regular one and called it spicy. Terrible.
perardi 4y ago
Ah, the Great Chicken Sandwich War. So many lives lost, so many psyches shattered…I fear we’ll be living with the consequences for generations. But nah, I doubt it’s any particular product issue. If it’s not just a matter of goosing the share price, it’s probably due to commodity prices eating into profits.
jalino23 4y ago
your comment made me order 4 popeyes chicken sandwich
- brookside 4y ago
  Popeye's still uses trans fats which seems pretty unconscionable given our current understanding of their effect on cardiovascular risk. https://fastfoodnutrition.org/popeyes/chicken-sandwich https://fastfoodnutrition.org/popeyes/chicken-sandwich https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-cholesterol/in-depth/trans-fat/art-20046114 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-ch...

lumost 4y ago

I am curious at what point concentrated wealth would allow an oligarch to dictate Fed policy through specific company policies. Want the fed to print more money? Lay off a bunch of workers and move a little too much money between banks. Want prices to rise? go on a hiring binge.

anaganisk 4y ago
Isn't that already happening? And isn't that what caused all this mess in the economy. Every time Fed wanted to end quantitative easing Wall St threw a hissy fit and they didn't dare to do it.
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  Also, the fed kept saying employment was too high
  - readthenotes1 4y ago
    and wages and wage growth were too high
- jjeaff 4y ago
  The markets are certainly too large for any one player to consistently change them. But there is probably a lot of group think going on.
  - Frost1x 4y ago
    It can be interest alignment. If it's in the vested interest of the independent players, you essentially get orchestrated collusion so long as all players follow their interest.
  - hammock 4y ago
    Most of the stock market is held by passive investors. So it takes comparably less to make a difference. In other words the ‘groupthink ’ isn’t think at all

1970-01-01 4y ago

..as the stock hits an all time high. I'm not exactly sure what that means but it sure doesn't mean their food is going to taste any better. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/stock-price-history https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/stoc...

icegreentea2 4y ago

The referenced "January message" was reported on here: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/06/mcdonalds-plans-reorganization-job-cuts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/06/mcdonalds-plans-reorganizati... Summary: Profits and and growth are good (https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-stories/article/Q4-2022-results.html https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-stories/article/...), they plan on speeding up growth, and want to restructure because leadership feels current organization (and "certain initiatives") are holding them back.

drewcoo 4y ago

Interesting. Why now? I knew McDonald's was primarily a real estate company, but are they heavily into office space now? https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estate/ https://thestrategystory.com/2020/09/24/mcdonalds-real-estat...

jacknews 4y ago

'McDonald’s asked them to work from home from Monday through Wednesday so it can deliver staffing decisions virtually' wow, too weaselly to fire people face to face.

nathanaldensr 4y ago

I love how scared all these globomegacorps are of their own workforces; they seem to all love closing their physical locations before layoffs now. Still think you're a "family?"

iancmceachern 4y ago

I bet the hamburgler is the culprit

kevmarsden 4y ago

A few comments pointed out McDonald's stock price or recent profit, but underneath the hood, their financials aren't great. Since 2010 their long-term debt has grown from about $10 billion to $35 billion. They currently spend about $1.2 billion/year on interest payments, but over time that will increase substantially as their low interest bonds mature. Here's the recent history of their balance sheet: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/balance-sheet https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/bala...

antibasilisk 4y ago

The west has fallen. Millions must fry.

red-iron-pine 4y ago

> McDonald’s is closing its U.S. corporate offices as it lays off hundreds of workers. > hundreds of workers A chain with 45000 workers or more, and like ~150k worldwide, is shedding a few hundred. My money says it's DEI, and maybe some project / program / marketing / other soft roles. Mostly a non-issue, IMO.