One day in my life

1Three years ago, Vanessa Stein and her husband Tom took up the fast food challenge: they bought the franchise for a 2McDonald’s restaurant near Leads.

3Early morning is always an effort for me. The alarm goes off at 6.30 a.m. and then I have 20 minutes “thinking time” to make some mental lists before I get up. I live by lists, actually – it’s the best way to keep things organised.

6Recently I’ve been arriving at our McDonald’s restaurant around 8.30 a.m. I’ve mastered the computerised accounts now so I’m training one of our floor managers to help me with the administration. Eventually this should give me more time to get involved in other areas of the business such as interviewing staff.

10Our restaurant is a retail park around five miles outside Leeds. Since we bought the franchise in 1995, we’ve already expended the seating and now we’re looking to expand the restaurant itself. We have to comfort to the McDonald’s standards 10(quality, service, cleanliness and value) of course, but the restaurant is actually our own business. We directly employ some 75 staff, order and pay for supplies (from “preferred suppliers”), take care of any maintenance or refurbishment, arrange local 12marketing, and so on. Around a quarter of all McDonald’s 800 UK restaurants are franchised.

17Buying this franchise was a big move for us. Tom (my husband) had to do nine month’s training before we could even be considered for a franchise. It paid off though, and we are delighted with this place – it boasts what was the first Drive-Thru 15in Yorkshire! – and the surrounding countryside is truly beautiful.

21By 9.30 a.m. I’m ready for a Bacon & Egg McMuffin and a cup of tea. I’ll have a quick chat with our regular breakfast 17customers before opening the post. This brings invoices from suppliers, marketing and training information from McDonald’s (they run the training courses but we pay for our staff to attend), booking for parties, or perhaps the monthly report from the “Mystery Diner”.

25Mystery Diners make monthly checks on every restaurant and Drive-Thru in the country. All aspects are assessed – food quality and presentation, atmosphere, quality and speed of service, restaurant cleanliness and so on. Staff are often commended by name, so I pass the news on to them and make sure any problems are tackled. We’re currently eighths in the UK league which is pretty good.

31We have an ongoing dialogue with McDonald’s. A field consultant visits us every two or tree weeks, and there are regular meetings with others franchisees to share ideas and experience.

34Much of my morning is spent updating computer records. Tax office queries, training records, pay roll, etc., have to be organised. Staff turnover varies but we can sometimes lose our casual workers when they go to travelling. There are McDonald’s all over the world now, so their training here really can open distant doors.

39The lunchtime rush starts around noon. On the rare occasions that we’re short staffed (e.g. flu season), I’ll muck in and serve customers (memories of my waitressing days at university!). I’ve even been known to cook fries when necessary. As with any small business, one has to be flexible but I think it’s also important to focus your energies where they are most effective. For me, this is behind the scenes admin work.

45My own lunch is a salad or chicken sandwich. By this time, my office looks like a bomb site to the untrained eye. I’ve usually divided the masses of paperwork into piles ready to tackle them in priority order.

48I have to head off around 3 p.m. to collect my two sons from school so I generally end up taking work home. I’ll finish 38it in the kitchen, listening Glenn Miller or the Moody Blues, while also supervising the children’s homework, music practice or whatever.

52If I’m doing the end-of-month figures; I generally have to work into the early hours. Otherwise I’m in bed any time after 10 p.m. I always have three or four books on the go, Walter Scott or Jane Austen for example, and usually one non-fiction- maybe an autobiography or a political work.

56I’m glad to say Tom’s snoring was lasered away last summer, so now I can look forward to some undisturbed sleep before another busy day at the restaurant. Now I think of it, I used to have cravings for McDonald’s when I was pregnant. It must have been a premonition!

Задание 12. Определите, являются ли утверждения:

а) ложными

b) истинными

1. Vanessa Stein starts to organise her day before she gets to work.

2. In the future Vanessa will continue to work in exactly the same way as she does today.

3. The restaurant has not changed since the Steins bought it.

4. The majority of McDonald's restaurants in the UK are not franchises.

5. Vanessa's husband did his training after having been accepted as a franchisee.

6. Every two weeks they receive an independent evaluation of how their business is performing.

7. Vanessa feels that she is best at working directly with customers.

8. All of the administrative work is now done in electronic form.

9. If she didn't have children, she would probably stay longer at work

Задание 13. Составьте план текста (см. задание 11).

Задание 14. Подберите определения к следующим словам.

1 a challenge (line 1)		a a reservation
2 maintenance (line 11)		b a list of employees and the wages they are paid
3 a booking (line 18)		c work involving written or printed documents
4 a report (line 18)		d to review and include recent changes
5 to tackle (line 22)		e a piece of writing giving information on a particular subject
6 to update (line 26)		f to pay special attention
1 records (line 26)		g a difficult but exciting thing to do
8 a payroll (line 26)		i to deal with
9 to focus (line 31)		j written documents containing information
10 paperwork (line 36)		h about the past

Задание 15. Заполните следующую анкету, используя слова из задания 14. При необходимости изменяйте форму слова.

1. When working with other people do you focus on that you can do best?

Yes___ No___

2. When preparing a written _____ do you list the different sections then make a brief summary of what will you include in each?

Yes___ No___

3. Do you ____ your address book as soon as people move?

Yes___ No___

4. Do you organise your _____ so that documents are grouped according to subjects?

Yes___ No___

5. Do you enjoy the _____ of doing new and perhaps more complicated work?

Yes___ No___

6. Do you regularly do ______ work to make sure that equipment works efficiently?

Yes___ No___

7. Do you keep clear ______ of the work that you have already done?

Yes___ No___

8. Do you _____ the most difficult pieces of work first?

Yes___ No___

Вариант 3

Задание 1. Прочитайте текст.