McDonalds Manager - A professional?

I was just having a discussion with a coworker about whether or not a manager at McDonalds is considered a professional. I think that such a person would be considered a professional - after all, he manages a business and has many more responsibilites than a cook or order taker.

My coworker says no, that a professional would be someone in the corporate world, or someone that has aquired specialized skills, like an airline pilot, police person etc.

What do you think?

Of course they are.

First up, I am not currently, or have ever, been employed by MacDonald’s.

But why would they be considered anything other than professional? Most MacDonald’s that I am aware of are ultra high volume and amazingly fast paced, you can’t manage that successfully without a degree of professionalism. And try that with a staff of 17 years olds! If anything, I don’t think they get enough credit as they should.

Just because they are pedaling burgers does not detract from the level of responsibility they must maintain to remain successful.

If I'm not mistaken, isn't a professional merely someone who gets paid for what they do? Technically speaking, those kids cooking the burgers are "professional" burger flippers. Dictionary.com can be great for nit-pick rebuttals, if you want to get out on a technicality

Occupations requiring either college graduation or experiences of such kind and amount as to provide a comparable background. Includes: accountants and auditors, airplane pilots and navigators, architects, artists, chemists, designers, dietitians, editors, engineers, lawyers, librarians, mathematicians, natural scientists, registered professional nurses, personnel and labor relations specialists, physical scientists, physicians, social scientists, teachers and kindred workers.

vendornet.state.wi.us...

A professional works to receive payment for an activity (as a profession), which usually requires expertise and carries with it socially significant mores and folkways. That is to say, behaving professionally would indicate that the person's actions remain in accordance with specific rules, written or unwritten, pertaining to behavior, dress, speech, etc. By extension, the adjective professional can indicate that someone has great expertise or skill in a craft or activity.

en.wikipedia.org...

I would say a manager at McDonalds is not a professional. I wouldn't call my paperboy one either, or someone else who is in a part-time, minimum wage job. Those jobs usually don't fall under the"learned professions" category.

The ``learned'' professions are described in Sec. 541.3(a)(1) as
those requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or
learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized
intellectual instruction and study as distinguished from a general
academic education and from an apprenticeship and from training in the
performance of routine mental, manual, or physical processes.
(b) The first element in the requirement is that the knowledge be of an advanced type. Thus, generally speaking, it must be knowledge which cannot be attained at the high school level.
……

www.dol.gov..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow"> www.dol.gov...

[edit on 3-11-2005 by andpau66]

They are a fellow worker, what more could you ask of them? I think they deserve the highest praise, and professional sounds like a good one to bestow on them.

Mcdonalds, yes, burger king no, White Castle, strangely yes.

Sonic, or hardees? no way.


Actually its not so whacky a thing to consider. I was reading a paper a little while ago and it was trying to distinguish between the upperclass people in revolutionary america and how they relate to other people. There were basically only two classes, upper and lower. If you were a hog rustler, you were lower, if you were the president of a bank, you were higher. Obviously.

If you were a merchant, you were part of the elite class. But where would you think a Sea Captain belongs? Or what if you were an artisan, but you had lots of contact with the upper class people in your business dealings? These kinds of peopel could go either way. So it was very subjective.

Being a shift manager at Mcdonalds is a pretty lowly rank, being the owner (even owner and operator) of a Mcdonalds, I'd say, is different, but I'm not really sure it can be called a professional job. Is a guy who owns an autoshop a professional? Is a guy who owns a gas station a professional?