McShirts

It's convention time again. Every 2 years, McDonalds holds their Worldwide Convention, where all McDonalds suppliers come together to show off their wares to the thousands of McDonalds owners and staff that attend. Most McDonalds corporate departments also have a presence at the convention so they can show off what they've been working on for the past 2 years.

When I was a consultant, this was a great time to work at McDonalds because most of the corporate managers and employees were gone for over a week, and you could really get a lot done without the usual interruptions. Now, as an employee, I'm expected to attend and work at the convention. This will be my 3rd convention. The first one in 2002 was actually fun. You don't suppose the fact it was held in Las Vegas has anything to do with that do you? I didn't attend the 2004 convention in Orlando. That was the one where the McDonalds CEO died, so it was probably not fun. When I went to the 2006 convention in Orlando, the novelty of going to convention had worn off, and it wasn't in Las Vegas, so it was more work than fun. So, while I don't mind spending 10 days in Florida, I'm not really looking forward to working the convention this year.

One of the fringe benefits of working the convention is that the department provides you with a fresh new shirt for each of the 4 days of the convention. These shirts are usually nice, collared, dress shirts with a tasteful McDonalds logo embroidered on the left sleeve. They are certainly suitable for wearing to work the next couple of years until the next convention. This year however, someone decided to order long sleeve, pullover turtleneck shirts. We're going to be in Florida! If these shirts were chosen for comfort over style, at least make them short sleeved!

So today they wanted us to try on sample shirts to find out what sizes they needed to order. I decided to try on the largest size first, and work my way down to the one that fit, so that I'd feel better with each consecutive shirt that was too big. :) The shirts come in size small, med, large, extra large, xxl, and OMG XXXL. Please don't let me need the XXXL! I worked my way down to large, but I was afraid it would shrink in the wash, so I settled for the XL. There's nothing like having to report to your co-workers that you're a size XL to make you think about starting a diet.