For several years, I worked for a McDonald's franchisee, Colley-McCoy, based in Salem, New Hampshire. How I got there was accidental, I stayed there due to an accident, and I while I was there, I accidentally learned how to learn.

The first store I managed was store #343 in the chain. (38,698 locations today. Pictured here in Fitchburg in the early 70's). When I started, McDonald's road signs read "13 Billion Served" and when I left, they read "49 billion Served." Today, they just say 'Billions and Billions Served' because changing the sign was becoming a hassle because it happened so often. At last check it was over 300 billion served.

Not sure if 'served' refers to customers or burgers?

I opened a couple of stores in Boston, one in Downtown Crossing, which at the time was only the 7th urban location in the world. I opened another across the street from Fenway Park. I also did a couple of shorter assignments, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Tremont Street Boston, Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, and Brattleboro, Vermont.

During that time, I learned a lot about leadership, training, finance, marketing and equipment. I learned how to learn one Sunday night in a part of a motel that was under construction, and it helped the trajectory of my career.

Recently I was accepted into an Executive MBA program, but a combination of time and financial impact made me decline, mostly time. But I went through the whole process of transcript, references, interview, and so forth.

The experience reminded me of the only advanced degree I possess. I have a degree in Hamburgerology from Hamburger University, class #213 in 1976.  

Even though I did decently in high school, and did well at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, looking back, I realize that I learned how to learn at Hamburger U, and the experience helped me for the rest of my career.

I know, I know, I don’t act like I have an advanced degree, but I will tell you that the two weeks I spent in the Chicago area that January were a little bit harder than any two weeks I spent at the University of Massachusetts.

So, yes, Hamburger U is a real school, but doesn't have a football team or a basketball team.

It is a private corporate learning center. Today, I should stay ‘centers’ because now there are locations all over the world, since McDonald’s are all over the world. At the time I attended, there was only one, with a couple of classrooms, tucked into a space between a motel that served as a dorm, and a very, very busy McDonald’s.

The school was founded in 1961 in the basement of that McDonald’s in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, by Fred Turner, the first grill man for McDonald's and, later, their CEO for 20 years. Over the past 55 years, more than 275,000 people have attended Hamburger University at campuses in Illinois, Tokyo, London, Sydney, Munich, São Paulo, Shanghai, and Moscow. 

Believe it or not students at the American campus can earn up to 23 credits toward an associate or bachelor's degree at 1,600 US colleges and universities. (According to the American Council on Education).

Here’s the story of my Hamburgerology Degree.

When I got out of college, I was working for an insurance company and hated the job. Putting the cart before the horse, my wife and I already had a wedding date, she had a great, high-paying job at Foster-Grant, the sunglass company in Leominster, and I was ‘between jobs’ as they used to say.

There was a McDonald’s across the street from Foster-Grant and one day, after dropping my wife off at work, I went in to eat and something caused me to ask for an application. I think I was a little bit tired of doing nothing all day, and since I had fast food experience, I thought I’d kill some time and make a little spending money until I got a ‘real’ job.

Needless to say, the manager was very skeptical of a recent college graduate looking for a minimum wage position. He must have liked my style because two days later I was working the grill and impressing the shit out of everyone. 

A couple of weeks later, the area supervisor asked me to talk after my shift. I sat with him in the lobby, and we talked about me becoming a manager trainee. It wasn’t on my radar, but as we sat there, I thought that the upcoming wedding announcement in the paper would read better if it said: ‘the groom is in the management training program for McDonald’s’ instead of ‘the groom slings burgers’ or ‘the groom lays around all day watching game shows and soap operas.’

I said yes to the salary offer of $135 per week for a 60-hour week. Still not as much as my wife made, but it was more money than watching game shows and soap operas paid, and way more interesting for me than selling life insurance.

After our honeymoon on the Cape, I started the new job and got to wear a shirt and tie instead of a smock. My hat color changed from blue to orange, and I was off to the races. My schedule was simple, Sunday through Thursday 3:30 PM to Close (midnight or 1 am) and Saturday 11 am to 7 pm. I know you are jealous.

My wife’s schedule? Monday through Saturday, 7:30 to 3:30. If you are a clock expert, you might think that we didn’t have the same day off and we almost never saw each other. You’d be partially correct. I drove her to work each day, a co-worker gave her a ride home. 

We both maintain that NOT seeing each other too much in those early days may be one of the reasons we are still together.

As I have previously described in this space, about a month after starting with McDonald’s I traveled to Vermont to open a new store in Brattleboro and on the way home I was almost killed in a car accident. The area supervisor reached out immediately and told my wife the company would take care of my paycheck until I was able to return. 

Almost four months of recovery later, I went back to the job and shortly after was promoted to Second Assistant at another location and worked that job for about a year. I was promoted again to First Assistant at my original store, and I guess I was in the pipeline to become a Store Manager.

Before you could be ‘the’ Store Manager of a unit for the franchisee I worked for, you had to attend/graduate from Hamburger University, so when I was told I was heading to Chicago, I was thrilled. If/when I was promoted, I would get a big raise and work mostly days and get to see my bride more often.

I believe I had to take a test to be ‘admitted’ and did well enough to get on the plane.

There were about 100 people in the class, and I remember that I graduated seventh, and was the highest rated Assistant Manager for that course. 

The curriculum surprised me. First of all, while there were some management concepts covered, it was mostly an equipment maintenance course. We studied grills, fryers, refrigeration, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, point of sale machines, multiplex post-mix beverage machines and more.

We actually had electives in ice machines, fryers, grills, and point of sale systems, based on the brands in our home location. That’s right, you either attended a Frymaster or Henny Penny elective deep fryer course. 

McDonald’s took equipment maintenance so seriously, that after ‘graduation’ and during my career there, I actually installed several fryers and grills. No big deal. 

The company even required managers to tell the service repair person when you called what the issue you were calling about was. You didn’t say the ‘ice machine isn’t working,’ you said that the ‘sight glass is cloudy.’

There are two things I remember most about the Hamburger University experience, since I was not, and I am still not, a technically savvy kind of guy.

First, speaking of ice machines. The machine at my new store was going to be a Manitowoc, but I had no experience with that brand. I was a Kold-Draft guy. So, I was instantly lost when the Ice Machine Elective class started.

And, in case you don’t know, ice is made by running water over a cold surface and the shape of the cubes is related to the type of cold plate and each brand of ice machine uses a different method, that’s why the ‘cubes’ are shaped differently. Some aren’t even cubes.

To this day, when I see ice in my glass at a restaurant, I mentally log the type of ice machine they use. I know, silly.

One Sunday night during my two-week stay in Elk Grove, before my Manitowoc final exam, I had a thought that maybe if I could find a similar ice machine and watch it work, I might do better on the test. 

There was a new wing of the motel that wasn’t opened yet and sure enough, there was a Manitowoc ice machine at the end of the unfinished hall. A small machine, but it made ice the same way. I opened it up and watched it make ice for a while. Then I shut it off and took it apart and put it back together. It was the night I learned how to learn. I set a goal, devised a plan, watched, listened, and then had ‘hands-on’ experience.

I aced the exam the next morning.

The second thing I remember was the final exam on equipment. It was two parts. 

Part 1, they put a detail of a piece of equipment on the big screen. 

For example, they would show a close up of a pressure valve or a pilot light. We’d have to identify the part, identify the equipment it was from, and describe what the part did or what it was used for and how to maintain it. Brutal.

Nothing compared to part 2, which was a sound test.

They played the sound of a piece of equipment over the speaker system. You would then have to identify the piece of equipment that the sound came from, and the part of the equipment that was making the sound. 

You then had to write down if it was a good sound, i.e. the equipment was in working order or not, or a bad sound. If it wasn’t in working order, you had to describe what the problem was and how to fix it.

Students knew in advance the nature of the test, so we ‘studied’ a little differently. Details were important, asking questions was important, verifying understanding was important. If you didn’t do all three, the final exam was an excruciating experience. 

Fortunately for me, I had already started to learn how to learn, and I aced that test, too. Even today, when I am in a restaurant and I hear a sound coming from the back, a strange thought will sneak into my head, and I’ll say something to myself like ‘that’s the carbonator pump safety valve opening and air releasing from under the drip tray’ or something similar. 

Don’t worry, I don’t tell the manager. If I am in a McDonald’s, s/he already knows.