McSweeney Restaurant jobs

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This page is about a source of missions / jobs.


McSweeney Restaurants in Ankh-Morpork and Genua offer jobs in the fast food industry. [1]

Jobs are divided into three types: cleaning, kitchen, and counter.

A help file is available in the restaurant. To join, use the following syntax:

join [staff] in {cleaning|kitchen|counter}         Join the staff of McSweeney's Restaurant for
                                                   one shift.
join [staff]                                       Join the staff of McSweeney's Restaurant for
                                                   one shift.

Upon joining to a job, the player will be taken to the manager's office, where s/he will be presented with a badge and uniform. They must be taken from the desk.

<l badge>
A rectangular clip-on McSweeney's Restaurants staff badge, it is bright red and has the
company logo printed in one corner.  Everyone employed by the chain is expected to wear one of
these badges whenever they're working for them.
It has two empty holes and one golden star on it.
It appears to have something written on it.

<r badge>
Written in chunky blank lettering on a white strip, above the words "Have a nice day!":
Name: [NAME]

<l uniform>
What passes for a uniform in McSweeney's restaurants is basically a sickly brown
jumpsuit with the company logo printed onto it in several obvious places.
One size fits none.
It is in excellent condition.

Both badge and uniform must be worn before the manager will allow the player to begin a job. At the end of a job, all job-related items, except the badge, will be taken from the inventory. The badge can be retained by the player.

Once badge and uniform are worn, the player will be taken to the job area and provided with additional instruction. The player can "shake" their head to have the instructions repeated, else "nod" to begin the shift. Each work shift is 30 Discworld minutes long.

Additionally, if too many players have attempted a given job, it will be unavailable until the next shift starts. This is sometimes to do with the individual player, and so if you do an available job, another will open up. e.g. if you are only offered the counter, doing the counter may immediately unlock the cleaning job, and then doing the cleaning job may immediately unlock the kitchen.

Note that if a player eats any of the prepared McSweeney food while working at a counter or kitchen shift, the manager will immediately stop the mission (with no reward). The manager will then refuse to allow the player to attempt any job for at least one shift.

Reward

The reward includes experience, money, and a star (bronze, silver, gold) for the badge. The amount of experience and type of star is based upon performance, with experience dropping if the same job is (re)attempted immediately in too short a time   research If this has been marked on a page, it's because there was something that probably isn't known, that the person who edited the page thinks could be found out. Perhaps you could figure this thing out, and be famous evermore. . The amount of money also appears to be tied to performance, with the maximum able to be earned A$30. If a performance is bad enough, one will not receive anything except a stern reprimand. Conversely, if at the end of the shift a silver- or gold-ranked player earns less than 18K, then the star will be downgraded to the next rank down; and if less than 15K (or nothing at all), a gold-rank will drop all the way to bronze   research If this has been marked on a page, it's because there was something that probably isn't known, that the person who edited the page thinks could be found out. Perhaps you could figure this thing out, and be famous evermore. . It's even possible to have a gold star removed if you do badly enough!

Each of the three holes in the badge correspond to a star in the three jobs.

  • Bronze star experience: 15K to 30K
  • Silver star experience: 30K to 46K
  • Gold star experience: 46K to 60K
Use of Aliases - General Strategy

Due to the complexity of the McSweeney Restaurant jobs, the use of aliases is encouraged to allow the player to achieve a gold star rating for each job. HOWEVER, as noted in each help file, the use of automated scripts and triggers is not permitted (see the Discworld 'help automation'). That said, players may need to undertake several work shifts at a given job to develop efficient aliases.

Cleaning

Several items, provided by the restaurant, are required for a successful cleaning shift. Before the shift begins, the player is able to take the tools - bucket, mop, broom, and cloth - from the cupboard. The items only need to be in inventory to be used, and there is no need to equip/unequip anything.

Within the section, there are eight tables ('table 1' through 'table 8') to oversee. Customers will sit down at a table, eat, then leave. Once gone, there will be one to four trays to remove, as well as the potential for dirty tables or trash underneath. Tables may need to be wiped more than once to be considered clean. Trash swept out from under the tables has to be picked up and put into the bin, which itself is required to be emptied when it is full (trash bags are kept in the cupboard). Finally, the floor needs to be kept mopped, with up to three mop cycles necessary to achieve an appropriate level of cleanliness.

There are two extra things to note which may not be self-evident to the newbie McSweeney cleaner, neither explained in the help files nor by the manager. First, if there is trash on the floor, mopping will be unsuccessful. Similarly, if there are trays on the table, then wiping will not work.

The McSweeney customers are picky! If they see an overly dirty floor (trash or needs mopping), the only empty table is uncleaned, or a too-full garbage, they will go sit elsewhere. Too many customer rejections presumably lowers the final amount of experience received by the player. Oddly, for all their fussiness, customers will sometimes sit at an empty table even if it has not been fully wiped off.

Kitchen

The kitchen may be the most complex and panic-inducing of the three McSweeney Restaurant work shift experiences. To be in the kitchen is to be frantically running to and from the pantry while attempting to manage cooking upon multiple appliances, followed up by prepping food for impatient customers. Orders come fairly quickly, so time management is a must. Each shift covers seven incoming orders.

(A different perspective: the kitchen is far and away the easiest of the three tasks, because it's so easy to reduce to a set of three aliases - one to run to the pantry and get whatever you need, one to put everything you're holding into the cookers, and one to take it all out, prepare it, and put it in the chute.)

The first step is to get the food from the pantry. There will be a delay while this occurs, after which you must put food on/in the correct appliance. If there is not enough room on a given appliance, the food will be kept in the player's inventory. It is possible to get more than one serving from the pantry at a time, e.g. "fetch rib, rib, rat, rat from pantry" gets you two servings of rat and two serving of ribs. Alternatively "fetch 2 ribs, 2 rats from pantry" can be used.

Most appliances can only hold a limited number of servings:

  • Fryer - 2 items/servings
  • Griddle - 2 items/servings
  • Grill - 2 items/servings
  • Vats - 4 servings per vat

All food has a delay as it goes from its uncooked to its cooked state. Food can (and will) burn on the fryer, griddle, and grill. On the other hand, the vats will hold their food ready to go, once cooked, indefinitely.

Some foods can go immediately from appliance to chute - vat items (boiled rice/noodles, crunchy bits, chopsuey), chowmein, and prawn balls. Fried rice and fried noodles also go from griddle to chute. However, McRibs, BigDibblers, Ratburgers, Kebabs, Ducks and Porkers require additional preparation upon the prep surface before wrappers/trays may be sent to the customer.

A note on cooking fried rice/noodles: once the player has a box of rice/noodles, just 'put <ingredient> on griddle'. The box will be automatically opened up, emptied, and thrown away. DO NOT try to open the box or get rice from the box - such an action counts as eating the dish, and the player will be kicked out of the kitchen.

Prior to the player beginning his/hers first kitchen work shift, the manager will provide additional instructions via chats:

Mr. O.L. Harribal says: The vats are fairly simple, they boil up multiple servings of the
     ingredients placed in them.  So when you put in rice, noodles, chopsuey, or crunchy bits in
     orange sauce, remember that you'll be able to get more than one meal's worth before you have
     to fetch more.
Mr. O.L. Harribal says: Any boiled rice and boiled noodles you cook in the vats can be used as an
     ingredient for making fried rice and fried noodles on the griddle.  The griddle is also used
     to cook chowmein.
Mr. O.L. Harribal says: Our duck, porker and prawn balls all get put into the deep fat fryer.
Mr. O.L. Harribal says: All other meals are cooked on the flame grill.  That would be our
     BigDibbler burger patties, our rats, our ribs, and our klatchian kebabs.
Mr. O.L. Harribal says: Don't let any food burn, I really don't like waste!  Look at the
     appliances to keep on eye on how the food is cooking.
Mr. O.L. Harribal says: Many of our foods require special preparation after being cooked.  There's
     a preparation surface right by the chutes you can use, don't leave packaged food lying around
     on there, get it onto the chutes fast.
Mr. O.L. Harribal says: It is vital that you waste as little food as possible.  Any food dropped
     on the floor cannot be used as an ingredient.  Nor can it be sent for service, same as for
     burned meals.  Bin any waste you do create.

Counter

As member of the counter staff you take orders, check the prices of the items ordered, add them up via the till, charge the customer, refund money, prepare drinks and serve drinks and food stuffs from the kitchen.

To make it more challenging, the manager will change prices of the menu items prior to beginning of every shift which can make it difficult to preload aliases with prices. Making refunds is a pain, too. Watch out for the menu deals because customers will complain if you accidentally ring up items separately when they could come as a meal deal.

Charging the customer will tell him automatically the sum of all items you have added via the till previously. If the sum is higher than expected (for example because of a meal deal with noodles that has been overlooked) the customer will complain, this gives you an option to reset the till and start over. If the sum is lower than expected (for example because of a typo) the customer smiles briefly, but pays the amount without further discussions. In this case it is not possible to reset the till.

You will get a similar reaction for refunds: If you refund too little the customer will even tell you how much you owe him, whereas if you refund too much he will quietly pocket the additional change.

Tips

Cleaning:

  • The Large Bucket (available from the Job Market close to the AM McSweeney Restaurant and a few other places), has twice the capacity of the default cupboard bucket, and this seems to reflect in being able to mop more before the bucket has to be refilled. That said, if you don't want to carry a bucket, you can refill the provided bucket in quiet moments without waiting for it to empty.
  • Extra arms from BEP and YEE allow you to pick up more trays at a time.