THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9503300034
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K4 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY JOB
SOURCE: BY COLE C. CAMPBELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
THE BEST DAYS are when a carrier slides into its berth just across the road.
Radiant moms and squirmy babies clump around tables while clean-clipped dads line up at the registers, one blue uniform after another, happy to be home and hungry for a taste of America.
A quarter-pounder with cheese. Large fries. A chocolate shake. Sure, throw in an apple pie, too.
On these days, Bernadette Hines shines.
She keeps one eye on the clock, a second on the sandwich bins and her third eye - the one hidden by hair in the back of every mother's head - on the crew she directs as the grill manager at the McDonald's restaurant alongside the carrier piers of Norfolk Naval Station.
On these days, she is in the flow. In fact, she orchestrates it.
``Fajita on top!''
``Pick up on the ham you're holding.''
``May I have two grilled chicken, please.''
That last request is not a question, and ham, of course, is a ground beef patty snug in a bun.
``It's called McDonald lingo,'' Hines explains.
Like a landing signal officer, she paces the touch and gos of Big Macs and McLean burgers as they fly from grill tops to ``Qing ovens'' to holding bins to dining trays.
Even in the maelstrom, quarterbacking her crew amid the stainless steel of the McDonald's kitchen, Hines gets to know her customers.
``I meet a lot of people, especially when the ships come in for a homecoming,'' she says. ``This store can be very hectic during a homecoming.''
When four carriers are in port, as many as 45 McDonald's crew members scurry about to maintain the flow. (``Anything more than that,'' store manager Steve Avery says, ``becomes so crowded it doesn't increase sales.'')
The store doesn't track how many fries and sandwiches are sold on a homecoming day, or any given day, but the Navy reports that $3.1 million rolled into the cash registers in 1994. (The two other McDonald's on the base brought in a combined $3.5 million, for a grand total of $6.6 million.)
Bus drivers on the Tidewater Regional Transit naval station tour once hailed the carrier-pier McDonald's as the busiest in the world. But shifts in the geopolitical axis have put a McDonald's in Moscow that may lay claim to the title. And the McDonald's at the naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, posted $4.8 million in sales in 1994.
Sailors love those Egg McMuffins.
The carrier-pier McDonald's will turn 10 in September. In February, the Naval Exchange Command, based in Virginia Beach, awarded a 10-year contract to McDonald's to continue operating 46 restaurants and open 26 more, mostly smaller satellite and kiosk operations.
On this day, the Roosevelt is the only carrier at the Norfolk Naval Station, so Bernie Hines can take time to talk.
She and her 11-year-old-son, Kendall, live on Little Creek Road in Norfolk. She graduated from Lake Taylor High School in 1984. She has worked for McDonald's on and off for a total of seven years.
What appeals to her about her job?
She likes the hordes of sailors and their families. She likes the hustle of peak times.
She likes the idea of running the whole show.
At 28, Hines is on the first step toward management, working from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. as a grill manager and a member of the crew. Within three years, she hopes to move into full-time management, then become a second assistant manager and then a first assistant manager - one rung below store manager.
Does she want to be a store manager?
``I think I would rather be an owner/operator of a franchise,'' she says.
What better spot to control the flow? ILLUSTRATION: Photo
TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff
Bernadette Hines thrives on the hustle of peak times at the
McDonald's alongside the Norfolk Naval Station carrier piers.
by CNB