How do I motivate people?

I work at a fast-food restaurant. Recently, I began training for a manager position, which basically involves doing everything a manager does, except what requires me to access the safe.

The problem is, there are some people who are dead weights. Basically, if I ask them to do something, they will, for a little while, but they'll do it half-assed and slowly.

My question is this: Does anyone have some good general motivation techniques?

I'm thinking about measuring how many cars come through and how long each car takes on drive through (to make a competition with themselves to lower the time, and makes sure they need to have everything stocked to speed up time), and how many customers each person on the front counter serves individually (which basically results in the same thing, but is easier to measure on the front). I'm trying to think of a way to reward a good number and good times, without increasing break times (which I'm not allowed to do). If anyone has any ideas about this, or just general advice, it would be helpful. I'm not in position where I can fire anyone right now, so that isn't an option. Thanks in advance!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by sprouticus

The problem with shit jobs like McDonalds is that the people who work there generally don't care about the work. I worked in a supermarket for 7 years, and there were so many fucking dregs who just simply didn't care and didn't listen to authority. If there was one thing I learned is that you need to be stern with these people. You need to be more of an asshole than anything, otherwise they will step all over you and not care what you say. Maybe be nicer and more lenient towards people who actually do their job well, but for the most part, take no shit from the half-assing morons.

This seems to be the problem with a lot of people. It's kind of weird, because when we first opened (about a year ago, I've been there the whole time), everyone was a good worker, helped each other out, and just stayed busy in general. About May, everyone started getting fired for bullshit reasons like being casual (in a good way) with customers and other crap like that. After that happened to a few people, the rest left. We had been hiring off and on until about October, and now we've reached a pretty stable group of employees again.

As I was saying, though, the new group just doesn't seem to be motivated like the old group. I really like both your answer and RainMan's, because it seems like the thing to do is balance between the extreme of not taking crap, but making the workers want to work. Thanks for the advice, both of you.

This isn't to discount everyone else's advice, but it just seems like sprouticus and RainMan managed to post about a more specific problem I'm having.

How ya doing, buddy?

We tend to be pretty fair about raises and promotions. If someone knows what they're doing, but isn't quiet ready to be a manager, we'll tell people to go learn from them, which I think is a positive thing (that's what I was doing before they talked about promoting me).

We'll also give people raises based on how hard they work, and how long they've been there. I think one of the problems, though, is that we don't tell people about raises, it just shows up as a rate increase on their paycheck. This is supposed to prevent fighting about wages, but I think some people are given too much credit and simply don't notice when they deposit the check.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.