Goodbye my lover, goodbye my friend

I'm trying my best to sound like a functioning human being when I say that it's actually been really hard not going out these last few weeks! Okay well not really, really hard because I have been in Florida at the end of the day but going from legal over here to illegal over there was really weird so I was definitely in need of a good night out by the time I was back. Which I definitely got because last night was amazing! It was a proper work squad night out and it was so good to see everyone again! I wore this long sleeved white missguided top (which turned out to be a mistake because I was boiling) with these cute printed shorts (river island) and black boots. I also got a chance to test out my new Lorac 3 palette and created a super shimmery smokey eye.

The reason last night was such a big deal as well is because it was my leaving night out. After 4 years, 2 different uniforms, every hair colour change under the sun, 5 management teams, a store refurbishment and countless people coming and going, I'm finally leaving McDonalds! So obviously I had to bake cakes for everyone on my last shift on wednesday, which went down a treat.

McDonalds seems to get a really bad reputation as a place to work and even I was guilty of thinking the same. Rewind 4 years and I was 16, fresh out of school with no real skills or experience and after applying for loads of jobs and getting nowhere, I reluctantly applied for McDonalds. When I got the job I said that I'd stay there a few months and then look for something else but clearly that is not how it went.

My expectations of having a job were that everyone would be really professional and it would be non-stop hard work. It's safe to say that working there is not like that. I quickly found out that Chilwell McDonalds is basically like a reality TV show; everyone's gossip spreads round the place like wild fire, there's always some drama or scandal, everyone sleeps with everyone else and we all spend the majority of time either getting drunk together or nursing hangovers together. Sometimes it feels a lot like an episode of Jeremy Kyle or something.

It's crazy to think that without McDonalds I wouldn't be anything like the person I am today. Working there and meeting the amazing people that I have has slowly transformed me from a fairly shy 16 year old to a sassy 20 year old. I've literally turned from child to adult while I've been there, I had my first night out in town with people I've met there (and countless ones since), I started AND finished college in the time that I've worked there and I've gone from red head to blonde to brunette to ombre to brunette to blonde.

McDonalds is like a little family and working there does teach you to get along with everybody (most of the time). It also gives you chance to become friends with people that you may have thought you'd never get along with, like people who are 40 years older than you, people who speak a completely different language to you or people who have a totally different background to you. And I do think that a lot of the friendships I've made there will be for life.

And so leaving really does feel like the end of an era! I'm really happy to have got myself a new job obviously; it's a marketing role at a magazine publishing house so it's exactly what I want to do and since I'm in my twenties now, it's time to really chase my dreams.

I'm not a big fan of change though. I was really upset when I left school and didn't really know what to do with myself. And 4 years is a long time. It's double the time I was at college, it's the amount of time it would take to get a masters, it's the time it would take to travel to mars and back, it's the amount of time a US president gets in office, it's the amount of time we get in between each leap day and it's the amount of time between each Olympic games and world cup.

So long story short, you can slag it off as much as you want but I've never met a more amazing, hard-working and fun-loving bunch of people as the ones I've met in my time at Chilwell McDonalds. My friendships with people who have already left have stood the test of time so I'm confident that the same will apply with me leaving. I've come away from this job with the most valuable life skills you can ever have, the knowledge of how to be a perfect customer wherever else I go, a whole little family deserving of the title 'squad goals', a slight drinking problem and a pair of work shoes that I will be very happy to throw in the bin. Chilwell McDonalds, thank you for everything, it's been a blast!