Major employers including McDonald's, Coles and Woolworths all pay significant numbers of workers less than the award through reduced, or in the case of McDonald's no, weekend penalties. Credit:Glenn Hunt One employee said on Reddit that a lack of grills saw the same plates being used for burger patties, eggs and sausage patties, and that "sausage and 10-1 regularly go down on the same grill one after the other without a steam clean". The patties used on Cheeseburgers and Big Macs are known as '10-1' (because 10 make a pound) and those used for Quarter Pounders are called 4-1 for the same reason. The user continued, saying "the muffin toaster pretty much gets jammed next to the buns. In my opinion makes the walkways too small especially considering on one aide [sic] is a hot toaster and on the other side is the fryers". The employee added: "Basic [sic] creates a lot more work for people out back in terms of preparation and cleaning but of course no more labour hours to compensate for that extra work. It sucks."

The introduction of an all-day breakfast menu has also paid off. Credit:AP A different worker described it as "a chaotic mess during change over". The lack of steam cleaning was confirmed by several replies, with one claiming to be from a current McDonald's manager, who said "nobody steam cleans unless there's a visit". Fries and hash browns are also cooked out of the same deep fryers, with one commenter complaining: "Hash browns used to be a treat for being there early enough in the day. They were always hot and crispy. Now they're warm and soggy and crap and ruined." Another warned people off ordering breakfast items in the afternoon completely.

"Cleaning the grills to put down sausage is a b---h. Plus sometimes you get lazy c---s that just cook a bunch of egg and then use that for the next 5 hours, IMO do NOT order all-day breakfast after 3 because you don't know what you're going to get, some of my co-workers disgust me." Another employee, who asked not to be named when they spoke with Fairfax Media, said that the comments on Reddit were slightly overblown. "It's really not as bad as I expected it to be, we might sell one breakfast item (excluding hash browns) every 45 minutes after 11:30am because people don't want breakfast that late." The Melbourne employee, who has worked at the store for five years, downplayed the burden that all-day breakfast had placed on food production, but still warned people off ordering McMuffins in the afternoon. "The later it gets the less likely it becomes that the breakfast food will be fresh. It's annoying but it's more of a minor inconvenience than anything else."

A McDonald's spokeswoman said: "All-day brekkie has been the number one request from Australians for a while, and we've had a positive response to the national roll-out. Just like with any new product launch we work closely with our restaurants and crew to ensure they have the training and support they need. "We're a business who has continually innovated to meet our customers' needs and our fantastic crew have always shown they are able to adapt to meet every challenge. "We've now had the concept in some states for more than six months; it's running smoothly and has been received well by both our customers and crew."