A McDonald''s worker who started as a cleaner earning $1.28 an hour now owns franchise 20 restaurants and plans to open more Summary List Placement Doug Wright started working at McDonald''s as a cleaner at age 16, earning a wage of 93 pence ($1.28) an hour. He now owns 20 of the chain''s restaurants with plans to open more and employs more than 2,000 staff. Wright told Birmingham Live that he started working as a part-time cleaner at a McDonald''s restaurant in Bedford, central England, the day before he finished high school in 1981. "Back then it was a hamburger restaurant that was hardly ever heard of," he said. McDonald''s opened its first US restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955 , but didn''t arrive in the UK until 1974 . The burger chain then expanded rapidly. It had opened 100 stores across the UK by 1983 and a further 100 by 1986. After two months as a cleaner, Wright was made a part-time general assistant and became full-time two weeks later, he said. He was promoted to restaurant manager around four years later, aged 20 making him McDonald''s youngest restaurant manager in the UK at the time.