I don’t mind waiting, I’m pretty hard to annoy, restaurant-wise.
If you mean long lines, I don’t mind because then I have time to decide what I want. Besides, it’ll taste better if it’s fresh. And even if not, who cares?
Damn, I am so jonesing for some fast food right now.
I don’t frequent fast food as much as I used to, but I remember when I was growing up we used to specifically put in special orders so we knew it would be made fresh. I don’t do that now, but generally, but I generally don’t mind waiting a couple three minutes - I’d rather have it fresh.
Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce
Special orders don’t upset us…
Yeah, I’m old.
What peeves me is when the chicken joint around the corner from work is out of white meat almost every time I go there for greasy fried chicken at lunchtime.
As long as the food hasn’t been tampered with, I’m happy. Obviously, I wouldn’t hang around a McDonald’s for 45 minutes waiting for a meal, but I completely understand that to prepare food, even fast food, takes time.
Special orders don’t always gurantee a fresh sandwich though. Like at McDonalds, they cook up the meat and put it in a warmed cabinet. As the customer orders, the sandwich is prepared “made for you”, with the already cooked meat. So while it’s made fresh, it can still taste like crap because the meat’s not cooked fresh.
And no matter what anyone says, special orders do upset us 
I worked in a McD’s in a little college town. We used to pull people out of line pretty much only if we had to fresh cook chicken for them(about 4-6 minutes). They were our top priority. The minute we could, we would run thier food out to them, leaving other customer’s waiting in line if we had to, because we understood how frustrating it isto have to sit outside for five minutes for nuggets.
SBS and SCR4–look for the manager. Alot of times, especially if during rush times, they will be working a register. They are usually the person that is better dressed than everyone else. If they tell you it will be a minute, they can void your original order, and take a new one immediately. Once I became a manager, I always offered to change the order if it would be more than about a minute wait.
Don’t expect to be told in advance about a wait, most of the time, IME, the register folks don’t know about it, untill you do. The Cooks usually let them know when the order shows up in the line.
If you hate to wait, order the basics. At most places, this is the cheeseburger. These are usually ready to go, because they are sold enough to be pre-cooked, and fly out of the doors, so are usually the freshest.
If you want fresh fries, ask for no salt. Fries are salted right after
they are cooked, so no-salt fries are almost always made to order. And salt is usually on the table, or available to-go on request.
I don’t mind waiting for a reasonable period of time, especially if I put in a large/special order, or if the store is very busy. But lately I’ve had to wait for the stupidest things. I can’t count how many times in the past month I’ve had a minivan full of young kids and a parent pull up to the window to pick up their order and have the parent decide that they would like to order more food. (Isn’t this, oh…not allowed? Or at least frowned upon.) 10 minute wait ensues. Some minimal problem in the order occurs, such as their second order contains a small fries instead of medium, and they demand (in addition to the non-ordered small fries) a new medium fries for free (yes, they actually say this…I’m always about 10 feet behind them and they’re talking very loudly, so I can hear). 5 minute wait, and by the time I get my food, it is cold and I do not get so much as an apology. It’s not that it honestly matters that much to me, but it is annoying, and for someone on a tight schedule I can imagine what it must be like.
ooh, I have a question, actually, regarding a Boston-area Wendy’s . . . I didn’t notice this at Downtown Crossing, but I did at Copley Square: three separate times during my meal, three different panhandlers each came up to me asking me for money for food.
What, exactly, is Wendy’s procedure for dealing with this? I’m a starving graduate student as it is, so when I finally save up enough money to order from the 99 cent menu, I don’t like it when a complete stranger comes up to me and accuses me of holding out on him during my meal.
I don’t think it’s the same Wendy’s you mentioned, but since it’s at least the same franchise, I was hoping for some insight as to what goes on behind the scenes.
I’m spoiled.
We have a choice between In 'N Out Burger and Fatburger.
(If you are unfamiliar with the two chains, too bad. Remember them should you ever come to the West Coast! They are the best!)
Both chains do not begin to make your order until after you order it…
You always have to wait.
And it is always fresh.
Nobody seems to mind the wait.
I’m perfectly happy to wait - at a fast food restaurant, at a slow food restaurant, at the DMV, Post Office, you name it. Unless I have some kind of emergency and need to get through pronto, I’m very patient with long lines, hold-ups and the like.
So, no, I wouldn’t get upset, and I tend to think that people who respond dramatically to delays such as the one the OP mentioned are overreacting (probably the guy in question had had a REALLY bad day. Or else he was just an asshead).
So that’s my 2 cents… And, while I’m here - my gratitude and appreciation to the hard-working men and women of the food-service industry. You all have tough jobs, and do them admirably.
I don’t mind too much as long as I’m in a decent mood to begin with.
One day I drove thru KFC for some honey bbq wings. When I went to the second window they asked if I’d park and they’d bring my food out to me, as they were making a fresh batch. Ok sure, I’m in no rush.
About 30 seconds later, they brought me out a free large iced tea to sip while waiting for my wigs. I thought that was a very classy thing to do, especially since they didn’t even wait to bring the tea with my wings which came a couple of minutes later.
I don’t mind so long as it doesn’t seem like they completely dropped the ball. I go to fast food places to get decent tasting food quickly. If I wanted to sit around for 15+ minutes, I’d go to the local diner.
A wait of more than 5 minutes suggests to me that someone screwed up. For instance, if your wings are getting too old to sell, and they take 10 minutes to cook, start batch #2 BEFORE batch #1 goes bad.
I agree, i have never heard Wendy’s claim to be fast food.
I work for Popeye’s Chicken and we do not claim to be fast food either… Chicken takes much longer to prepare and cook then a BigMac. :smack:
And i think customers should understand that, and not get upset when someone before them orders several large orders and then they have to wait till more is cooked. We can only put up so much food at a time, because of time limits on cooked products.
My pet peeve on waiting:
All too often, I’ll have to wait a couple minutes for a burger to be prepared. This is fine. But during those couple minutes the cashier will scoop my fries and take them out of the nice warm heating area and place them on my tray, to ensure that they’ll be cold by the time by burger’s done. They’ll also pour my soda right away, ensuring that it’ll be watery and flat by the time I drink it.
-lv
I misposted this in the wrong thread. It belongs here.
This post is a bit off topic but addresses the thread title.
What really frosts me is when it’s the middle of lunch rush and there are only two cashiers up front. The shift is trying to run itself into the ground because no one is in charge. The one in the tie is hiding in drive thru, the dining room is trashed, the ketchup and napkin dispensers are empty, the soap dispenser in the men’s room doesn’t, one cashier is a trainee and the other knows what she’s doing so no one wants to get in the trainee’s line but no one wants to lose his spot either, so there is this mass of humanity in the lobby with no apparent beginning or end to the line. The guy on fries is also trying to keep up on chicken sandwiches and failing miserably at both. Then he runs out of onion rings and there are none in the reach-in freezer, so the fry/chicken guy runs to the basement, which is locked, runs back upstairs to get the key from the manager hiding in drive thru, runs back downstairs and returns with a single bag of onion rings which should last about ten minutes whereupon he can do it all over again.
My fries get cold while waiting for their signature sandwich prepared as advertised. They have self-serve drinks but won’t give me the cup while I’m waiting because I could easily drink at least a gallon of pop while waiting for my order to converge. Hey, my sandwich is ready, but wait, there are no more fries because the fry guy is down in the basement.
I love that.
Welcome to Boston…home of the bums. I swear, I’ve never seen so many beggars as I have since I’ve moved up here.
I don’t know specifically about dealing with panhandlers, but Wendy’s in general has a “No Solicitation” policy. Theoretically, management shouldn’t be allowing them to scam their customers. I would definitely talk to a manager about it if you run into it again…let them know that as a frequent customer, you don’t appreciate the hassle, and that there are other restaurants nearby which do not run into these problems. I would venture to guess that if they think they’ll lose business as a result, they’ll put a stop on it pretty quick…
The Wendy’s in Central Square in Cambridge has a similar clientele. Is there something about Wendy’s? I personally think it’s nice of the management to put up with a lot from people who can’t be buying all that much, but I’ve never been approached for donations either.
Once upon a time, a franchised burger joint just down the road from where I was living at the time closed down for about three months while they did a complete remodelling of the place. When they opened back up, they did so with moderately great fanfare, with waving banners and large garish signs. Unfortunately, they must have hired brain-damaged colobus monkeys for cooks, because their operation was the very definition of “not having your shit together.” Once I went in there shortly after they re-opened, and ordered a standard combo meal (burger, fries, drink). They gave me my cup, and I proceeded to sit around and wait for literally 45 minutes for my food. I consider myself somewhat lucky, as I heard reports that in some cases it took over an hour for them to get customers their food. As you might imagine, after getting my food, I left the restaurant never to return. I did occasionally revisit there, though, after enough time had elapsed for them to get a clue about the nature of “fast food.” They had managed to improve their serving time to around 10 minutes, last time I was there.
To tie this rather lengthy anecdote into the thread, I will say that I definitely don’t mind waiting 5 minutes. 10 minutes is pushing it, but I recognize that things happen, ingredients run out, the restaurant occasionally gets massive runs on certain products, etc., so I tend to give the poor fast food workers a goodly amount of leeway.
i think that 5 minutes is a bit over the top for a fast food operation, without major comps that is. (i call places that have drive thrus fast food.) it is evidence of a major blunder if one has to wait that long. if there is a problem, it should be told when taking the order, not after one waits for some time. if the cashiers don’t know about it, it is bad management! i am there to get the food that i am used to in reasonably short time. that is why i go to that restaurant. to give the restaurant any slack for not having it together makes as much sense asto ask the manager for a discount because i had financial problems at home.
this doesn’t mean not to ever go back, it just means that the deal is unworkable that day.
interestingly, Wendy’s has been totally remarkable in my experience with them. at the most, in the 20 plus years that i have been going there, i can’t think of more than one negative experience. ironically, and just as inexplicably, wendy’s is one of the ff groups that i wouldn’t mind cutting extra slack.
i’m with harli pretty much except for "At KFC, we had a LOT of people rag on our head when forty-five before close on a weeknight, they’d show up wanting two twenty piece buckets and be told that it would take about half an hour. People just don’t understand how the industry works. Either that, or they’re just out to get freebies because they think the world owes them. " i used to work in a fast food operation and think this way until the district manager came in and clipped us for this attitude. the whole point in staying open till X is to offer the full service till that time.
I have to wonder why you waited. I’d’ve been demanding my money back long before then and gone elsewhere.
I don’t mind waiting, because the only thing I’ve ever had to wait for are Arby’s chicken fingers, which they make to order, and I know before I order that this’ll happen, plus they let you know before they ring in the order that you’ll have to wait for them.