Australia (now with AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT SUBTITLES):
Me: Can I get a Zinger Tower* with extra cheese** **(*a burger wit mad sauce) (yo special order off da broiler hook me up wit dat fresh boiger taste)
Them: Any drinks or fries with that? (lol buy more stuff)
Me: No, thanks. (cause ya’ll know they soda be watered down and fries be causin’ heart failure yo)
pause
Them: Here ya go. (Ooh, mister smart ass with his special order. Get the hell out of my office. I mean, fast food joint.)
Me: Cheers. (Good day sir.)
Total time elapsed less than two minutes! We use the same minutes you Americans do by the way. Maybe they have a magical octopus out the back making burgers at ninja-like speeds. Maybe some day a vengeful jealous employee will create a calamari burger. Slower burgers from then on but man, imagine a delicious calamari burger.
When my mother and I go to buy fried chicken for the family, it’s about $40.00. By the time you get the two buckets of chicken, all the sides, and enough biscuits to satisfy everyone, the money adds up. And with us, it’s not just that we’re eating it all at one sitting. We want enough to have midnight snacks/mid-day munchies for two days.
Now when she goes to buy for New Year’s Eve, Christmas Eve, or July 4th get-togethers, the price skyrockets far above $60.00. And then she goes to the Krystal and spends as much there.
I just passed KFC on the Rokin here in Amsterdam, and noticed trhat they have a sign posted in the window, stating that if you have to wait for more than five minutes for your order, you will get your next meal free.
I’m not sure what to make of that: apparently long waits do occur, otherwise what is the point? Personally I’ve never had to wait long when I did visit, except for people standing in line before me. I find the prices prohibitive, though.
Tell me about it. Apperantly shake machines must be the most fragile mechanisms on Earth, because McDonald’s and Burger King are constantly having theirs broken.
My experience with KFC is that it takes a while to get your food no matter what.
My complaint is not about the speed of service, but rather the quality of the food. At the Taco Bell I go to, I’ll order 5 or so Tacos for lunch, and I can almost guarantee you that of those 5, 3 will have broken shells and the other two will be soggy.
No I know that I’m not paying a lot of money for them, but are decent taco shells so much to ask for? The rest of it is fine, but dammit I want non-broken, crispy shells when I order tacos!1!
There is a principle at work here that y’all should familiarize yourselves with: The better the employee, the further removed from actual food production.
If you have a cheerful, hardworking, efficient and friendly worker, do you put him in the grill where he can make burgers quickly? No, you do not. You put the stoned guy who hasn’t slept since '72 back there. Mr. Chipper goes to the cash register or drive-through window, so that ever-elusive customer service can be provided.
So if you ever encounter a genuinely good food-service worker, understand that they’re usually dragging the weight of two or three other employees, none of whom understand simple requests like “Put the fries into the oil, please,” or, “Take the fries out of the oil and put some salt on them, would ya?” This person will be under constant pressure because they’re always doing their job, plus the job of two other workers, plus apologizing for being behind, which they never would be if everyone just did their job!
Also, do not be the guy who orders fresh fries and can’t wait around for them. When someone orders fresh fries at my store, we assume that they mean “the freshest fries possible,” so we make a new basket just for them. But you always get the jackass who apparently has a very important job, yet only is allowed seven minutes for lunch. Fries take three minutes and ten seconds. There is nothing to be done about that. If you want fresher fries than everyone else, you have to sacrifice a bit of time.
Perhaps the constantly-broken ice-cream machine is the reason that a simple shake consts the equivalent of 2 or 3 burgers. I’ve always wondered about that. Does it really cost that much to make? Milk costs more than meat? Am I subsidizing someone’s BigMac™?
Maybe not with your shake, but definitely with your soda. There is no way that those things should cost so much. A little syrup and some carbonation, plus ice… definitely not worth the price.
God bless teh Arby’s accors the street from me. I had just moved in, it was late (I was amazed that they were still open) and I was starving but didn’t want to cook. I walked in and a cheery man behind the counter was happy to take my order, a sweet guy in teh back made my sandwich while cheery man started fries for me, we all chatted and laughed pleasantly while the fries cooked, then I got my food and said good night.
I’m nowhere near that happy to see customers close to close. Ever. I was unbeliveably grateful. I’ve gone back four times, all close to close, and every time gotten great (well, for Arby’s) food and service from five or so different people. I may never go anywhere else for my crap food needs.
I second the broken shake explanation. If it’s anywhere near closing, that’s your reason.
We used to do that shit all the time with the espresso machine in the resteraunt I worked in. If a table was dilly dallying past close, fuck 'em. I’m doing my side work so I can get the fuck home. I’m not going to re-assemble the machine and get it all dirty again, just to make you an espresso 30 minutes after close, just so I can dismantle and clean it again, not to mention having you sit in my section for another 45 minutes sipping your evil nectar. Go to the coffee shop down the street.
To those who mentioned the shake/soda prices, it was my understanding (probably gleaned from these very boards) that most fast food places are breaking even or taking a loss on their beef products, thus offering low prices and luring you in to pay $2 for a few pennies worth of soda.
At a number of places I’ve worked this has been expressly prohibited by management, who insist that all food left over is thrown out at the end of the day. The logic being that the staff (who are usually getting paid minimum wage) may order/make extra food, just so they’ll have stuff left over at the end of the night to take home. If they’re required to throw it out, then this will not happen.
I have seen unbelievable amounts of decent, edible food wasted in this manner. I used to sneak it out to charities and homeless people.
My sister worked at Wendy’s when she was in high school and told me this story. One night she had an incident that pissed her off enough that she nearly walked off the job. She was closing and one of her duties was to break down and clean the salad bar. I’m sure Wendy’s has a policy which states that so long as there is even one customer in the dining area the salad bar must remain fully stocked (Side note: I was a manager for Burger King and we had all kinds of stupid policies like this. For example we couldn’t tell a customer who was in the dining area after closing to leave. we had to leave the doors open as long as there were customers inside the building, we couldn’t break down the shake machine or any other equipment early, etc. Most managers, myself included, never followed such policies as we all wanted to get home as soon as everyone else did).
Unfortunately my sister had an anal-retentive by-the-book manager working with her. A group of 5 or 6 people were just sitting at a table talking, long having finished their meals. My sister had all her work done except for the salad bar and she waited 45 minutes after closing before she went up to them and politely asked them if they wanted anything else from the salad bar since she was getting ready to close it. The people kindly told her to go ahead, they were done. The manager witnessed this and he jumped on her case, saying “NEVER ask a customer if they’re done! We’re here to serve customers, customers come first!.. blah, blah, blah.”
When I worked at OfficeMax we had similar policies, such as having to leave the doors open until at least five minutes after closing (at promptly 9:00 PM the doors were locked). If the store was occupied we couldn’t announce that we would be closing, we couldn’t tell customers still in the store that we were getting ready to close. If a customer was taking his sweet old time we had to let him shop at his leisure, and then, after he left we still had to keep the store open for five minutes past. Again, no manager was sadistic enough to force such policies on the rest of us, though the most we could do was strongly hint to customers that we were closing (“is there anything we can help you find before you check out?”) . It’s as if the people at the corporate offices who make such policies have never actually worked in a store themselves, much less at closing time. If they did, you can bet your bottom dollar they’d want to close shop as soon as possible, too.
