There are lots of little tricks like this, but management isn’t supposed to get caught doing them…
I would definitely go to the management first, as they might not know what their assistants are doing, even if they want them to do it…
If they blow you off, then I would imagine that would give you enough of a rage boost to go to corporate (or to just stop going to Wendy’s…) to complain.
Err, I’m pretty sure that’s because they have to wait for clearance to take off. Not because of customer service quotas. I could be wrong, though.
It’s easier to just take a tray and hold it over the sensor for a few seconds. At least that’s what we did when I worked at a Wendy’s and we needed to get service time down.
I don’t remember this happening to me recently, but when I lived in the suburbs I saw it happen all the time, at any fast food restaurant. We did this when I worked at Wendy’s 25 years ago, and I’ve seen it at McDonald’s, Burger King, Carl’s Jr. and Jack In The Box.
Come to think of it, I think about a year or so it happened at a KFC.
It’s definitely not an issue with whether it’s Wendy’s or not, but more to do with how the individual store is run.
I never complained, mainly because I was too lazy to be annoyed, but I agree with the rest that calling the feedback number at the window (which usually conveniently gives the store number as well) is the best way to respond.
Man, Wendy’s is the one fast food place in my area where they (multiple locations!) consistently have the food ready within the 15 seconds it takes from speaking my order to arriving at the window to pay. It’s like they read my mind while I was on my way to the restaurant! O_O
The combination Pizza Hut/KFC place by me does this every time, though.
Yep, this is a traffic control/Airport Authority problem, not the airlines. It’s the airport authority that needs to manage all the ground movements of the planes, and gods help an aircraft that doesn’t fit into their schedule. Most airports are operating at a maximum capacity, so even a small airline-side delay (minor maintenance check or whatever) can mean that the plane has lost it’s spot for taxi and take-off - these slots are purchased time by the airline, btw. The airport doesn’t have much choice but to simply try and squeeze the plane in at the next opportunity, which might not happen for hours. It sucks for the passengers, to be sure, but it’s rarely actually the airline’s fault.
Oh, and the plane needs to move back from the gate because the next plane to use that gate is probably on time and it needs to turnover and take-off for it’s next flight in it’s assigned slot, etc etc.
This assumes that there is a way to genuinely improve service time, without incurring unacceptable costs. That’s not guaranteed to exist.
You’re up against human nature here. Humans try to game the system, whatever that system might be. If the management comes up with a new metric for measuring speed of service, the underlings will come up with a new way to game that system.
Thanks for the reminder - I wanted to complain about Wendy’s not washing their baked potatoes. I know not everyone eats the skin, but they’re serving dirty potatoes there, dammit!
ETA: The website I used was www.talktowendys.com
I finally broke down and tried their new fries. They were horrible. And they got the rest of my order wrong. I won’t be going back anytime soon.
Just let the poor saps fudge the numbers if they need to. I just pull up. If I doubt they got my order right, I just ask the kid to please wait one sec while I check the bag. They don’t seem to mind that.
I didn’t mean to imply that there’s absolutely a way to improve service that is now being masked. I just meant that if folks are lying about how long it’s taking to get food out, then how would management or ownership ever know if there is room for service-time improvement (or if there’s any problem with service at all, for that matter)?
And yeah, I’m sure employees will always try to figure out how to game the system. That shouldn’t mean to me that ownership should just close their eyes and look the other way because it’s inevitable. I may take up the suggestions in here and call a Wendy’s hotline. I don’t think I’ll be complaining to anyone in the store in person because I actually like Wendy’s food, and I’d like mine to stay untainted by disgruntled employees.
This happens to me at McDonald’s from time to time. I always want to reply, “Why, so you can wait on someone who is behind me in line???”
I know it is wiser to not be a smartass in such a situation for reasons already mentioned; so far, I’ve resisted.
It’s an ongoing struggle, though.
mmm
I strongly suspect that management – certainly at any levels above the store manager – simply doesn’t care about whether their service time requirements are anywhere near realistic or how they are achieved in reality as opposed to their never-worked-fast-food-a-day-in-their-lives heads. It looks good on paper, enough said, if they can’t do it, fire the drones and find new ones. They can’t do it either, fire them, find new ones…
I’d be faking it too if I worked fast food!
I’ve long since given up on Wendy’s drive through, if it’s not during the lunch rush.
Lunch rush, they get my order right and quickly. Any other time? Something is missing or wrong with the order, or whatever it is I want, they are out of. They probably bat under 50% in non-rush visits.
Former fast food GM chiming in…
…what you’re seeing here is really a symptom of how pathological the quick-service industry is. Upper management types, by which I mean those far ABOVE the store level, generally have not actually worked in one of their restaurants, or did so a long long time ago, and don’t have a holistic feel for how changes like adding new products to the menu or changing cooking procedures affect the flow of business. On top of that, they tend to measure success solely in focus of numbers - “customer satisfaction” is an abstract, but “how long was that car in the drive-thru?” is a number they can put on a spreadsheet and hold restaurant managers accountable for, and those goal numbers tend not to get changed even when the circumstances in restaurant operations change wildly.
In the chain I used to work for, our speed of service goal was 3 minutes and 30 seconds. This was set sometime in the '80s or early '90s, when french fries took 1:35 to cook, procedure allowed for burgers to be prepared in advance and staged, and there were three protein types - small hamburger patty, large hamburger patty, and chicken patty. Breakfast was only served during morning hours, and burgers were not served until after 11.
Fast forward to the 2000s. The french fries have been replaced with a new variety that takes 3:05 to cook. All sandwiches MUST be prepared to order, and patties can only be staged in limited quantities for a brief period of time. Protein types now include three kinds of hamburger patty, (the longest of which takes 2:30 to cook), eight kinds of chicken (the longest of which takes 3:05 to cook), fish filets, steak strips, three kinds of deli meat, - and breakfast is now served all day as well, which means we have to throw in fried eggs, scrambled eggs, sausage patties, and chorizo. The speed of service goal is STILL 3 minutes, 30 seconds. See the problem here? On top of that, labor guide hours have not changed and deployment guides have not changed either, meaning that, at all but the busiest of peak times, there is ONE person assigned to cook and prepare all of those products. (And heaven help you if you get the customer who takes more than 60 seconds to order.)
In regards to the specific situation at Wendy’s, it’s been pretty well publicized that they’ve just redone their entire hamburger line. My guess is that the new hamburgers take longer to cook and assemble than the old ones, that they’ve reduced how long they can stage patties for (so they’ll taste more “fresh”), and that the store employees had minimal training on the new procedures and were expected to pick it up as they went the day it went on sale (since the manager can’t schedule extra time for training without going over his labor guide or cutting shifts elsewhere in the week, which will hurt business even more).
Aside from that, it may be that they DO have a legitimate reason for parking people. My policy for parking orders was only to do it if either the order for the car behind the window would be ready first (because it was a smaller or simpler order, or because what they’d ordered would take less time to cook), or if the customer had added on to their order at the window, and we gave them an antenna ball as compensation for having to pull around.
My bitch about Wendy’s is when you go up to the register and they ask, “Will this be for the dining room today?”
Who came up with this little piece of corporate bullshit? Dining room? Look, pal, this is Wendy’s. There are no candles or violin players here.
Nobody “dines” at Wendy’s, you eat. Take your corporate speak and shove it up your ass. “For here or to go” works just fine.
Wendy’s is mostly great in my opinion, and I find the pulling-up thing seems to be fairly universal in my area, with the longest wait times being at Hardee’s (Carl’s Jr.) Wendy’s needs to get with the program and let people get their own drink refills. I always feel uncomfortable walking up there in line where people are waiting with my cup in hand.
How would you be able to tell?
“Hmm, this cheeseburger seems to have a little extra je nais se quois today.”
i remember as a kid having to do that anytime you ordered a quarter pounder or a double quarter pounder at McD’s in the early 80s because it took longer to cook than the normal burger and they were made to order … so if we were in a hurry id get the "no quarter pounders today were in a hurry speech when we went through drive-through