I don’t like Hardee’s (Carl Jr’s out west, I think) food as a rule but I like the occasional country ham biscuit or fried chicken. Their burgers have gone crazy in price and size, and no more roast beef.
But the god damned drivethrough at the local Hardee’s is incredibly slow. You can easily wait 10 or 15 minutes. Last weekend I went there to buy chicken and waited over 5 minutes in the drivethrough line and I wasn’t even up to the order intercom yet. So I thought I’d be smart and go inside. Line inside wasn’t too long. A couple people in front of me ordering milkshakes. I look up on the TV screen showing the orders, top 3 have been waiting 6, 8, and 9 minutes! The workers are nice enough but are in no hurry at all. The milkshakes take at least 5 minutes and 2 different workers. I finally get to order my 8-piece chicken and after a few minutes the manager herself starts filling my order. I watch her put pieces of chicken in the box, excruciatingly slowly one by one. Same with the biscuits. It takes a few more minutes to locate the green beans and mashed potatoes. If the manager is no faster than that no wonder the place is so slow.
After probably 8 or 9 minutes I finally get out of there and I notice that the car I was behind in the drivethrough line already left, so I would have been just just as well off sitting in my car. Well I would have burnt more gasoline. Goodbye Hardees, see you again in a few months…
I get home and my girlfriend asks me what took me so long, “Well, I went to Hardee’s.” No more needed to be said.
McDonalds sucks but at least you don’t burn up a gallon of gas and 15 minutes of your life getting your fast food.
Our local Dairy Queen is this way. Every time we sit in the drive-thru waiting we speculate whether they had to butcher and pluck the chickens for the chicken strips, dig some potatoes for the fries, or milk the cow so they could make the ice cream.
Hardees on post here is incredibly slow. That would be bad enough, but it takes forever for them to overcharge me and get my order wrong on the first two tries. I thought I would outsmart them by skipping the drive-thru and going inside for a take out. I learned twenty five minutes later that they fill the drive-thru orders first, then the dine in customers, then the take out. They even filled the orders for drive thru and dine in that had been placed after my order. I only ordered two double cheeseburgers. I saw several of them being handed out. I finally lost it and asked the manager WTF, why was my order taking so long. I had to remind her what I ordered, show my reciept and then wait for the cheeseburgers to be made. I would never go to this place again, but it is the closest food place to the barrack and my company area, so when I need a quick (?) lunch, I have to go there.
WE have a Taco Bell here in town that was INCREDIBLY slow - we’re talking 4 cars in line, time enough to list to an entire QUARTER of an NBA game (no lie - this actually happened to me and a friend of mine. This was a drive thru with curbs on both sides of the lane, so no escape possible).
control-z, have you complained? It probably won’t help, but what the hell.
We go to the same McDonald’s every week, and service is strikingly uneven. Last week, they were really slow and I actually think the problem was overstaffing. Sometimes I go in and see seven people busting their ass, but that time there were more like fifteen people and everyone was fairly languid. Maybe they were training new hires or something.
No, I haven’t complained, I’m more of the anonymous grumbling type… But they’ve been through several management and staff changes but the slowness remains constant.
I see a decline in service at the local McDonalds when school ends for the summer; they have new people working the day shift and things are unpredictable for a while.
Same with our Burger King; as a general rule it’s super slow but every once in a while there’s this one guy who keeps things hopping. Sadly, the pattern cannot be predicted.
My checker at the grocery store last night was Slow-Motion Man. Everything was done veeeerrryyyyy … deliberately.