Speaking as a McDonalds employee of nearly three years… here’s what I guess happened.
The clerk was probably unaware that they were out of McNuggets. It’s possible that they had run out of nuggets only moments earlier. What must have happened is that the clerk rang up the order, found out there weren’t any nuggets available, and knowing that the nearest manager was busy on a smoke break or something, tried to persuade the customer to go with something else. You need a manager override to cancel an order that’s already been wrung up. It’s impossible for a non-manager at McDonalds to give a refund.
I’ve been in such situations… and let me tell you, it’s a real bitch dealing with those kind of scenerios. If it’s the graveyard shift and the only manager on duty is using the restroom… I just have to wait and hope the customer is patient or try to offer them an alternative.
Ok, this scenario isn’t exactly the same, but is similar. I manage a fast food place. I have a set of policies set in place by the owners. Sure, when it comes to management most rules aren’t set in stone and you are expected to use your judgement according to the situation however, we have one rule I will not bend on: no refunds or replacements without a recipt. Period, end of story. I don’t care if you bring the food back, if you have no recipt you get nothing. If you claim we didn’t give you a recipt I don’t believe you. If you threw it away inside our building I don’t care. You get nothing. The reason behind this has to do with the PLU codes on the recipts. If I void out the wrong one, it looks like theft, even if the dollar amount was the same. Also, if the recipt isn’t present with the voided ticket it looks like I just voided some random something so I could pocket the money. I won’t be accused of theft, and my minimum wage cashiers shouldn’t have to be either.
So a guy comes in and asks for a refund for his pizza which wasn’t made right, and he doesn’t want to wait for us to make a new one and blah blah blah so the cashier comes and gets me. He doesn’t have his recipt, he threw it out the window on his way home. I calmly explain that I can’t–don’t have the authority to–refund his money. He says the cashier remembers him, he was just here 10 minutes ago. She confirms that he was indeed just here and he did indeed pay for that pizza. It doesn’t matter, I explain, practicality and company policy demand that I have his recipt before I hand him back his money. I know the total. I have a key in my hand that can open the register. It. Does. Not. Matter. I can’t do it. I will lose my job. I explain that he is welcome to call the GM in the morning or the 800 number tonight, but I myself can’t help him. He proceeds to threaten me with violence, cause a huge scene in front of the other customers, etc. I call the police and have him escorted from the building (on the legitimate grounds that he threatened me with violence, and we have it on camera.)
And a week later he comes in with a letter from the company saying that he can have his money back. Luckily the GM was present to handle it himself, because if I’d been on duty that night I’d have had him removed from the building again. Fine. If the guy was so terribly dissatisfied–and it turned out he actually ordered his pizza wrong, rather than us making it wrong–I’m glad he could have his money back. But I wasn’t the person who could give it to him, since he threw away his recipt. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some technicality like this involved here. It probably would have been very possible for the woman to have her money back, just not RIGHT THEN from that cashier or the manager on duty–who may have wanted to just hand the three bucks back and get on with her night but who had rules to follow at risk of her job. I have no sympathy for the woman–you don’t call 911 over food.
But can you at least understand why this rigid policy would cause a customer to get angry? Why even though the cashier remembered him and the transaction, you still wouldn’t yield, just based on a lost slip of paper and a “PLU code”? Isn’t there any way you could have written up an explanation of the transaction to attach to the voided ticket for whoever is above you to review so you or your cashier are not blamed theft? It’s not hard to understand why this type of extreme, unyielding adherence to an arbitrary rule designed only to keep paperwork tidy could make a customer fly off the handle. You’re a human who can make judgments and decisions, not a robot. And it’s not just $3 like the chicken nugget lady – with a pizza, we’re talking like $20 or more, which is a lot.
Actually we are talking about $8.72 which could be PLU# 36 or 72. Yes, I can understand how this policy may make someone angry. Fly off the handle, curse me out in front of a dozen other customers and threaten me over a pizza? No. Believe me, it would have been easier on all parties involved if I had just popped the till open and handed the guy back his money. I could have gotten on with my cleaning and paperwork and not been set back half an hour. However, the customer has to realize that I didn’t make that policy, I just get paid to enforce it. I don’t deserve to be cursed at and threatened with violence over a pizza. Yes, I could probably have left a note with the timestamp from the cameras with minimal risk to my job. I am second in command of the store and I have a lot of leeway. Am I willing to do that over $8.72? For somebody who ORDERED THEIR FOOD WRONG and IMHO doesn’t deserve their money back because they got what they asked for? No, I’m not.
Now if somebody ordered something and we were out and they hadn’t left the building I’d assume they still had their recipt with their change–and a refund would be no problem. I’d probably give them some free breadsticks and a coupon to bring them back in, and I’d be genuinely sorry for their inconvenience because it’s my job to keep the customers happy. But if they’d gone out to the parking lot and tossed their recipt in the gutter, they’d be out of luck.
So you admit you could have refunded his money, but you didn’t because you did not feel he “deserved” it because he ordered his food wrong… and to cover this up you just pulled the old “I didn’t make that policy, I just get paid to enforce it” line.
If I thought he didn’t deserve a refund, and that was the only reason I had, I’d have told him that. The bit about ordering his food wrong came in after the fact so it wasn’t a factor at the time. The policy is no recipt, no refund. Yes, I could have rolled the cameras back to when he came in, watched him get rung up, and left a note for my boss that the recipt was missing. Could I have been written up or fired if I did that? Yes. Probably not, but yes, I could have. The guy admitted he tossed it out his car window–littering! Should I risk my job for his eight dollars? Which he could have had back the next morning if he’d had the patience to be calm and wait and call the GM, who could have fixed it all for him and given him a free pizza for his trouble? For anybody living paycheck to paycheck with no savings and no family to help you out if you fall on hard times the answer is No. I follow the rules the owners laid down for me to follow. Would I have done it for someone who ordered something we’d just run out of? Probably, but it’s also probable that they’d still have their recipt. If they didn’t I’d probably be inclined to call the GM at home and have him give me permission to void the order. I wasn’t in this case because the guy started yelling before it crossed my mind, and by the time it did I was pretty pissed off. I don’t wonder why he got mad, I wonder why he couldn’t be a calm rational human being and call the GM in the morning.
Actually, I didn’t want to report my car stolen. I mostly wanted to check if I had been privately towed, and as the precinct explained to me at length, the only way to check the police tow logs, apparently, is to report your car stolen. By calling 911.
The worst part about working customer service is dealing with stupid, inflexible policies like this. You know what’s right, the customer knows what’s right, you’d like to give the customer what he wants so that he’ll go away, but some stupid corporate policy keeps it all from happening. And, of course, this always seems to come up when the manager isn’t there. The big problem is that such scenarios often go from being neutral to perhaps even positive straight to horribly, horribly, “I’ll never shop here again!” negative (even if the police don’t have to get involved). When you feel you are being treated unfairly, most people don’t just want to sit there and take it, yet that’s what these policies expect us to do.
I realize that such policies are often meant to combat fraud, but it is very frustrating to see an honest customer who obviously is not committing fraud get trapped by something so stupid. Lady wants McNuggets, lady didn’t get McNuggets, lady doesn’t want something else, so lady should get her money back. She should not need to throw a fit or call the police in order for it to happen.
I have a coworker who will never shop at Target again over a two-liter bottle of soda. She bought the wrong kind and wanted to exchange it. She lost the receipt, so Target said no. She tells everybody about this. Everybody. It happened several years ago, and I think she still brings it up occasionally. She took the soda to a different store and exchanged it there. Did she commit fraud? Perhaps. But that store has a customer now that Target does not.
I’m not denying that 911 is for “emergencies” and not for non-emergency crimes. But a crime is a crime, she is a victim and she doesn’t know the seven digit police number and they probably refused to transfer her call. What is she supposed to do? Go home and call the police? Right. They would tell her to go to civil court or see a lawyer. When a business has a disruptive person, for example a homeless person hanging around out front (saw this last week), they have all the tools to call the right number or call 911 and get away with it. I think this woman is being punished for calling while black. The cops don’t need us, and they expect the same.
No, I can’t. We don’t have a touch screen system or thermal printers or even a reprint function. We have hundred year old registers that look like typewriters. Once the transaction is over, that’s it. The register adds it to the total sales for the day and then forgets. (Have I begged for a new POS system? Yes. I’ve also begged for a radio and an air freshener in the bathroom but nobody listens to me.)
And it’s not the poor cashier’s fault she doesn’t have a key. The woman should have waited for a manager or called 800 McD’s instead of 911. She’d have gotten results a lot faster.
I don’t see a crime here. I see a civil tort. And just because the system is pretty lousy for dealing with a matter of three dollars doesn’t mean that a person should escalate it to the process that deals with life and death.
This isn’t a police matter. Go to McDonalds web site and make up a story about shoddy service you received. They will send you a lot of coupons for free food. They don’t want to lose a customer over three bucks.
But, if you are a person who can’t handle conflict resolution, and that must involve the constables over a matter of three dollars, then call the non-emergency number. She doesn’t know the number? That’s what directory assistance is for. If those cops tell you to call 911, then do so by all means, but under other circumstances only use 911 for emergencies. How hard is that?