So I grab a Happy Meal at McDonalds.
At the pick-up window,
I’m waiting,
watching traffic,
whistling,
when all of the sudden, this arm jettisons violently out of the window like a piston, shoving a bag and a half-lidded cup of Coke into my hands.
My first thought is, “what did I do to piss this girl off?”
Then I notice the big red shot clock in the window.
Apparently, they only have 30 seconds to get my food in my hand, or else I win-I don’t know-a whole cookie or something.
I drive off, sweater soggy with Coke which spilled on me when I grabbed it (I’m the non-confrontational type.)
OK-here’s the thing. I know if I get fast food, service quality etc. should not be my first priority. However, I would have gladly waited a few extra lousy seconds so that I don’t have to take my outfit to the dry cleaners.
It pisses me off that McDonalds apparently puts the fear of God into this girl to get my stuff to me in 30 seconds, regardless of whether the lid is on. (I guess if I had wanted ketchup, it would have really lit a fire under their asses!)
Besides, they just held me from paying at the first window (clock starts at second window) until my order was ready, so what the hell is the point? Do they have this deal everywhere?
Harumph.
At the McD’s in Union Station in Chicago, they have these huge “X seconds for (insert description of various tasks here)” signs all over the front of the store. Yes, up front, along side the menu and all of that stuff. I guess it’s supposed to be for customer pressure or something - “If you have to wait more than 5 seconds for someone to ask for your order, that person is incompetent; ask to speak to the manager now”, maybe?
(I’m just pissed at them for soaking their fries in beef broth. Bastards. After that, I don’t trust them to not be slipping beef broth into their broccoli cheese soup or whatever else normally shouldn’t have meat in it.)
I work at a Burger King, and some managers are more anal about this than others. Fortunately, I’ve been on days lately, because the night manager is really into the whole “speed of service” deal. He has even set up a poster in the breakroom offering rewards (read: free food) to the employee who can take a drive-thru order the fastest. (NOTE: the ‘‘speed of service’’ does not apply to dine-in customers.) If a customer is in the drive-thru line for more than 60 seconds - from the time the employee says “Hi, thanks for stopping at BK, may I take your order?” until the customer has their food and has been wished a nice day - the boss goes apeshit. Don’t know why, and really don’t care to know why - maybe he gets a raise if we’re number one in the region ‘x’ days in a row or something - but yes, it does happen other places.
As a fast food veteran (Burger King), I feel compelled to comment on so-called “speed of service” goals imposed on employees. We had a limit of thirty seconds for each car at the window for the lunch rush and 60 seconds for the overall day. Never happened. Ever. Attaining a 30-second average was virtually impossible. If we averaged 45 seconds during a lunch rush this was considered a good day, but most of the time the average during lunch ranged from 60-70 seconds. I don’t remember what we averaged for the overall day, but it was well over 60 seconds. We had one of those LED-display timers above the window. At 30 seconds it would emit a short beep and the numbers would start flashing. At 60 seconds it would emit a sustained BEEEEEP, much like the sound of a patient’s EKG who has just flatlined. After awhile we just tuned out this annoying contraption.
The speed of service goals could only be attained as long as every transaction at the window went perfectly. So often, though, this wasn’t the case, and most of the time the delays were customer-caused. This includes:
[ul]
[li]Customers who didn’t have their money ready. Worse were the ones who, upon arriving at the window, would go digging through the ashtray, between and under the seats, in the map pockets, the tiny space between the dash and the windshield, or dump out their purses on the empty passenger’s seat, to pay for their purchases. Check writers and credit card users also fall into this category.[/li][li] Customers who changed their order or added items at the window.[/li][li] Customers who specified what they wanted on their sandwiches after ordering at the speaker.[/li][li] Customers who drove past the speaker and placed their orders at the window, throwing the order sequence off (customers behind them stopping at the speaker get their orders taken first)[/li][li] Customers who disputed the total (not always their fault, we made mistakes, too.)[/li][li] Customers who returned wrong orders or food that was not to their satisfaction (again, not always their fault).[/li][li] Customers who just had to finish up their cell phone conversations before handing me the money (I worked at BK up to 1994, so I imagine this problem is ten times worse now).[/li][/ul]
I should also add that the DM didn’t take into account the fact that many people didn’t drive away from the window right away (some would spend up to a minute or more checking their order, distributing food to the eight kids in the back of the mini-van, etc.). The clock kept running until the car pulled away, and we were still held accountable for this extra time :rolleyes:
At the time I worked there, yes. This was a franchise-owned restaurant, so it was up to the owner to decide which methods of payment could be taken. The owner has since left, so I have no idea how they do things there now. All I remember is groaning every time someone would start writing a check once they got to the window, instead of having thought to do this while waiting in line.
But… but… what if the customer has a vanload of 7 year old soccer players, and not only takes 10 minutes to order, but also makes a dozen special requests (little Jeremy will die if he eats a pickle, and Sandra farts a lot if she eats cheese)?
What Dumbasses come up with these Ideas? Do they actually know what the hell goes on in the stores? I have never worked in fast food, but 30 seconds seems a little too fast to me.
If the person at the window has been rude, discourtious, or acts as if my patronage is in some way a major inconveniance, I do the following.
After the window person shoves my order at me, I take it, roll up my window, and sit there, rooting thru the bag, puting away my wallet, noticing an unseen something on the celing of the car, etc.
The length of time is determined by the craptitude of the service.
The way the drive-thru operates at BK (at least, 'round these parts) is by headset. The customer places their order at the speaker while the employee taking the order - as well as several in the kitchen - are wearing headsets. The people with the headsets can hear everything that the customer is saying (yes, everything) while they are at the speaker. So we get a head start on making the orders. So by my boss’s logic, there should be little to no excuse for a customer waiting more than 60 seconds for their food.
And after re-reading my post, I realize I may have mis-spoken. I am not exactly sure when the timer starts, but I believe it is after the first item is entered on the cash register, rather than when a car pulls up to the drive-thru. Still, 60 seconds is sometimes impossible to do, like in the example quoted above.
The whole “speed of service” thing is bullshit, IMO. When I go to a fast-food place - even before I started working at BK - I’m more concerned with the quality of service as opposed to the speed. If it takes 45 seconds to get my food, but the person taking my order is rude, I would reconsider going back to that particular place. But if it takes three to five minutes, and the employee is hospitable and polite and does what they have to do to make me want to come back there, they will have a regular customer. It’s common sense, really - something that, apparently, lots of management-types (and not just in fast-food) seem to be sorely lacking.
Yeah, but then you’ve got to unload a vanful of kids and try to maintain some order once you have them inside. I’d rather wait five minutes in the drive-through.
Except now that I know what the workers have to go through because of it. Hmm. I suppose I’ll just have to continue refusing to buy a van.
You’d be surprised…the last time i got one from the store near my house, the muffin was burnt, the cheese was hard like it’d sat out too long, and the egg was runny. I got my money back.
Last year when I did the mcdonalds thing, we were running some “that’s mcdonalds time!” special…if you didnt get your food 90 seconds from when you ordered,you got some kind of free sandwich. that was their big mistake…they advertised that we had to be fast. at the same time, we had 3 manager trainees, and the realmanagers were supposed to let them run all of the lunches for practice. There would be about 4 real managers, all doing meaningless support jobs, so we could observe, but not interfere. I usually volunteered for back drive thru ordertaking…I couldnt see the DT clock, but my watch clocked 5 minutes plus on at least half the orders. Eventually, I just grabbed a stack of the cards out of the safe and handed them out with the change. “Thanks for choosingMcDonalds, come see us again soon, here’s your free sandwich because we’re apaprently idiots!” We lost a lot of money that summer…
When I worked at Sonic, the max time on most orders was supposed to be 3 minutes (from the time the order is completely entered in). The exceptions were a few deep-fried foods that required more time to cook. 30 seconds seems much too fast, especially considering that the customers don’t care how long they hold up the order.
Slight hijack: The movie theater I frequented when I lived in Washington had a program where if you were in line for snacks for more than X minutes (can’t remember the exact time, I think it was 2 minutes), you got a free drink. I remember being glad they were finally gonna speed up the snack line, but everyone, and I mean, everyone got a free soda. The program lasted about 2 weeks. I don’t know why, but it seems to be impossible to get popcorn, mountain dew and twizzlers in less than 5 minutes.
