No. No, you haven't "always done it this way."

The BBQ Pit
41

Oh, I just had this problem.

One of my guilty pleasures is Taco Bell. I’ve been going to the exact same Taco Bell for lunch every Monday for roughly 4 years. (I call it Taco Bell Monday.) I order the same thing every time. I don’t eat meat either, and many times–usually when there’s someone new taking order–my order has come out with that atrocious ground beast in it.

Because I’ve had many problems trying to get my order correct, despite enunciating clearly, repeating myself, and asking the order-taker to repeat my order back to me to confirm, this does not prevent the people in the kitchen from not reading the board correctly and fucking up the order anyway. So I’ve got the correct sequence of requests down pat. Also, my sister and her husband have worked at Taco Bells for about thousands of years (my BIL is a Regional Manager), so they’ve instructed me on what the cashier’s board looks like, what keys they have to punch to get my order correct, and how to say the order so it comes out right.

Despite all that…

I cruise through the drive thru a couple weeks ago. Pull up to the little speaker and give my standard, practiced and proven order: “Burrito Supreme minus beef, one order of nachos and a medium diet.”

The drive thru guy proceeds to argue with me. “I put that in as a bean burrito supreme because you can’t get a beef burrito supreme without beef. Your order will come out wrong because we will have to substitute beans.” (Ss if that is rocket science and the morons in the kitchen will be unable to understand the word “substitute.”)

“Um, no, I’ve been ordering this same thing every week for a couple years now, and there is no such thing as a Beef Burrito Supreme on your menu. (I’m looking at the menu board as I say this – nope, no Beef Burrito Supreme) Burrito Supremes* all *come with both beans and beef so all you have to do is instruct the kitchen to leave off the beef.”

[Side rant: Why is it, when you add something to an order, you can get charged extra, like $0.25 for extra cheese on the Veggie burger at BK… but when you order something to be subtracted from your order, like “take off the beef,” you don’t get a 0.25 or .050 discount? That pisses me off. I have to pay extra for a burrito to be made properly because I’ve asked for the most expensive ingredient to be omitted? Life is hard for vegetarians.]

Anyway, this drive thru guy continues to argue with me about how to input the order, so I just said, “Fine, man, do whatever you’ve gotta do.” And thought, “Just don’t put fucking cow on my burrito because I will retch while I’m ripping you a new asshole in about a half hour.”

So I pick up my food, drive 20 minutes home, open the wrapper and it’s a goddamn Burrito Supreme with BOTH beans and fucking meat on it. I check the receipt and the order has been input properly. After all that, and they still fucked it up. Filled with Grrrr. So I call that shop, and after 20 rings, they still haven’t answered. I hang up and call again. This time, they finally pick up in about 15 rings. I ask for the manager. Whoever answered the phone didn’t bother to say, “Oh yeah, I’ll get her” or anything; I just heard the phone hit the table with a thunk. Finally the manager gets on and I tell her what happened, and ask her to make me another burrito, this time with no goddamn beef on it, and explain I’ll be there in 15 minutes to pick it up. When I got there, and she saw me, she never said a word to me, just turned to the burrito-maker-guys and told them to make me another burrito. I watched as my burrito was made correctly, and was handed off to me without a word. Not one employee spoke to me the entire time I stood there. This of course burned up my entire lunch hour, so I had to take the food back to work and eat at my desk.

The moral: It took me a long time to figure out how to order my burrito so your kitchen staff doesn’t fuck up the order. Don’t fucking argue with me about how to input the damn order. Why do I have to train all the new employees? Isn’t there a shift manager who has that responsibility?

ETA: Yes, I realize I said it took 20 minutes to get home but 15 minutes to get back to Taco Bell from my house. I had a headwind. :wink:

42

This, essentially, is why I don’t buy burgers at McDonalds: because their internal system can’t handle plain orders. I go to A&W, where they just push the ‘plain’ button and it goes up on the board as BURGER - XPLAIN (you can read it on the screen behind the counter). No problem.

43

Per Visa’s website, the rules for Visa merchants don’t preclude merchants from asking for ID; however, “merchants cannot make an ID a condition of acceptance,” and “merchants cannot refuse to complete a transaction because a cardholder refuses to provide ID”.

They can ask for your ID, but you don’t have to show it if you don’t want to. It’s a violation of their merchant rules, and they can lose the ability to take Visa (and Mastercard) if they refuse to make the sale when you refuse to show ID. They’re supposed to check the signature on the card, and compare the two signatures.

I never, ever show my ID when making a credit card purchase. I say “No, thanks, the card is signed”. I call Visa to report the merchant if they refuse to take my card without ID. It’s a big hassle, and Mrs. Danalan disowns me for a while whenever I do this, but right is right. Visa (Mastercard too) made this rule, the merchants agreed to it, and I’m not going to bend for some stupid ‘manager’ who thinks security will be enhanced by requiring ID.

BTW, I first learned this at the SDMB, on some post I can’t find right now.

Cite.

44

My favorite BS customer story like this:

I worked in a small amusement park, found a group of customers picnicing with a large quantity of alcohol (not permitted). I approach and ask them to please return it to their vehicle because we are not licenced/insured for alcohol consumption on the premises. Guy comes up and starts lecturing me about how he was just over at the home of (correct park owner name) for thanksgiving dinner and he said it was no problem and I should.

Of course its a weekend and the owners are not on duty…luckily a perfect plan B comes up.

I pull out my radio and call for the duty manager to please meet me near the picnic area. He comes, I relay the content of the conversation and we once again approach the customers in question. Duty manager informs the gentleman that the alcohol needs to be removed, guy starts on the thanksgiving speech again.

Duty manager replies, “thats funny, I don’t remember seeing you there” and informs him the alcohol, or his entire group, would be going.

Duty manager was the owners oldest son :smiley:

The guy as it turns out was a contractor who had been bidding on some work for the park therefore had met with the owners and knew names. Guess who didn’t get the job…

45

One of the joys of working onsite. Customers present CC and ask if I need to see ID. I usually say, “thats ok, I know where you live” :eek: .

46

To the best of my recollection it’s been years since I’ve been asked to show ID when I use a credit card except in Las Vegas, where it seems to be almost standard practice. I suspect that’s because the likelihood of a credit card being stolen there is higher. I don’t have a problem with it in any case, since I already have my wallet in my hand when they ask anyway.

47

Commenting from behind the counter here too. I’ve worked for my Airline long enough to have risen from the ranks. Agent, Lead, Supervisor to Manager. I love when a customer demands to speak to me because an agent is applying a long standing policy.

Excuse me ma’am that has been out standard policy since 1999. As my agent explained to you there are liabilities and extra service involved in transporting an unaccompanied minor and there will be a fee associated with that service.

Ma’am I’ve applied this same policy 5 days a week for the last decade. I promise you this is not new. Is it possible you are thinking about another carrier?

The sad thing is these same people don’t blink when we charge them twice as much to CHECK a pet. I think there is an inherent resentment and the kids are the ultimate loser in these situations…

48

As you indicated, D-bear, not all carriers have the same policy. I’ve also done the kid shuttle thing for a number of years and every carrier I ever used was slightly different. Usually, there was a minimum age that a minor could fly unaccompanied without the extra fee – IIRC, it was generally around 12 yo if there was a layover/transfer. For direct flights, I’ve never had an airline insist on charging the UM fee. Not to say that yours doesn’t. For transfers, I insisted on the service regardless of whether the airline required it until my son was probably around 10 or 11. By then, he was a pro, having clocked more flight hours than I’ve got.

He’s also a charmer and almost always told me stories about how the flight attendants gave him extra service escorting him to a restaurant to get a bite and pointing out which way his gate was. He also seemed to find some very kind people sitting next to him that didn’t mind sharing their CD player or chatting him up for three hours.

Point is, I always made sure to know what the airline’s policy was and determine based on the trip whether I needed the service if it was optional. I don’t think we ever argued about it except the one time I paid for it and he didn’t get it. I was a bit perturbed that time. I think people just forget that each carrier has their own policies and don’t have to follow those of other carriers. Passengers are free to choose the carrier that gives them what they want if they don’t like it. Irritating, I’m sure.

49

I think that sounds perfectly reasonable. When I want a book, I don’t want to go all over town to each branch to get the one I want. I order it online and they email me when it comes in. I go to the library where I chose to pick it up and it’s right there next to the desk. I can be in and out in less than 5 minutes.

My library (as of now) doesn’t charge a fee for these, but if they did I’d still think it was worth it.

50

Bolding mine. I’m normally of the service people have to be a special kind of stupid before they irk me kind of attitude. However, when I get the “derrr, I don’t know, I can’t find it” behaviour it does make me a bit irritated.

Like you said, what ever happened to “I’ll ask”? It’s as if, upon being asked something slightly out of the norm, their mind circuits are just blown and they are unable to come up with anything intelligent (or helpful).

And FWIW, I’ve had service folks tell me “that’s the way we’ve always done it”, and I know darned well it’s not, and then upon asking I find out they’ve been there a whole 3 weeks or the like. Grrrr

51

Your problem (aside from braindead workers) is that you wait to open the wrapper. Pull up one space and open your order to check that it’s done properly. Since it probably won’t be, park and go inside, demand to see the manager with receipt and burrito in hand. This will save you about 40 minutes, according to you. I have to do the same thing with onions. I can’t digest raw onions, and it seems that many food preparers can’t wrap their minds around the concept that someone, somewhere, does not wish onions on her burgers.

52

One of the many banks I no longer do business with got into that category by doing exactly this.

“Sir, we cannot give you cash from that deposit until it clears the other bank.”

“I have done that every two weeks for the last two years.”

“No, sir, we have never allowed that.”

“Please close my account and give me the entire amount in cash.”

Tris

53

[Leo Getz]Okay okay, let me tell you guys something. You NEVER go to the drive-thru, okay? You NEVER go to the drive-thru. Why? They FUCK YOU at the drive-thru, okay? They FUCK YOU at the drive-thru! They know you’re gonna be miles away before you find out you got fucked! They know you’re not gonna turn around and go back, they don’t care. So who gets fucked? Ol’ Leo Getz! Okay, sure! I don’t give a fuck! I’m not eating this tuna, okay?[/Leo Getz]

54

I don’t like it either, I have memories of having my face eaten off by a Spanish student, looking to have papers stamped to say that she had been in the country for a couple of weeks longer than she actually had been, to get more grant money.

It seems my cow-orker had been making what one of the senior staff called “executive decisions” and dishing out extra money to all her little friends from abroad. She really was a stupid, stupid person, with me there to get the flak from angry students.

55

This pisses me off, too. Whenever I go to Panera, I get my son a roast beef sandwich on white bread with Swiss cheese. Nothing else, just roast beef and cheese.

That eliminates the condiments, lettuce, tomato, onion, etc.

Do I get a break on the price? No–instead, I get charged extra for the cheese!

56

I assume you have enough already in the account to cover the cash taken out of the check? Otherwise, that’s just good sense on the banks part to not give cash back on a check that hasn’t cleared…

57

Related: Why does it cost more to get fried egg whites at a diner? Why does less food cost more?

58

Well, in THIS case, it’s because there’s an extra step involved in removing the yolk.

But yes, I think if add a tomato is 25 cents more, then remove a tomato should be 25 cents less.

59

Blame the computer. In order to get your meal right, the cashier has to key in roast beef/white bread/no lettuce, tomato, etc, since you’re deviating from the “standard” roast beef sandwich, which doesn’t come with cheese. To add cheese is extra, and in order to get cheese on the sandwich the cashier has to hit the Swiss Cheese button.

60

Yes, but I make fried egg whites at home, and I know it only takes 2 seconds to separate the youlks and throw them away. The other dishes at a diner aren’t usually priced by difficulty, but by materials.