Wednesday, September 3

Inconvenience

I've left my pet peeves out of my blog thus far; other than my myriad winter ones concerning snow removal from other drivers' windshields, I have a real problem with McDonald's employees and the way they "do" their jobs. Not the folks who work in the back, who are preparing the food, I'm talking about the folks who work up front.

The local store has far too many people in the "lobby". How many people do you really need up there? There's one to take the walk-up orders, one on the window, one generally doing the fried potato products. Seems to me there should be another one to do the actual order filling for the walk-up and one for the window, right? So how, exactly, do they need a total of ten people crammed into an area designed for five? They're either looking at the monitors or just watching; no one is actually filling or taking orders.

My order taker listens to what I order (following is verbatim):

BS: "A number two combo with a large drink"
McD: "Is that to stay or to go?"
BS: "To go. AND Two Bacon, Egg, and Cheese biscuits
McD: "Is that to stay or to go?"
BS: "ALSO to go"
McD: [silence]
BS: "A number 11 combo with orange juice"
BS: [silence]
BS: "And a small coffee"

McD: "Is that to stay or to go?"

And when the "order" is presented to me, sans large drink cup, on a tray, I say "That was to go", they turn and look at the monitor they've been staring at for the last twenty minutes (or so it seems), no one ever thinks that maybe the order-taker has made a mistake. They just look at you like YOU have made a mistake.

Tempted to say something negative about any kind of language barrier, I just smile and say again "TO GO". Begrudgingly, they put the order in a bag. Like it's more work for them.

OK, so this whole exchange has taken less than a minute. And you're not so much paying for the quality of the food, you're paying for the convenience of fast food.

At least when you go to a 7-11, you expect the minimalist service. Convenience at its best.

And everything's to go.

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