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| ~ Rant ~ |
They couldn't do it.
The kid behind the cash register was flustered while attempting to fulfill my order because the preset order-taking system McDonald's has in place didn't have buttons for processing and relaying my order in the configuration I had ordered it in (different quantities in two different sacks).
This kid was just the order taker. Someone else would prepare my order and then someone else would bag my order.
I told the kid not to worry, just put everything in a big sack and then give me a small sack and I'll separate out the food later.
They couldn't do that either.
So I then suggested doing whatever worked with their system. That gave the kid the leeway to process my order the way she had been trained to do so. We had finally got to the part where I paid and waited for my order.
After a moment, another employee asked if it was OK if all of the hamburgers I had ordered were put into one sack and the fries put in a separate sack.
I nodded in agreement.
Then a moment later another employee asked if it was alright if half the hamburgers I had ordered were put in one sack and the other half put in another sack along with the order of fries.
Again, I nodded and said, "Ok".
Minutes later I was handed two sacks of burgers and a medium fries and I went on my way.
Now it may surprise you to know that I was not upset or angry with the employees of McDonald's.
I have worked in jobs like this and sympathize greatly with the employees.
These kinds of jobs are lousy. You have to deal with some of the nastiest, most ridiculous customers you will ever have the displeasure of meeting and the pay is not even remotely close to being enough to put up with all of that.
So, no, I do not get upset with employees in situations like this.
This was during the dinner hour and they were under pressure to get the orders out. They were doing their jobs, as they were trained to do under McDonald's system, with the tools McDonald's gave them to do their jobs with.
Those last two parts are where the problem is.
These kids are too young to remember the days when your server would write down your order on a piece of paper (a ticket), along with any special instructions like "14 burgers, 12 in large bag, 2 in small bag", and then hand the paper to the short-order cook.
Even if the kid who took my order wanted to write down the special instructions, there was no pen or paper in the counter area. Everything is computerized.
These kids grew up in a world of automated systems and have been trained to function only within the parameters of those systems. Any deviation, such as writing a custom order on paper, is beyond what these kids are familiar with. Such an idea just would not occur to them and apparently it didn't occur to anyone who devised and approved the system McDonald's trains these kids to use and obey. Otherwise the terminal on the cash register might have had a "see written custom order" button to push, notifying anyone along the process line that this is a "special order", and pen and paper for the cashier to hand-write special instructions about the customer's order to pass along to the other members of the "team".
Another aspect of this was that, after McDonald's spent millions of dollars to develop an almost entirely automated system, that system failed to produce my order in the way I wanted it.
Someday soon, these jobs will be replaced by robots.
Robots that are operating off of the same inflexible system and are unable to prepare any order that deviates from the program.
If you think customer service is bad now, it will be worse when a robot rejects your order when you want something slightly outside of the programmed presets - like different quantities of the same product in just two, different sized, sacks.
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