A Business that Just Won't Go Away

I've griped before about our local Burger King. My son had decided he'd like a cheeseburger from there recently; my wife had also picked up something from McDonald's not more than a day before that; I noticed something about the way they conduct business a little differently.

There's the obvious; BK usually got our orders wrong. I'm wary of them because once I would order something simple, they'd get it right, and just as I got confidence in them they'd end up screwing up the order again.

But I noticed something else. The people seemed different; they carried themselves differently, had a different attitude. One that seemed to say, "I can't wait to go home."

There seemed to be more tattoos at the BK. Does that sound biased? I think it sounds biased. But I thought it was unusual that proportionately there were more people with tattoos working at the BK than at the local McD's...I'm simply stating an observation.

The voicebox where you can place an order starts greeting us with a cheerful, pleasant woman's voice...then abruptly turned into a man's voice asking for the order. Huh? My wife said that it's an automatic pre-recorded voice, one that's supposed to greet you right away then the employees are supposed to stop whatever they're doing and take your order.

"You mean, they're supposed to be distracted while trying to fill an order, and probably increase the chances they're going to screw up my order rather than have a car wait an extra fifteen seconds?"

"Yup."

Then they take some extra seconds at the drive through asking if I'm paying cash or credit. Why do you need to ask me that there? I just want to place my order and pull up to pay.

These in my opinion are bad practices for business. They have a sloppy track record for getting my order accurately filled, they have an image of employees that look like they're about as happy to be there as they would be at the proctologist's office (Hey, the McD's employees aren't exactly skipping around behind the counter, but at least they usually don't let on that they hate the customer...), and they annoy me with cheap gimmicks to make me think service is better than it really is while at the same time it's probably increasing the odds they're screwing up my order again.

Barring something else coming up of great significance, this will probably be the last time I rant on about this, so for those few people reading this blog that may be a source of relief. I know it is for me to get this off my chest. Drives me nuts that businesses run in such a sloppy manner manage to apparently still turn a profit...makes me wonder what's wrong with people. I know I avoid this business when I have a choice.