Thursday, February 23, 2006

Fastfood Woes




I love fastfood. No, no.... I live fastfood. My body is 70% McDonald's. It's my emotional food. It's my sustenance. I also get into heated arguments with people about wheteher or not I should eat as much fast food as I do. You'd probably think that I'm the last person to complain about the establishments. Not so.
Cases in point-

#1 I go to a fastfood in the Paranaque area. I'm in line, right? Then the manager on the counter, upon my 'turn' motions me to the left side with an open palm without a word. A service crewperson attended to me, and I thought nothing of the stone cold silent manager... until about three seconds later when she attended to the person behind me in the line. So the crewperson was taking my order already and to multitask, the manager attended to the guy, greeting him with a warm 'Good afternoon, sir! What is your order?'
I was, like, 'What? Do you ignore the yuppie generation now or what?' I proceeded to state my order in full English to signify my annoyance.
To further salt my slashed bleeding ego, as the crewperson was about done with my order, the manager says to her, 'Let me at the register first' and she began 'punching in' the guy's orders and straightaway set up his tray. Two minutes later and voila!-the guy's order was done.
I had to wait for roughly seven minutes after that to get my order filled.

#2 The following week, I was in line right after my Chinese friend at another fastfood. It would've been a quick grab had it not been for a woman who wandered away from her line and 'hovered' beside ours. Now, it was quite obvious that I came after my Chinese friend since we were all yappy while she was ordering. I was definitely next. As my friend left. I began to dictate my order. Suddenly I realized that this floating lady with an order slip from her abandoned line was right beside me. So, the crewperson goes, as I am talking, 'Ma'am. Did you come first?" My jaw dropped to the floor. Of course the woman was all 'Yes, of course.' And the crewperson proceeded to take her order, ignoring my rolling eyes which were starting to mimic a pachinko machine on decaf. And so the woman left, having had her order filled. As the crewperson finally set her eyes on me, I let out 'Could you please make sure you take the order of the right person next time? The ones in line? I mean ... hello?'. I was amazed when the girl had the gall to insist that I did not come first. The manager overheard and asked to hear about the sitch. The crewperson continued to defend her stance. I told her not to insist, and of course the manager apologized for the erring crewperson.

#3 Two days ago, I ate at a fastfood in a mall in my town. I ordered a large meal and it took ages for my fries to arrive. About 15 minutes into my meal, I decided to check on it. Lo and behold, the frying machine zord thing was overflowing with fries and so were the trays of the customers being served. The reaction of the negligent crewperson? 'Oh, I forgot! Heeheehee.'

#4 Just tonight, after a looong day's work which ended in a taxing tutor session, I went for dinner at another mall fastfood. They no longer served anything except the generic burger meal. They told me that it was because it was already closing time. it was understandable. The two managers took my order, leaving out one detail- they didn't ask if it was to be dined in or taken out. They rushed preparations of my order in take-out bags with what seemed to be much impatience. Granted, they were closing. But did they really have to make the tired, hungry customer feel unwelcome?

It seems that everytime I go to a fastfood nowadays there are those things that make meel so... unfastfoody-happppyish. Hope they can fix this.

Painting from Cathy Quiel's collection
http://www.santabarbarawatercolor.com/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

that sucks.kk