COMMENTS
Well, seems like no-one cares.. as illustrated by your 240/hour statement. Obviously the "customers" don't care.
The problem is that the consume in North America has been turned into a non-thinking vegetable who would defend (to the death) the rights of corporations and other entities to exploit them. They are no better than the peasants of the middle ages who granted their "aristocrats" the rights and fought for those rights.
Another drawback of having minimum wage slaves is that they don't give a furk! what are you going to do? fire them? they'll find another job with 5 bucks an hour. Wash your hands you say? Go firk yourself they say. The reason there are so many epidemics in the U.S now is that most workers are overworked wage slaves and don't really have anything to look forward to .. therefore they don't give a shit and you'd be lucky if someone with clean hands actually prepared your food.
This will cause a gigantic public health crisis when things reach some threshold, for now, 99% of the "consumers" (forget about citizens.. noone thinks of themselves as such anymore) will lecture you on how it is important for these corporations to make shitloads of profits while they sqander away their youthful energies and best years of their lives for 5 bucks an hour. They feel they are "capitalists" for regurgitating this slaveminded bullshit fed to them by none other than quite possibly the parent company of their soulless foodchain who also happens to (just happens to) own the media as well..
and when they get out of line.. well guess what, the same mother corporation also owns private security firms as well (not to mention regular police) who would be happy to beat the crap out of anyone who dares to assemble together to protest..
but the best thing is that it never comes to that. most north american consumers are idiots who have self-brainwashed themselves into thinking that their predicament has nothing to do with excessive profit taking and everything to do with that one thing that they don't have (drive for success, ambition, fill-in-the-bullshit-excuse-of-the-day) that dr. Phil or Oprah told them about on the zombie tube the other night.
oh my. couldn't agree with you more. i no longer go to dunkin donuts because of this. i ordered a breakfast sandwich and they gave it to me frozen. how inept can you possibly have to be?
You should really stop eating at the establisments you listed. It is clearly having a negative effect on your mental health as demonstrated by the drivel you write.
While I agree someone who can get my order right is important, I feel people who feign friendliness because it's how they're trained to operate are less desirable to deal with than someone who is challenging to understand.
Really, I'd more like to punch my order into a computer terminal than deal with someone whose sole job is to do exactly that. Better yet, let me punch and pay for my order at home and have it ready for me when I get there.
Have you considered the point that the customers themselves HATE upselling, HATE all the extra crap that greeters and phone answerers say at the beginning of the conversation, and just want to get to the damn order? When I was a kid I worked at a record shop where we were required to answer the phone with "Hello, and thank you for calling Blah Blah Music, where you can earn free gifts. My name is Blah Blah. How can I help you today?" It used to infuriate people. It's phony, redundant, and serves no purpose, since the whole idea is to make people feel welcome and it just alienates them by sounding rehearsed and false. People know where they are when they get to the drive-in menu because they saw the sign on the building. Why not talk to them like human beings and stop wasting their time like they were consumers? Sheesh. Have some respect for people, for crying out loud.
As a current Dunkin' Donut employee in Upper Marlboro, MD, I can personally say that the quality of our service is far beyond what you believe it is. Though we are not minimum wage workers (minimum wage is $6.15), we don't make far from it. We are still taught to apply the best techniques to our customer service in order to bring in more customers as well as generate more sales.
While we do indeed do suggestive sell, i.e., "Would you like to add an order of hash browns to your order today for only 99 cents?" most of the time, people come in and want only what they ask for. Not everyone wishes to order two donuts with their coffee, or coffee with their sandwich, or sweet tea with their pizza.
Working the drive thru, I can say that i apply the "up sale" method frequently, and normally receive a "No thank you, that completes my order" before they drive up to the window without even waiting to hear their total. This is likely because of a rush. People go through a drive thru for convenience and speed. We are usually supposed to have customers in and out of the drive thru in under two minutes, unless, of course, there is a larger order. In this case the customer will be asked to pull to the side.
So to have an extra long greeting can cause extra pull outs, angry/impatient customers and a "bad look" on the store itself due to the length of time it takes to complete an order. It wouldn't exactly be wise, especially in the drive thru window.