the death of customer service

having worked in the retail or customer service industry since i was 15 years old [cashier at publix] i have somewhat high standards when it comes to how i'm treated at various locations. i don't expect someone to offer to carry out my groceries or give me something for nothing, i'm just looking for a modicum of courteous behavior from those in any customer oriented job. so in the past six or so years i've had some bad experiences with customer service ranging from best buy to petsmart and everywhere in between. my recent encounters with mcdonalds have led me to want to put them here.

first, you need to know that sean and i go to the same mcdonalds every morning on sunset boulevard in west columbia about 5 minutes from my work. i ALWAYS [look caps, it must be true] order 2 fruit & yogurt parfaits and sean either a. orders nothing, b. orders hotcakes with sausage, or c. orders a sausage biscuit with pancake syrup [apparently he likes syrup on his sausage as i like syrup on my bacon...sweet]. so on july 8th i order 2 parfaits and sean orders a sausage biscuit with pancake syrup. with those wonderful digital screens you can tell up front if they've got your order correct [if they use the screens since half the time they don't] and the person working the cash register put hotcakes up on our order. sean responded saying he just wanted the syrup not the hotcakes and she removed the hotcakes from the screen. we pull up to the first window and pay for our order. we travel to the second window to receive our grub and lo and behold there is no syrup. so he asks for syrup and the employee proceeds to argue with him about it saying that he didn't order it [first off - it doesn't even matter whether or not he ordered it (which he did, i was there) the customer is always right, second - what the hell difference does it make if you give this guy one small pancake syrup anyways?]. so then after sean insists that he ordered the syrup the employee proceeds to tell him it's going to cost him if he wants pancake syrup. he says fine and hands her some change. it then takes about four more attempts to prove he ordered the syrup before she finally goes to get the pancake syrup. we leave to realize there were no spoons and no granola in with my parfaits. i decide we should just go to my work and not go back and start another conflict.

okay so at this point, sean is mad. i'm a little angry but not too upset. why even argue with a customer at all over something so trivial? and why make such a huge deal about pancake syrup when it's doing nothing but making your job harder? maybe she had a bad day at that point or hates her job at mcdonalds or whatever but that's not an excuse for the amount of time and energy wasted not to mention the horrible experience she just provided a customer with. not that we're the end all of customers and mcdonalds everywhere would shut down without us but we are constant return customers and regardless should have been treated with a bit more service and a lot less disrespect.

so let's fast forward to today, july 10th. same mcdonalds. this time i'm ordering just the 2 parfaits. the girl from the magical drive thru voice machine tells us that it'll be $2.14 [which is what 2 parfaits cost with tax]. on this particular morning she did not employ the use of the drive thru screen. alright at this point in the story the mcdonalds' employees are not the only ones at fault here. i will take the blame for not looking at my receipt as i have been conditioned through many years of quick drive thru experiences. i gave sean my debit card. he handed it to the girl at the cash register and she handed it back with the receipt. he pulled forward and i crinkled up the receipt. the receipt had the wrong order on it. i should have looked at it. so we pull up to the next window and the guy standing there says, "sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit?" sean says, "no, we had two parfaits." another employee comes up and she begins to argue with us about how we paid for a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit [which we did, which is more ($2.35), and i should have looked at the damned receipt] and how we didn't order 2 parfaits. but again why even argue with us over this? why would we lie about what we ordered? i was to the point of using foul language today in the drive thru. i was that mad.

suffice it to say i will not be going back to this particular mcdonalds and i'm sure it won't hurt their business at all. but just as i e-mail companies about when i have a great customer service experience i sure as hell e-mailed them this morning about the bad experiences i've had this week. i just can't wrap my brain around the reasoning behind being so rude to a customer. i would have been fired had i ever acted that way toward a customer at eb games, hollywood video, publix, lazy creek, clemson dining services, or at the surgical referral [i've worked at a lot of jobs that require customer service obviously]. it's not like i haven't been there with a jackass customer before and have wanted to say all sorts of things yet i have held my tongue because i knew that it wouldn't do anything to help me or my current position at the time to argue with a customer or tell them they were wrong [i have explained to many customers why they will never see pokemon or mario on the xbox]. and i would be a bit more sympathetic with the employee if we had been rude and hadn't ordered correctly but we were perfectly normal everyday customers.

off to work with insurance companies for now...

enjoy the silence.

-pyper