I haven’t been to McDonald’s for about a year and frankly speaking I only go there for the ice cream. I had a very friendly looking cashier at McDonald’s who took my order. I ordered a hamburger with 4 pickles and well-done French fries with no salt. Also I repeated my order and I showed her four with my fingers to make sure that she got everything correct. The cashier punched everything in the POS and it seemed that she totally understood what I had ordered. Then she told the personnel who prepared the burgers that I wanted 4 pickles and she got me my French fries. I paid my order, saved the receipt and when I checked my order I was shocked because my hamburger had about ten pickles and the fries were well-done but very salted. When I looked at my receipt she actually punched in a hamburger with extra pickles. So I went back and told her about the mistakes. She was still nice and told the preparer for the burger again that I wanted to have exactly four pickles and showed him as I did by holding up four fingers. I got the second hamburger very quickly and this time it was correct. However, I had to wait for the fries because they had to cook. Meanwhile she was serving other customers. After my second encounter with the cashier I realized that her English wasn’t very good. I was standing next to the counter and I saw that the entire McDonald’s staff heard about my strange order and looked at me as if I were crazy. One worker smiled at me and the other two looked annoyed.
When I finally got the French fries without salt 8 minutes I placed my order, even the cashier looked at me annoyed and frowned. I thanked her and I felt bad because I caused so much trouble. After all I got a cheap dinner meal.
In total, two people got involved during the process: the cashier and the hamburger preparer. I was greeted with a smile and friendliness, however, as time went by, I made everyone upset. The cashier started to get annoyed by me when I was waiting for my French fries. Probably she had to fix a new portion extra for me.
The preparation is smooth when it comes to the hamburgers. On the other hand, French fries without any salt are a rare order and as a result I had to wait almost five minutes for it. There is also miscommunication going on, party because the cashier was not a native speaker. She did understood that I wanted to have four pickles, but she punched the wrong note in the POS. In fact there probably was no button for four pickles so she had to enter “extra pickles” and verbally tell the chef the exact amount. Even though she did tell the hamburger preparer about my extra wish, he got it wrong. This is likely because he reads whatever is on the monitor and prepares the orders as quickly as possible according to the readout. The customer service was initially very good, but then it went downhill. When I was waiting for the fries I did not feel welcome at all. After my experience I would like to recommend the staff to be more patient in order to enhance customer service. It’s not a big deal that the cashier has some difficulties with English and it would be still a nice encounter if she would keep up her upbeat attitude.
In all I got the impression that McDonald’s is set up like an automobile assembly line. They perform best when orders meet certain standard criteria, as they are set up to handle some minor order customization but not all. It seems their system works well for the vast majority of orders, and for those orders the process is very efficient. So I would not recommend that they change their order fulfillment practices, despite the difficulty with my specific order.
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