My Most Common Complaint

My Most Common Complaints:

"I come into your restaurant almost everyday, and everytime I come in there, you assholes screw up
my order. What are you? A bunch of idiots? Can't you people get anything right?"

First of all, if your order is always "screwed up" whenever you come into our restaurant, then why
do you keep coming back? Fast food restaurants are "a dime a dozen", and anymore nowadays, you'll
find them on almost every street corner. Or at least within two or three miles of each other. So,
you can't tell me that there isn't any place else to go.

Second, who the heck do you think pays our salary? Everytime you buy our product, you invest in us,
the same people you profess to hate. And personally, I think you are the idiot. If I don't like
something, I'm not going to buy it. Why waste my hard-earned money on poor service or poor quality?
As far as I am concerned, I don't believe that this happens nearly as much as customers claim. For
many people, things could be fine for a long time. But one time someone messes up, and that one time
all of a sudden becomes all of the time.

Some customers complaints are legitimate because things do happen. After all, you are dealing with
humans. Humans are not perfect and are subject to error just like you are. And for that reason, you
are no one to be pointing fingers and calling them "idiots" or "assholes". And as for the legitimate
complaints, I am more than happy to do whatever I can to correct the situation, but it has happened
many times where someone will call and complain, and no matter what I offer to do about it, it isn't
good enough. Which leaves me wondering why did they bother to call in the first place?

I have been known to say to these people:

"I have offered to do this, this, and this, and nothing seems to be satisfactory as far as you are
concerned. What exactly do you expect me to do?"

Or:

"Since we can't seem to do anything right as far as you are concerned, why don't you just take your
business elsewhere?"

And I have said these things to people in person at my front counter, and you wouldn't believe how
many chins I've seen drop. They don't expect to get a response like this, but if you have a complaint,
and expect me to do something about it, and I try to, but nothing I do is good enough, then what else
can I say? You can take it as being rude if you want to, but when I am dealing with someone like you,
then I feel like I'm wasting my time. I am a busy person. I have a restaurant to run, and I can't
do my job if you are "tying" me up at the front counter with your petty bullshit.

"Why can't you open up another register? I'm in a hurry!"

Excuse me, but do you see anyone else here who can run that register? Yes, we do have six registers
at our front counter, but generally, from 2:00 p.m. on we do not do enough business to warrant scheduling
enough people to run all six. Most of the time I will have one person for the drive-thru window presenting
orders, one person for the drive-thru window taking orders and collecting for them, one person to run a
a cash register, and me, and one or two people to work in the food preparation area in the back. Most of
the time this is all I need because business tends to be slow during the late afternoon or evening hours.
Sometimes we get "slammed" unexpectedly, but because of our location this doesn't happen very often. All
I can do is apologize to our customers when they do end up having to wait, and while I do realize that
this is "fast food" it is supposed to be "fast", I think that the expectations that some of our customers
have tend to be a little unfair. You are dealing with human beings, not robots, and we are doing the best
we can under whatever circumstances we happen to be dealing with.

We might have started out with the number of people we should have needed to get the work done, but
sometimes people call off sick, sometimes they just don't bother to show up, and sometimes people quit
without notice. How am I supposed to know ahead of time that these things are going to happen? Shoot,
if I had ESP, I certainly wouldn't be in this business. As a manager, I do the best I can to make sure
that my shift is covered so that it will run as smoothly as I can make it, but I can not force people
to come in and work if they don't want to.

Yesterday, I had a customer get upset because he was in a hurry and had a total of seven people ahead of
him. I had four people at my register, all of their orders were large orders, and the other cashier had
three people, whose orders were pretty big also. So, unfortunately, he had to wait his turn. What can I
say? It isn't our fault he didn't arrive earlier, and it actually didn't take me as long as he thought it
did. When I finally took his order, and handed it to him, he yanked the bag out of my hand and stormed out
of the restaurant. The other customers in the store thought he was rude also, and that his behavior was
uncalled for. But what can I say? We get 'em in all shapes, colors, sizes, and attitudes.