This rant is devoted to a friend of mine.
We were sitting in his car one day during college breathless, tears rolling down my face laughing so hard I nearly spilled my Ribena. We were discussing the fast food industry and more specifically how shit it is. Honestly my views on the subject haven't changed very much since then therefore I'll share them with you now.
What does a person want when they go to a fast food place? Really, have a think about it. Considering this is about me and not you, I'll put my thoughts down, I want:
+ Hot food
+ Freshly cooked
+ Served fucking yesterday, so lets say served as the name suggests, fast.
+ Cost effective
You could get more wanky and say impossible things like "Healthy" and "Tasty" but you have to understand these guys aren't Jesus, which is why I AM willing to wait longer for hot, freshly cooked food.
Some of the aforementioned list however still are asking a bit much, so once again, break it down to it's base roots, what do you want from a place that serves food?
+ Hot food
+ Served fast
The rest are, lets face it, direct opposite ends of the same/similar spectrum in some cases, meaning you have to sacrifice a certain level of one to obtain a level of the other:
| Freshly Cooked Food | |-----|-*---|-----|-----|-----|-----| | Fast Serving Time |
| Hot Food | |-----|-----|-----|-----|--*--|-----| | Cost Effective |
| % Chance Salmonella Poisoning | |--*--|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----| | Prepared by trained staff over 17y/o |
| Healthy Food | |-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|----*| | Fucking Reality |
So yes, I want at the very, VERY base level, hot food quickly. Is that too much to ask for? Excuse the cliche. No, it really fucking isn't, but what is sad is the fact that apparently it is.
One day you go into your local imported American burger joint 'Drive Thru', you order your large burger or chicken wrap meal and then it happens. "Our designated burger flipper has obtained a case of cotton mouth and doesn't have enough saliva to suitably apply spit to your meal therefore there will be a 4 minute wait on the blah-blah-blah." Oh, you think, no problem, you continue, the meal will be hot, fresh and sufficiently spat on when I receive it in 4 minutes and with that you pull into the waiting bay supplied and your mental timer begins.
4 minutes pass and you're ok with it, Tool is playing a 9 minute metal odyssey in the car right now and you are too caught up in it to really care, I know the pieces fit.. I truly do.
9 minutes pass, you are now sans-music with which to sooth the savage and hungry beast within. Sans derived from the French for 'still without my fucking wrap meal.'
In your anger you wait til 15 minutes plotting that when the Emo who served you brings you your food you'll cut them with your words and then back over them with your car.
Sixteen and a half minutes pass and you crack it, you slip your uggies back on, pull your beanie down over your eyes, tuck your white wife beater into your navy going out trackies. While you realise how you look it only fuels your hatred because you thought you could get away with leaving the house in it thinking you didn't have to get out the fucking car.
Due to the nature of the clothing you have donned you begin to channel the god of Bogan, this worries you as you catch site of a horrid moose sitting with her friends inside the establishment, claw and scooping chips off the table into the slobbering hole between its cheeks and all you can think of is the baby bonus. ...I digress.
You mung into a chip and it's cold.. and seems to be suffering from a case of Foster's flop because you haven't seen a more flaccid object since looking down when you mistakenly discovered midget porn. You open your burger wrapper and they've given you the furthest thing from what you ordered. In this instance a single patty burger with the lot instead of a chicken wrap with no mc-fucking-mayo and added tomato.
You walk back in and the manner in which you enter the building gives you the ability to part people like Moses and the Red Sea because everyone looks at you and sides up. You don't talk, you wang the limp chips back AT the unkindness of Emos behind the counter in the hope of moving their mopey fucking fringe out of the way so they can then witness you open the burger and systematically pull each ingredient off and lay it out on the service desk. You say: "I fail to see the chicken, the wrap and the added tomato. Your service is shit, your food is cold, I will see the manager now."
Anyway so maybe not everyone has the same level of contempt I have for such incredibly bad customer service. It can be a difficult job too, dealing with whingey, bitchy customers. I think you have to have worked in the industry to fully appreciate how difficult it can be. Dealing with difficult customers is a skill you acquire, you're not born with it. Having said that, we as customers have to stop putting up with bad service.
Companies in general don't care about you, they don't give a flying fuck about you, and this sometimes seeps down through to the customer service level. Stop being a walking wallet I say. Be a nest of vipers, make them handle you with care. I say give credit for good service, smash people for bad service as high as you can get, go to managers go to their manager's manager if you can. Classically condition the mc-shit out of customer service reps. Quarter-circle forward + Punch = Pavlovian Reinforcement Smite, learn the technique and smash them with it.
Having said that, don't go the other way and be a shit customer before the service begins, and you know who I'm talking about, we've either got a dad or maybe a mum like it, or a rich uncle, family friend, or you've been in the vicinity when a douche bag customer has just been a prick about nothing. Don't be that guy/girl. Cause clean food is hard to come by when you are THAT person.
Live it up, take no shit and be a fun and happy person, the important people will love you for it.
Holy Bartender
xx
P.s.
Once the restraining order lapses I'm going to get my fucking chicken wrap.
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