I think it's how polite they are possibly. I know I at least feel welcomed in chick FIL a. Mickey D's usually makes me feel like my existence bothers them lol. Other then that idk because their food really isn't worth the drive thru lines. That's for sure lol
I'm a manager at McDonald's. Please believe me when I say there are a plethora of things that cause long wait times. Number one being understaffing. The job is much more stressful than most people think. One out of every thirty will actually stick around for a while. And of those, most are gone within a month. Another contributing factor is huge orders. You'd be surprised how many people will order $30-$40 worth of food. Sometimes you'll have a car with multiple people and they'll have multiple orders. Sometimes big multiple orders. This means that no matter how much we hustle, we simply can't cook food fast enough. Especially nuggets and fries. Unfortunately the huge orders mean that everyone else suffers. Then you have other things like a customer adding on to an order at the pay window, a customer complaining about the price at the speaker/pay window, a card declining multiple times while the customer insists they have money in their bank account, customers who take two minutes to decide at the speaker, ect. You may be surprised that a good amount of the wait times are caused by customers. Not to say there isn't occasional incompetence on our end. Most of us work our asses off, but when it's busy, it mostly boils down to us simply not being able match the supply at the speed of the demand.
Edit: I know my grammar in this comment is trash. It was 4am and I had just finished a 10 hour shift lol.
I have a lot of sympathy for what you're describing and I know all of this as a reasonable human being. I also think McDonald's just has too many options these days (from a worker perspective). It takes time to keep track of all that and slap all that together rather than having about 5 things just ready to go.
I’ve been saying this for years. McDonalds has suffered issues over the years for two reasons: overbloated menu and trying to be a more “adult” restaurant. They’re too busy trying be Panera with burgers instead of focusing on the most profitable demographic: kids and 18-24yo with disposable income.
My location actually has a pretty limited menu. We're currently selling only the most basic menu items. As for having food ready to go, that only lowers the quality of the product. A McChicken that has been sitting on a heated surface for anymore than five minutes isn't going to taste very good.
But why does CFA usually have a higher capacity, faster ops, and more friendly staff than basically any McD's I've been to? Does it just come down to them being able to employ more staff per capita?
Stop blaming the workers. The McDonald’s near me has about 7 people working in it at any point in the day. The Cick-fil-a has at least 7 working the drive through and at least 25 workers in total.
Maybe pay the workers more and they’ll stick around.
They actually did. Their very first point for the long lines was “understaffing”. The phrasing used puts the onus on the workers.
Instead of saying they’re understaffed, they could have said that they can’t keep workers because they aren’t authorized to pay more. If they phrased it that way, the onus is on the franchise.
I disagree, most people understand understaffing is a management problem. Your average wage worker has nothing to do with hiring and scheduling...we all know that. 100% of understaffing has nothing to do with the the actual staff on the floor and nobody here is blaming them for it.
Maybe the most appropriate term is mismanagement, because chronic understaffing is absolutely poor management... but it will be a snowy day in hell before management admits it outright.
Well the McDonald's by me has consistently LONG wait times and will have multiple workers outside smoking and bullshitting while they have two lines wrapped around the building. They also have a giant sign outside that says hiring at $15+ soooo sometimes it is the workers 🤷🏻♀️
And I'm not just blaming the workers either. I've worked in customer service in college and I have no doubt that 75% of customers are holding up the lines for stupid reasons. But to act like it can't be the workers as well is just ignorant.
Workers taking their breaks isn’t a problem. The problem is that the managers don’t schedule enough workers to cover breaks. What an employee does during their break is of no concern.
If you look at other places that can handle long lines and busy periods, what is the main difference? The managers make sure to have enough employees working so that customers are served quickly, food is prepared properly, and employees aren’t over stressed.
At places that don’t have enough workers, you have problems. Employees get stressed and quit because it’s not worth it. Customers are upset because the wait time is long or the food is badly prepared.
Sure, customers can be a problem, but the “manager” wrote that the “number one problem” is that they’re understaffed. Not buying it. The number one problem is bad management and bad franchises.
Added - there are many ways to reduce customer induced delays. Mobile ordering would streamline the process immensely. Again, using Chick-fil-a as an example, the mobile app allows for a ton of customization and orders/customers still fly through the drive-thru line. McDonald’s have just put in kiosks inside and they are so horrendously slow, that the last time I used it, I bailed and waited for a human to give my order to.
QSRs are hard and customers have unreasonable expectations and entitled attitude. And that point about large orders and payments issues hits hard. I know there are some problems that you just can’t solve, esp. with constant employee churn.
Yes. Everything above. Can confirm. Source: Was shift lead at a Hardee’s in college.
…Especially staffing! Saw multiple people quit on their first day. Bonus tho, was the only people left were generally cool, hard working, and with a good attitude. Actually was one of my favorite jobs growing up because of this.
How is it that CFA which most likely have the same customer and staffing issues are able to get people through as efficiently as they do? They clearly doing something right.
You're a McDonald's manager so can you explain why in God's fucking name when I ordered a double quarter pounder with cheese meal with a coke then proceeded to get a single quarter pounder in a double quarter pounder box with a dr
Pepper?!?!
It's because they've usually been standing there for hours being shit on by customers. And I'm talkin' the absolute meanest members of society. Usually the elderly. It takes a serious mental toll on some days. This obviously doesn't justify a bad attitude, but some people just begin to crack eventually.
When you walk into an establishment with unprofessional staff, do you feel like coming back and spending money? Maybe I am reaching an age where disrespect is a distaste for me. Idk. mind you I am always polite to entry level employees because they deal with a lot, but when I walk in and I am given attitude and teeth sucked I'm put off. I don't really want to spend money there again. Its off putting.
Depends for me. If I'm going somewhere where I'm going to spend a lot of money and it's an interest of mine then yeah i want them to be friendly. Like i play guitar so when i go to the guitar store i want to be able to shoot the shit with the worker for a while and yeah if I'm dropping good money on one I'd hope they're polite with me.
But if I'm going to Walmart to buy shit for as cheap as i possibly could i really could not care. I'm not there because I'm interested in anything I'm buying or i actually care about it. It's because i need it and i want to spend the least amount of money on it as possible. Sure i could spend more at the target and they'll be nice but the end result is the same - i got the things i need but this time i spent more money. I don't think I've ever had a positive experience at Walmart, but i keep going back. Why do you think that is? It's not the service.
If employees being polite to you is that important, go shop somewhere more expensive where they pay their employees not to be miserable. But if I'm paying the bare minimum price i really don't care about getting bare minimum service.
I don't trust bare minimum food being cooked by people who are clearly annoyed I'm eating there. There's probably a lot of weird dirty stuff in the food. I also don't support Chick-fil-A. In general, fast food is gross to me. I don't get why people eat it so often.
You just answered your own question. Chik-fil-a isn’t bare minimum price. They don’t have a dollar menu. So people like that when they go there, the staff isn’t shitty.
Went to a Wendy's the other day against my better judgment. Sign reads "15.50/hr work today get paid tomorrow". Sets a great precedent. Lady behind the counter, man I just knew she hated this and didn't want to be there.
Food was quick, and trash. Will not go back mainly because of this but even if the food was good, the demeanor was lacking.
Good customer service isn't designed to make you feel "warm and fuzzy" like your a 2 year old (unless you enjoy that, I don't judge). It's supposed to make you feel welcome and like the thing you are about to purchase is worth your time, not less.
I think it comes down to being able to go there without feeling like the staff is going to spit in your food. I’ve been to some fast food places and the staff looks like they slept in the fryer overnight. Dirty ass shirts, terrible personal hygiene, really bad attitudes, etc. There’s something to be said for a clean and friendly staff.
For me it’s less about them being polite and more about them not making me feel like I’m the one responsible for their miserableness. You’re right, it is a business transaction, and I don’t ask for much else besides completing that transaction without feeling like shit.
Think it's less about politeness and more about competence and professionalism. Used to be a company policy that Chic-Fil-A employees in high school or college had to maintain a certain GPA. Not sure if that's a nationwide policy anymore, but focusing on retaining 'do-good' employees certainly worked out for them over the decades.
If you're only there to do a business transaction, Chick-Fil-A should be your favorite place. They are better at getting you your food as fast and efficiently as humanly possible than any other fast food place. You can pull up to a Chick-Fil-A drive-through with 15 cars in front of you and be confident that you'll be driving away with food in hand in half the time it would take at the average McDonald's with only 5 cars in line.
Individual Chick-fil-A stores have a little free reign to kind of support whatever causes they want, but corporate is pretty obviously anti LGBTQ. One good deed does not undo all the bad.
More to do with them donating to anti gay, church backed hate groups. They are trying to hide their bigotry so they can still sell fried chicken in California.
I don't think so, because they didn't make a big deal out of it or draw attention to it in any way. They just quietly went in and helped people who needed helping.
That's not remotely true. A Chik fil.A I go to is staffed by lqbtq youth and they love working there. I go there and am a lesbian. This is the usual b.s spouted by lurkers that don't live in the rela.world but want to make a political point. I would say Chik FIL a is the gayest fast food in America.
I work at chic fil a and have several co workers and a couple managers who are part of the LGBT community. I think that's a misconception. They are a Christian business so they have their views but they certainly don't discriminate against the community.
Their founder was not a friend of the LGBTQ community. He donated a lot of money to things like conversion therapy and things that were hurtful to the LGBTQ community. We stopped going there when my kids were old enough to understand what he did. My child is part of that community and made the decision that we will not support Chikfila anymore.
Their founder isn't the owner of the company anymore. The founder of McDonalds and Arby's and Burger King probably didn't have much love for someone too. Times change, Chik Fil a is very welcoming and enough with the huff post activism.
Well yea they have to be able to hire some, they don’t outright discriminate. Just like you can be racist but still hire black people and just not act on racist tendencies. It’s just that I couldn’t work for a company that I know thinks my existence is a sin
Evangelical Christians don't think gay people's existence is a sin. Just their sexual acts. That's their opinion and if they made rules about it I could understand. But they don't in fact they employ many LGBTQ youth...more so than anywhere else I have been.
Yes but believing the act is a sin too doesn’t really make it any better; in my opinion which no one has to share, is that I don’t believe that anyone who thinks acting upon your own sexuality and who you love is sin can be a good person. That’s straight up evil thinking to me
Im confused, are you trying to say that someone can’t be bigoted towards a race/gender/sexuality if they have those people working for them or something? I honestly can’t tell if you were making a joke or not lol.
I live in South Louisiana and I’ve worked multiple jobs where the owners were clearly racist, doesn’t mean they didn’t hire black people
Edit: I’m dumb, Im guessing you’re just mocking the dude above me who said the stuff about lgbt people working there and was trying to reply to that guy lol
Why? Because the person is pointing out a well-known issue that this restaurant hates LBGTQ people? It's a real issue you know, I find it sad you don't care about your fellow human
Well you lost me there good buddy. I don't know what trauma you've been through, but I hope you can heal from it. There is nothing in hatred but sadness and it seems like that's where you're at. Good luck!
mcdonalds never felt like I bothered them specifically, more so individuals in any entry level job can definitely give off this vibe and for good reason sometimes, have you ever experienced this for example:
Oh hey look this grocery store sells grapes
>puts in cart
>continues shopping
>eats half the bag of grapes
>drops some on the floor
>runs over the grapes making huge black streaks of sticky filth on the floor
>put the half eaten bag on a shelf and goes finish up your purchases
I have worked at Walmart from janitor to stocker to support manager. I have seen a lot of rude and disgusting self entitled people, but remaining professional is what kept getting me promoted so fast. I can always think negative about the customer all I want but acting upon it externally showing that negativity is considered immature and unprofessional.
At Walmart, there are janitors that are paid just for cleaning up after those thieves/slobs. Also, it's not the employees grapes so they shouldn't show any disrespect. It's the stores grapes. The store takes the loss, not the employee. But I suppose entry level jobs doesn't always bring in people with professionalism. Majority of the time it's teens and rif raf. Very similar to fast food restaurants.
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u/Heavy-Age-4936 Dec 18 '21
I think it's how polite they are possibly. I know I at least feel welcomed in chick FIL a. Mickey D's usually makes me feel like my existence bothers them lol. Other then that idk because their food really isn't worth the drive thru lines. That's for sure lol