You Want It When?

We've all experienced bad customer service in one form or another during our lifetime, and for the most part, we don't put up with it for very long. We find ways to make our opinion known that we won't be treated like chattel. We complain to the manager, we complain to the business owner and in cases where it's a continuing problem, we take our money elsewhere.

I fall into the above category about 25% of the time and one of the reasons as to why the percentage is so low, is because I've spent most of my working life in a multitude of different customer service oriented jobs.

I've delivered newspapers when I was both my son's and daughter's ages. I've worked in various cashiering jobs and had a few retail management jobs. All of which require a major degree of customer service skills not usually seen in today's world. Even my current job requires a level of customer service that the average person probably wouldn't even consider doing on a quarterly basis, let alone a daily basis.

Because of this vast experience in standing on the other side of the counter asking people, "You all want fries with that?", I developed an incredibly high tolerance for what people might call bad customer service. While people would get upset at what they perceive to be bad customer service, I usually let that type of service fall by the wayside because what might be bad to one might seen by another with a sympathetic eye, especially since some people don't know how to follow the rule of "Do unto others as others would do unto you."

Now that isn't to say that I treat all bad service with the same sympathetic eye. If I get what I consider to be genuinely bad service, then I simply take my business elsewhere. Case closed.

However there has been the rare occasion in which I have escalated my usual response and entered the realm of actually complaining about it.

On Sundays, my early afternoon routine usually consists of the following: lunch, grocery/shopping at Big Lots, and picking up staples (milk, bread, eggs) at Aldi's.

I used to do Burger King for lunch, but the g(rease) factor got to be a bit too much for me to handle, so I started going to Wendy's. However, the customer service for both of these particular restaurants in my hometown are complete polar opposites.

Whereas the service was fast enough at Burger King so that I could take my fast acting insulin prior to entering the restaurant without worrying about the potential side effects, Wendy's was so slow that I didn't dare risk applying the same strategy there. Instead, my lunches were always to go, that way, I could safely take my insulin and eat my lunch without worrying about the side effects.

However, this past Sunday (9/4), service sank to a brand new low. I was already ticked about the previous Sunday's visit, in which I got hung up behind two frat boys with a dozen burger meal combos to go (seriously, about 12 separate bags) and the cashier on duty was incredibly slow and incredibly stupid because he continued to take new orders without really expediting the old orders.

So here I is, standing line and once again hung up behind three groups of people who were waiting for their order. And just like last week, the kitchen seemed to be concentrating more on the drive-thru than the front, so people were waiting so long for their order to be completed that they actually starting eating what little food there was on the tray. So when the cashier asked if she could take my order, I said loud enough for everyone to hear, "I am not putting my order in until you get rid of the back log in front of me."

It took about another five minutes before the back log was finally cleared so that I could put my order in (chicken sandwich, fries and a small diet soda). I was so pissed when I got to my car, that I decided to actually pay attention to the website printed on the bag that wanted to know how your visit went.

When I got home from my grocery shopping, I went to that website and absolutely buried that store's rep. I complained about the poor management skills, the poor cashiering skills, the poor way that the front was run and the overall poor quality of the restaurant (they actually did an entire business day without any napkins in the store). That particular store is notorious for slow service to begin with (seeing people walk out because they didn't want to wait that long is a frequent happening) but this is making a visit to a busy eye doctor's office seem like a drag race.

What does the future hold in store for this particular Wendy's? Well, just like a particular Subway, a particular Friendly's and a particular D&D that I experienced piss poor service at, it will fall by the wayside because my hard earned dollars will be spent elsewhere.