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[Freedom Gate Co.]

We all know that public schools, chemicals, along with bad parenting, are causing kids to grow up in bubbles that cause them to end up incredibly dumb as they enter high school or after they graduate, but we are really at rock bottom these days.

Many fast food joints from Md's to Burger King, to Popeyes, to Taco Bell, to yamomma, to Wendy's and many many more, are all using touch screen panels that have an interface designed to be as simple as possible.

And yet the majority of the time, the cashiers, including in many cases the "managers" or "shift supervisors", are too fucking stupid to use it. Either by lagging and taking too much time to find A SINGLE button, or getting the order wrong.

As you can see in the picture, this is an example of McDonalds register.

It's very simple, you click one of the categories above, and then items are listed, and then you click the item the customer wants.

For example right now "drinks" are selected, so if someone orders a large drink you don't somehow end up adding a fucking burger. But somehow they always managed to do that.

Everything else is self-explanatory, BF is breakfast, regular 1 and 2 switch between cheaper and expensive sandwiches, etc. This is actually not the newest one, there are actually MORE SIMPLE interfaces with BIGGER pictures now, but a lot of McDonalds still use this one or some variation of this one.

Now here's the thing, I order a sandwich, why is the cashier spending 90 seconds going "uhhhhh" and then pressing the button? A 6 year old child can figure this out. I've heard "I can't find it" numerous times, having one time, the cashier calling for help by another cashier, who also couldn't find what I ordered and got a third person. This was for a fucking milkshake.

But what's worse? Others have the same simple, or simpler interfaces. Yet the same problem keeps occurring. How can you be so unintelligent you think 7+7 is 18, when you have the damn machine tell you the freaking change you need to give the customer ON SCREEN???

This is Taco bells:

I don't get how these are causing so much confusion for so many people. Some of these cashiers have been employed from 6 months to 3 years, the managers sometimes around 4-5 years along with shift supervisors.

Yet, for some reason, everyone hears "large fry" and they click on large drink, then back out, then can't find it, then call for backup. What?

This level of unintelligent is unsafe. I think there should be a basic audit at every restaurant that has a touch screen with simple interfaces. Those that fail a simple test should be placed in center for rehabilitation because, that kind of stupid shouldn't be walking in the street.

 

[n0razi]

You have to look at it from the point of view of the restaurant. Say you own a McDonalds and need 10 employees per shift to keep everything running smoothly. You also have a budget that allows you to pay slightly better than minimum wage to make enough profit for it to be even worth it from your end to be running a restaurant. Bright, intelligent, hard working employees who work for slightly better than minimum wage while having to deal with shitty customers all day do not grow on trees. The well qualified people work better paying jobs (customer support, higher end restaurant, internship/trade) while you get to pick teenagers who have zero experience or older people who can't get hired anywhere else due to whatever issues. You want your system to be as foolproof as possible so that your lowest common denominator can still do a satisfactory job. If you audit every possible employee then there will be even less labor supply and who is going to pay for the rehabilitation centers? You want taxes to go up?

Its very easy to criticize if you have never been on the other side.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

You have to look at it from the point of view of the restaurant. Say you own a McDonalds and need 10 employees per shift to keep everything running smoothly. You also have a budget that allows you to pay slightly better than minimum wage to make enough profit for it to be even worth it from your end to be running a restaurant. Bright, intelligent, hard working employees who work for slightly better than minimum wage while having to deal with shitty customers all day do not grow on trees. The well qualified people work better paying jobs (customer support, higher end restaurant, internship/trade) while you get to pick teenagers who have zero experience or older people who can't get hired anywhere else due to whatever issues. You want your system to be as foolproof as possible so that your lowest common denominator can still do a satisfactory job. If you audit every possible employee then there will be even less labor supply and who is going to pay for the rehabilitation centers? You want taxes to go up?

Its very easy to criticize if you have never been on the other side.

Or most of my complaints are echoed by restaurant administrators and franchise owners. The amount spend on bad customer services experiences among other issues off-sets any gains for a "hire everyone". There's a reason the 90 days is there, most fast food places don't use it though.

 

[n0razi]

Or most of my complaints are echoed by restaurant administrators and franchise owners. The amount spend on bad customer services experiences among other issues off-sets any gains for a "hire everyone". There's a reason the 90 days is there, most fast food places don't use it though.

Small business owners (non franchise) can choose and customize their POS software as they see fit. Franchisers obviously have to use a one size fits all solution from corporate but thats the trade off you agree to when you sign up for a franchise. A place like McDonalds will mostly likely have software thats more dumbed down for their employee demographic vs say a Shake Shack or In-N-Out (which has higher prices, higher employee wages, and higher barrier to franchise ownership). There is an inherent level of forgiveness to lower priced goods and services. If you go to a nice steak house and have a bad experience, you probably wont go back. That's why they spend more money on higher paid employees and training. If you have a bad experience at McDonalds, you will still go back because at the end of the day, its a $2 burger. That $2 buys you the absolute lowest quality experience.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Small business owners (non franchise) can choose and customize their POS software as they see fit. Franchisers obviously have to use a one size fits all solution from corporate but thats the trade off you agree to when you sign up for a franchise. A place like McDonalds will mostly likely have software thats more dumbed down for their employee demographic vs say a Shake Shack or In-N-Out

Issue is the majority of fast-food places have simplified designs and the majority have the same problems. The ones that have higher hiring requirements are not based on intelligence but work history or presentation.

 

[n0razi]

Issue is the majority of fast-food places have simplified designs and the majority have the same problems. The ones that have higher hiring requirements are not based on intelligence but work history or presentation.

Sounds like there's a business opportunity then

 

[EverydayBeast]

It doesn’t mean they’re stupid, some people don’t handle the fast paced line well. I just think online ordering is the way going forward.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

It doesn’t mean they’re stupid, some people don’t handle the fast paced line well. I just think online ordering is the way going forward.

Sometimes there's no customers there or few and they make the same mistakes.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

you are eating at a fast food restaurant. this is not a high class 5 star joint with a maitre d' and a valet taking your car. they are employing dirt cheap labor to sell you dirty cheap food at a dirty cheap price.

you must eat out a lot, cos i eat fast food quite often, and very rarely have my orders messed up. in fact this happens far more often at sit-down estaurants with servers, where i tend to get overlooked in favor of more well-to-do looking customers.

tbh i get McDonald's a couple times a month and they have big touchscreen panels that you can order & pay from, entirely bypassing the server from your transaction. if you are having problems with servers, try using the self-order stations instead, or try going to another location.

it is pointless to complain about the intelligence of this job. this person is there to entirely subsume their ego for 8 hours and serve YOU, the all holy customer. this is a dead end low paying job, this is bottom of the job market, service industry. i worked one of these jobs when i was 19, i was still in high school, i was on medications & very moody all the time, etc. try and have some sympathy.

i try to avoid berating people that are paid to serve me, it is not a good look, i find it quite elitist and bougeious.

 

[Nymphae]

I was at a McDonald's one time and I ordered, the young girl gives me my change, and I pretty much always just trust them, but that time I checked it, and it was wrong. So I told her, and she struggled for a second, and then handed me back my change. Incorrect again. I said it's still wrong and she calls the manager, who comes over and does the math and gives me the correct change. While he's doing this, the first cashier is standing right beside him with her friend, waiting for him to resolve this, and she says to her friend, "what are we going to do about this computer problem?" Unreal.

 

[Valonquar]

Don''t worry too much about it. These are the jobs that robots will entirely replace humans at soon.

 

[Mr Nash]

This is why cashiers are being replaced by self-serve terminals. The only time I actually order at the cash for fast food is if there's something wrong with the terminal. In 10 years, fast food cashiers will be a thing of the past.

 

[nush]

This is why cashiers are being replaced by self-serve terminals. The only time I actually order at the cash for fast food is if there's something wrong with the terminal. In 10 years, fast food cashiers will be a thing of the past.

Self serve terminals are much better, you don't get stuck behind someone who didn't think about what they wanted to order while queuing until the last second when they are being asked what they want.

 

[Mr Nash]

Self serve terminals are much better, you don't get stuck behind someone who didn't think about what they wanted to order while queuing until the last second when they are being asked what they want.

Yup, it'll be a combination of terminals and phone apps so people can order on the way, pay, and just pick it up as soon as they arrive. Waaaaay faster than waiting behind some idiot staring into space for 5 minutes, not even planning out their order.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

you are eating at a fast food restaurant. this is not a high class 5 star joint with a maitre d' and a valet taking your car. they are employing dirt cheap labor to sell you dirty cheap food at a dirty cheap price.

you must eat out a lot, cos i eat fast food quite often, and very rarely have my orders messed up. in fact this happens far more often at sit-down estaurants with servers, where i tend to get overlooked in favor of more well-to-do looking customers.

tbh i get McDonald's a couple times a month and they have big touchscreen panels that you can order & pay from, entirely bypassing the server from your transaction. if you are having problems with servers, try using the self-order stations instead, or try going to another location.

it is pointless to complain about the intelligence of this job. this person is there to entirely subsume their ego for 8 hours and serve YOU, the all holy customer. this is a dead end low paying job, this is bottom of the job market, service industry. i worked one of these jobs when i was 19, i was still in high school, i was on medications & very moody all the time, etc. try and have some sympathy.

i try to avoid berating people that are paid to serve me, it is not a good look, i find it quite elitist and bougeious.

I eat out just about every day. And sometimes twice (lunch and dinner). The number of times I've had my order messed up at a fast food joint or a decent sit-down restaurant is probably 1%.

I use McD's touch screens too. 100% accurate.

In terms of pure service, I'd put fast food over fancy restaurants. Think of it, fast food places.....

- Fast food
- Fast drinks
- Paying is immediate
- Most places have self serve drink stations

At sit-down places, you have to wait for food, a server, for drinks and refills, to pay the bill. Add up all the waiting, and getting your meal/drink/paying the bill has you waiting at least half an hour. If it's super busy, you can be sitting there waiting for 45-60 minutes worth. Have fun a busy night flagging down a server for drinks. And somehow, these are the people who expect tips? The fast food workers get zero, and you get your food, drinks and pay up all in 1-2 minutes.

 

[Doom85]

I dunno, I don't give fast food employees grief over low-level stuff like this, the job sucks and I don't feel like giving them a hard time over it. I mean, I worked retail for 10+ years and it's not fun.

Also, probably once they accidentally press the wrong button, it's likely they start getting anxious about it and that doesn't help. Wouldn't be a problem if they felt the customer was being patient and calm about it but well this thread alone proves that's likely not the case.

Also, what, are we going to act like customers are the smarter ones in comparison? Trust me, from experience I know that's BS. I once had a guy complain that the free toy that he could have gotten from spending X amount was sold out (and of course, it was the final day of the week-long promotion, heaven forbid he think and try to get earlier in the week) and I explained that we were sold out and he told me the company should order "enough" to guarantee any customer can get one and I'm thinking, "oh okay, we'll just have that toy manufacturer make billions of this one toy just to be sure." Also, when training us they explained that when customers ask for more info on a product often we can just simply flip over the box and read the info there and it will be enough. I'm thinking, "okay, surely customers know a toy's box will have more info on the back...." NOPE, I can't even begin to count in a single year alone where I had to do this for full-grown adults, I'm not talking elderly people who might not know better, I'm talking 20-40's folks who seem oblivious to the possibility that more info might be provided on any other spot of the box.

Not to mention the one guy who went crazy because we were out of a certain bicycle, grabbed a shopping cart, and threw it across the store. Could have easily hit a kid or something. We called the police of course but he bolted as soon as he threw it, dunno if he was ever caught.

Oh, and the shoplifters. The MANY, MANY shoplifters.

 

[nush]

Retail sucks, everybody should be forced to to a tour of duty there to learn a bit of empathy.

 

[Winter John]

I worked part time at a MacDs when I was in high school. It was pretty cool. Our boss was an ex con/pirate who spent most of his time looking for ways to steal shit while banging every chick in the place. It wasn't unusual to find him out back sneaking stuff into his truck or hunched over some girl.
I liked working the drive thru best cos it was guaranteed that someone would roll up and want to trade some of their weed. Those fast food places get a lot of shit and you couldn't pay me to eat anything that comes out of them, but if some kid is interested in becoming a chef they ain't a bad place to start. They're excellent for getting experience in volume, speed and timing. Those are all things chefs look for when they're hiring. They don't want the guy who tells them how they're going to revolutionize their kitchen. They want the guy who can be relied upon to work fast under pressure and turn out the same quality every time.

 

[Nymphae]

At sit-down places, you have to wait for food, a server, for drinks and refills, to pay the bill. Add up all the waiting, and getting your meal/drink/paying the bill has you waiting at least half an hour. If it's super busy, you can be sitting there waiting for 45-60 minutes worth.

I cannot stand going to a sit down restaurant or diner these days because of all the wasted time, and the fact that I can't smoke/vape at the table while I'm waiting. Then I'm expected to pay the server more, because tradition? Pay your fucking workers the minimum, or perhaps even above that, and leave me out of it.

 

[Geki-D]

My fast food cashiers tend to look like this:

Makes things way easier. Although it has nothing to do with me thinking the humans behind the counter are stupid, I just need to see everything on offer to actually select something.

 

[AV]

can't smoke at the table

Visit Prague. Beautiful city, you can smoke in restaurants and the beer is like a dollar per pint.

 

[Noboru Wataya]

Play dumb, frustrate the customer. What fun you think these poor cunts get in their work day?

Wrong change was a speciality when I worked in fast food. Don’t rob the store, rob the customer. If they catch on then apologise and give them their correct change back. Easy bonus at the end of the day and your till float is never down.

Fuck fast food customers.

 

[Shotpun]

Visit Prague. Beautiful city, you can smoke in restaurants and the beer is like a dollar per pint.

Been there twice and after I read your post I realized I never saw anyone smoke inside any of the restaurants/pubs I visited there. Google says smoking has been prohibited in public areas and restaurants since May 31, 2017 in Czech Republic.

But the city really is beautiful and the beer is not only cheap, it's also pretty damn good.

 

[AV]

Google says smoking has been prohibited in public areas and restaurants since May 31, 2017 in Czech Republic.

Shit, we last visited before that. Shame. Sometimes I forget that time actually passes.

 

[SurprisedPikachu]

This is something I have a lot of experience with because I worked for a company that did call center technical support for both McDonald's and (for a very brief period) Taco Bell. Let me give you some insight on the McDonald's side of things. You see McDonald's owns their own POS software called NewPOS, they had bought out the company that made the original software and rebranded it was NewPOS. Anyway - it's used in all of their markets but with some differences. In the UK/Ireland market their back office software ran on a *nix virtual machine while the POS units ran on Windows XP Embedded. Their "Admin PC" which is what the managers use to do some manager tasks (adding/removing employees, closing/opening the restaurant, etc) runs as a virtual machine as well and is accessed remotely. This is so that if the manager manages to fuck something up so horrifically bad they can restore the system since everything (aside from the POS units) are hosted on the back office server. In the United States, things are a bit different. They have a device specifically for cashless transactions called the Cashless Appliance and so on.

Anyway - McDonald's is so laughably bad at testing their shit that they would often push out broken updates and restaurants are scrambling to work around it while the call center remotes in and fixes XML files (for menu items), INI files (for the card readers, printers, etc) and back office software (usually rebooting it because its locked up). That's often why you're waiting a long time for something seemingly simple to do to be done. It doesn't help that more than half of their departments are outsourced.

Internal IT? Mostly outsourced to India.
Restaurant IT? Outsourced to an American company called RTS (ITO for ATOS) which is based out of Fargo, North Dakota and Clovis, New Mexico. They also have a location in the UK (forgot where) which handles the UK and Ireland stuff. This is also the same company that pushed for a software called "RSMSP" which is now called "RRM". RSMSP - Restaurant Systems Management Support Portal is a webapp platform they access from a shared environment (terminal server) that has connections to the McDonald's infrastructure. Their call center types in the store number and from there they are presented with a slew of buttons and tabs that can do various things. If they need to restart a till, they find the till and click "Restart". It establishes a PSEXEC connection to the device and runs the command to restart. This breaks A LOT too because again, McDonald's outsources a lot of shit.

Also at McDonald's if the unit doesn't work after the Level 2 team (at RTS) says it's fucked, then instead of finding out why it's fucked they simply replace the entire unit. Ship a brand "new" one straight to the store, a technician (outsourced to ANOTHER company) then schedules a time to drive out and install it. Then they call RTS and RTS configures it.

McDonald's is a massive cluster fuck. Taco Bell on the other hand was doing GREAT. Their call center IT was all in house, but then they randomly decided to outsource their call center IT to RTS. It failed within a year because the folks who were the call center IT for Taco Bell that had to train their replacements was VERY good at making sure they made it as difficult as possible. Then you got the stupid fucks at RTS who had no idea what they were doing and kept over promising things to the point that within a year everyone on that floor (they had one floor in Fargo dedicated to McD and the other to Taco Bell) was fired. It was so bad that ATOS tried sending their "Red Team" to salvage the contract. These were the supposed elite ATOS team members who's entire purpose is to clean up massive internal fuckups - they couldn't salvage it. It was that fucking bad.

 

[Nymphae]

I wish places would simply allow business owners to set rules for their establishments. If you don't like this smoking bar, go to a non-smoking bar. Instead, they all have to adopt the same dumb rules, and now I can't even vape outside on the patio at what was once my favourite patio bar. Last time I was there I was literally outside in their patio, sitting beside the gate that separates the outside from the line to get it, and I'm vaping and the dude at the door says "I know it's dumb but you can't actually do that here", I have never went back to the bars.

 

[lil puff]

In the NYC locations I visit, with all the non-english speaking tourists, of some that don't understand US currency, or the different menu items, I'm surpised (IME) they don't make more mistakes, or blow up in customers face often.

I find most times they are patient and if they do make a mistake, are happy to fix it immediately.

If I were behind the counter, I'd be more frustrated at the amount of customers who order, have their number called, and never show up. I'd be like FUCK, will you idiots pick up your shit! Or worse, people that wait in line, get to the register and then start figuring out what they want to order. You had 5 friggin minutes to figure this out. Customers who act like it's their 1st time in McDs piss me off more.

 

[Valonquar]

The problem with Self-Checkout Kiosks is being stuck behind someone too stupid to understand how to use them.