Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Hot coffee, cold reality and crossing the street

I can file this away under the heading “Will he ever learn?” Despite my rant just yesterday about the poor service at the place with the golden arches, I still stopped by this morning for a cup of Joe. Big mistake!

After standing about at the front counter, waiting for someone to take my order, I was put on hold when the cashier opted to wait on one of her colleagues. While I cooled my heels and the line behind me grew – both in length and impatience – the McBurger putz first told her friend to input his order in a nearby register, then left us all dangling to handle the chore herself.

In fact, what should have taken only a moment, turned into clerking 101, the cashier explaining in detail to her friend how best to place an order on McBurger registers and, in the doing, how best to tick off paying customers.

After five minutes or so she returned to take my order, took my money, let the register figure out my change, then informed me that the coffee pot was empty and it would take only a few moments to brew a fresh batch! For an instant I thought all this was being taped and I was part of a new reality TV show.

I sort of smiled, then explained I didn’t have any more minutes to wait around and asked that she return my money. That of course involved her calling her manager, getting the boss to open the register and fiddle around with the gizmo so it would register that someone – that would be me – interrupted a transaction in process.

I took my buck and change, drove across the street and stopped at QuikTrip (see Tuesday’s blog posting), said hi to the cashier who greeted me with a smile, then poured my own cup of coffee. I was in and out in less than two minutes and can now report that, yes, I have finally learned my lesson!

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