Bad service at Wendy's in Fremont.

[gridlore]

After a near-11 hour shift driving a truck, I was bloody hungry, and there was a Wendy's along my route home, so I hit the drive-through for a quick bit.

Now, a bit of a disclaimer: I'm a picky eater with a couple of digestive issues. So when I order a hamburger, it is always no cheese, ketchup and mustard only.

I order a #2 Combo (Double burger, fries and a Coke) and specified my special order. The person taking the order repeated it correctly, and when I paid, my receipt showed the correct instructions.

I must admit I was less than surprised when my order came out and there was cheese on the burger. This happens quite often, and is usually attributable to the fact that the kids working these places do the same thing over and over. What happened next, though, was over the top.

I waved the person working the window back over, explained the error, and handed my burger back. A minute or so later, she handed me a fresh burger. Thinking the problem resolved, I pulled out and started heading back towards the freeway, opening my burger...

..which had cheese on it.

Quick U-turn, and I head into the store. Remember, I'm exhausted, hot, and really fucking hungry by this point. What should have been a three-minute stop has now consumed over ten before I reach the front and ask for a manager. I explain the situation to the manager on duty, keeping my temper. She goes over to the grill area, which was within my line of sight, reviewed the orders, talked to a few people, and several of her crew started laughing, and I heard at least one of them say something like "so cheese is going to kill him, what a weirdo!"

Now I was pissed off.

When the manager came back up, this is what I said.

"Thank you" (she handed me the correct burger, finally) "I'm glad to see your crew finds messing up my order so amusing. I think I'll share their casual disregard of what we actually pay for with my coworkers. Oh, and with the drivers from other trucking companies we interact with. What the hell, I'll just post this locations amusing approach to customer satisfaction on the Internet and let your corporate office know that the crew here mocks customers within their hearing. Good day!"

She was already screaming at the staff as I left.

I'm not normally one to react like that - I make special, odd, orders, so I expect some confusion, but the utter lack of professionalism and screwing up and order when it has just been explained to you verbally what was needed is unforgivable.

Posted to gridlore and bad_service

Comments

Yep.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

My ex is diabetic. He orders regular food and diet soda. More than once we've seen the server start to fill up two regular Cokes instead of making his diet. When we see this happening, we always start up a fairly loud conversation about how we sued [some other restaurant] and won when he went into insulin shock from a person bringing him a non-diet soda. (The lawsuit is nonexistent, never really happened, but it serves as an object lesson to the server.) The server always freezes, stops, and dumps the drink and gets a new (diet) one... except once.

This server, who had to be corrected by their manager (it was a Wendy's also), said defensively, "Well, they didn't order diet food, why do they need diet soda?" He got fired on the spot.

For another description of bad customer service, see my latest public LJ entry.

Re: Yep.

[kengr]

I really think restaurants *especially* fast food ones need to drum into the help the simple fact that getting an order wrong, even on "silly" or "trivial" stuff can put someone in the hospital.

Yeah, some folks get overly picky about their orders. But others *have* to be that picky. And that means that you have to assume *all* of the orders have to be right.

Yeah, the pay is sucky for putting in that much attention. But that's life.