The Wait Was A Feeling But The Time Is A Fact
It’s a mid-week short shift for me, and I’m covering the back window of the drive-thru. We’re slammed (odd for this time of the week and year) and have both lanes of our drive-thru packed.
I’m taking orders as I can, with a trio of front employees also taking orders as much as possible. Mostly from lane one. At one point, lane two beeps, but shortly stops beeping. I assume someone up front got it.
After the rest of the cars clear, I look up at my camera feed and think I see a car in lane two (the camera can’t see the lane very well), and I answer.
Me: “Thank you for choosing McDonald’s. Have you been helped yet?”
Customer: *Shouting.* “NO! I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR TWENTY MINUTES, AND I WAS HERE BEFORE ALL THOSE PEOPLE!”
He was not waiting that long.
Me: *Taken aback slightly.* “I’m sorry about that, sir. I was unaware of that. Are you going to be using the mobile app?”
Customer: *Still shouting.* “NO! I’M NEVER USING THE GOD D*** APP! JUST GIVE ME A BIG MAC MEAL! AND A QUARTER POUNDER WITH CHEESE MEAL!”
Me: “And your drinks?”
Customer: *Slightly less mad.* “Coke with one. And I don’t know, Dr Pepper with the other.”
Me: “Anything else?”
Customer: “No!”
Me: “Alright, your total is [total] at the first window. Thank you.”
My McDonald’s is right off a major interstate, though our area is so small we likely wouldn’t be able to keep one open without it. Because of this, we park 75%-90% of orders when we’re busy. That’s inevitably what happened here. One of the sandwiches we ordered was made fresh to order, and it takes about seven minutes to cook the meat.
Less than five minutes later (this was relayed to me afterwards, though I could hear *something* from the back window), apparently the guy stormed back in and started yelling at my manager about how “this always happens” and “I waited twenty minutes for my order to be taken”.
While I am unsure of the aftermath of that (besides the fact that he spent so long shouting at the manager that he got his food before he was done), I checked after he left. One of my coworkers up front *did* get lane two, but got no response. So he thought no one was there.
This isn’t unusual. Sometimes people pull around the building by using lane two if it’s empty. Or someone with a trailer or longer vehicle will set it off again when pulling around.
