Hey Burger King, You're Getting Timed for a Reason!
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Something weird happened at the Burger King drive-thru, and I finally figured out why.
Last night, on the way home from camp, the kids and I went through the Burger King drive-thru. When we were next in line for the window I noticed that the guy in front of me had his reverse lights on, so I stayed back about 10 feet-I can't tell you how many times I've seen people back up for something, forget they're in reverse, then hit the gas.
When it was my turn at the window, the BK cashier asked me to pull forward and then back up. I was so surprised and busy processing what she was saying and trying not to back up into the window with my mirror and asking for salt and checking the orders that I didn't get a chance to ask her why. But I guessed that she had asked the guy in front of me to do the same thing. As I was leaving, I looked in the review mirror and saw that the guy behind me was doing the same thing as well. WTF?
It bothered me for the rest of the day that I couldn't figure out what the purpose was. I went back in my mind to my days working at McDonald's and Arby's, but at both places I mostly made the food. I worked the registers occasionally, but I rarely worked the drive-thru (and when I did, I got overwhelmed easily-it's the hardest job in any fast food restaurant that has only one drive-thru window).
Then, finally, it hit me: I've seen big timers in some restaurants, timing how long each Drive-Through order was taking. There must be a sensor somewhere that stops the clock and starts timing the next order! Was she asking each car to stop the clock on their order so that the restaurant's stats would look good?
I went back this morning in the interest of investigation, not because I was dying for a Croissan'wich (OK, I was-they're really good!). Once again, when I got to the window, I was asked to pull forward and back up. I said "Why? Are you trying to stop the timer?" She said yes. I said something to the effect of "But that's cheating. How will the process get any faster if they think you're already really fast?"
I know enough about fast food restaurants to know that they really study this stuff. There are systems that figure out when you should drop fries based on how many cars are in the drive-thru lines. There are McDonald's that have outsourced their drive-thru order-taking jobs to call centers. Corporate sure as hell wants to know for how long people are sitting in the drive-thru.
The BK worker admitted that yes, it was cheating, but that the restaurant is given time goals each week and they're not meeting them. So I said something like, "But how will the times get faster if you don't acknowledge that there's a problem?" She told me I didn't have to pull forward if I didn't want to. I'm not really sure it was necessary for her to tell me that. Was the alternative for her to hold my food hostage until I pulled forward?
When I go through a drive-thru, I want the process to be fast. And more often than not here in Brooklyn, the process is anything but. So as a customer, it is absolutely not in my best interest to help Burger King trick corporate into thinking that they're already speedy. I'm insulted that they'd ask.
2024 EDIT: Wow. I just found this post and read it for the first time in a very long time. I come off as very bitchy. If I'd written this today, I would be called a Karen.
I still stand by the principle of the post: circumventing systems meant to make things faster doesn't help anybody in the long-run.
But first of all, I absolutely should not have talked to that employee about it. I mean, seriously, dick move. I'd had those types of jobs, you would think that would have kept me from being so uptight about somebody just trying to get through her minimum-wage shift.
And second of all, I didn't do a good job (either to that employee, or in the post) of explaining that the problem I had was with the system that corporate had set up, because ultimately I'm sure their goal was to do less with more. To drive their employees as hard as they could.
And in my naive little mind, my thinking was that if you could just show the bosses the real numbers, you could convince them that the system they'd set up was doomed to fail, because they were giving the employees impossibly high goals. That cheating, by asking me to back up, was really cheating the employees out of a chance to improve things for themselves.
I'll bet that when I wrote this, I actually believed that. Because that's the way I want the world to work. (But of course, that all kind of falls apart in the last paragraph, when I make it about me getting my food faster. I'm guessing I thought that that was a "strong" way to close.)
But of course, we all know that that's not how things work. Most companies don't care even a little bit about their employees' well being. They care about profits. It was bad then, and it's gotten worse now. And yes, I'm just stating the obvious here, I know. But the post makes it seem like I don't care about the employees at all, just the rules.
Hopefully my writing has gotten better since then, and I can now get my points across better. I know that my empathy has grown, although there is always room for more.
Get a life
Bitch
You are a total bitch, seriously I honestly wish I would never have seen this, I hope the person that wrote this stupid ass article reads this comment so that the time I wasted reading your crap; you waste reading the crap I am writing right now. Are you really so bored and so much of a bitch that you honestly want to fuck over people that make minimum wage making food for you and your fat ass family? Seriously, I am sure you feel real powerful saying "No, I am not moving forward" but, seriously you should find somewhere else to get your shits and giggles. Either that or make your own food, they didn't tell you had to, they asked you to. Excluding that corporate does not care, it is used as a means to see what the average time is, but since food in the morning and late at night are made completely to order as opposed to during mid-day and dinner when the food is made before you order it. Seriously, relax breathe out and stop being an asshole just because you can.
Fat bitch, you should start jogging instead of being concerned about Burger King
I work at a burger king and i can understand what the employee is saying. Corporate is very strict and stores what to be on the goal or else they loose points. when it comes to evaluation time every point counts. Late night is the worst when everything is clean and u have an order five mins to close and that can be 5 mins to make and put together and hand it out. A good SOS (speed of service) is about 2;30 for the month
Hey disgruntled employee, the reason that customer's check the bags before leaving is because they are never right! Not ever! If we don't check it we get home, unpack the food and find out half the order is missing.
Who.. the.. hell.. cares?
You probably got some nice pubic hair and spit with your food as well. And you deserved it.
Jesus.
Wow......Fast Food workers are not as lazy as they seem....they are actually working harder to have more time to do a poor job making you some crap to eat. It is a good thing you are here StupidMom.....where would the wrold be without watchdogs like yourself....getting their fries 45 seconds later than they should be. I bet fuming about this nearly burned up one of the ten million calories you fucking hog down each week in the drive through.
You will probably be awarded the Burger King medal of honor for this.
@SomeGuy - Thank goodness you didn't judge me harshly.
@Sal - Your comment is hilarious for so many reasons. It reminds me of a bit Jon Stewart did about some country protesting some other country - there were elaborate flags, presidents burned in effigy, etc. He pointed out that if only the protesters could take their amazing and organized flag- and effigy-making talents and translate them into something useful, they wouldn't be living in the kind of country that blamed all of its problems on someone else.
I love the solutions you guys came up with. I also love that there was a trophy.
Reading a synopsis of your post at Consumerist I was prepared to judge you very harshly. I thought your handle was perhaps very apt, a "selfish mom"...You seemed like many of the self-important a-holes with an over-developed sense of entitlement that I had to deal with while working in retail-hell in high-school.
Allow me to digress a moment, and say I was a very responsible and hard worker, so I was quickly promoted to assistant manager. I also appeared a few years younger than my 18 years of age. You struck me as one of the types who were always hyper-vigilant that this "young whippersnapper", who was probably lazy and incompetent was going to rip them off, screw up in some way, et cetera et cetera...They would be continually second guessing everything I did; "why are you ringing it up that way...why are you doing this...at this other store they do it that way...I was in here the other day and the old lady did it another way...blah blah blah"..
It's certainly important to be vigilant because "rip-offs" and "screw-ups" do happen, and myself like many others in retail appreciate it when a customer "has our back" so to speak and points out a mistake like double-ringing or something...that is if they are polite and just say something like "whoops, seems like you double-ringed" instead of "YOU RANG THAT UP TWICE, YOU BETTER TAKE THAT OFF YOU RANG IT UP TWICE HOW COULD YOU!!". But these people seemed divorced from reality...to them the retail world is populated by inferior beings who lack the ability to reason, don't care about customers, will rip them off if possible, et cetera...and I can see why they may think that...but they suffer from ignorance of what we have to work with...It was particularly frustrating when I would have to perform some involved ringing procedure to enable them to use a few coupons together (which technically are supposed to be one-per-purchase), and they would still freak out even after I explained what I was doing and why....
...but I've blabbed enough and far off point....You seem more reasonable than you first struck me (allow me to say you could have expressed yourself better in your initial post), but you still seem blissfully ignorant of reality.
Your points are reasonable enough, but the problem is we live in reality and it is not a "reasonable" world. The coporations have set up this timing system because it is neccesary on some level...I think we all realize that. It's a good idea in theory, although in application it has it's flaws...On the "front lines" they are painfully aware of these flaws, and sometimes must perform little cheats to keep everything flowing, because timing is not the only metric here. The thing is coporate realizes this, but there's just too much momentum to switch to another system, they would have to change a lot of equipment, software, training, it would be very very expensive (perhaps it is worth it, but there will always be resistence to such large spending)...
Copororate realizes this little "cheating" is going on, but they let it continue because they can't let up the "squeeze"...they are trying to wring as much money out of you and these wage slaves as possible...and probably reason something like "if we give an inch, they'll take a mile" (which is perhaps true to an extent)...So we must push them on these metrics, and we cannot ever say "ok perhaps we were being unreasonable with this metric..." or change it because that might open up a back door to some other type of cheating! A cheating that would be worse for the customer even.
Your primary complaint seems to be that this system is completely untenable because customers are *constantly* being asked to back up, if it were here or there, you can understand that....and I can agree with that...but permit me to doubt that that is actually the case. It's probably something they do when they reach the end of a certain time-period and are not meeting quota, or during certain busy times of the day or week...so they are not making customers do it "all the time"....and I'm sure they are trying to find ways so they don't have to do it anymore. It becomes a question of balance.
So it seems to me you're taking this position that "well I know why they do it, and it's not really a big deal, but IT'S NOT THE BEST WAY TO DO IT"...well welcome to reality honey. No doubt you find it romantic in some way to be a "reasonable" person who can see the flaws in all these "systems" and thinks we should do things the "best way"...but the fact of the matter is there are many factors you are unaware of...many constraints...and the system yoy think is "better" probably has a whole set of problems of it's own...
So perhaps you're not so different from those people I spoke of before, you suffer the same ignorance as them, although you are much more pleasant and polite. But I say to you what I could not say to them in the interest of professionalism "Back off m'am, I know what I'm doing"
If someone poor wage-slave makes a request of you...and it's not hurting you, and is not a lot of trouble, and they're not forcing you to do it, and it's not illegal (distinct from "not allowed") ....just do it....or not if you really feel that strongly about it. Even ask for an explanation...but for goodness' sake when you get said explanation just shut up about it.
This reminds me of when I worked at Burger King during my senior year of high school (1996). We never asked anyone to reverse, instead, we used our personal cars and drove around the restaurant several times to lower our average serving time. Another technique we used was the garbage compactor. This was a very heavey piece of metal we used to smash the trash down in the trash cans. It was heavy enough to trigger the sensors that would stop the clock. These techniques placed us in first place among the owner's other Burger Kings. Later that year the district manager was looking at our tape recordings and caught us on video using the trash compactor. Our trophy was removed from our location :<
I currently work for Burger King, we also struggle with SOS, can you please tell me how the metal works.
I worked at taco bell for about a year. We used a system where you had 3 seconds when the car drove up to greet the person, then they could take as long as they liked at the menu and when they drove to the window a 1 minute timer started counting down. Even with this system people would yell at their kids, take forever to get their money together, order at the window, which is the worst thing you can do to fast food workers, and then sit there and check their order. It IS possible to get the majority of the orders out in time, but theres also plenty of "trouble" customers who honestly are just to effing stupid to know what food they want to stuff in their mouth, and trust me its always more then they need. These people slow down the whole chain of cars and really mess with the times that corporate is brutal about.
The bottom line is.... when dealing with fast food, the employees dont care about or like their job, the customers are never happy, the management couldnt care less or cares way too much, and its all around a terrible system perpetuated by this countries "MORE FOR LESS!!!!!!" way of thinking thats got us in the financial hole we're in.
My $.02 from the other side of things:
* Times DO start from the menu board, from the second you arrive. If you take 2 minutes there you're starting with a 2 minute service time.
* 2:30 is a typical goal for a normal day period
* That leaves an 30 seconds for the customer to pay and give change.
* It's an average of 45 seconds at the window before the customer gets the money ready - so by that time you've already blown your time.
* That 2:30 time is DICTATED BY THE CUSTOMERS! Any longer than that and customers complain of slowness.
* Customers regularly exaggerate (greatly) the amount of time they wait - I've personally done research on this at fast food restaurants with stop watches and you'd be amazed how many people said it "took 10 minutes to get my food"! when it actually took 3-4.
So, in short, many customers complaining that it takes so long when it really doesn't is part of the driving force behind the stores encouraging 'fraud' on this minor level.
Times vs size of order doesn't work - what happens when somebody orders a really, really special order and then changes it at the window? It's a long time stuck in eternity that the stores' punished for. They're trying to make up for slow times in many cases.
As a customer it's certainly your right to say you don't want to pull up, but it's certainly NOT your job to try to improve processes at the business by trying to bend the will of employees and managers to yours, though you're always welcome to try!
Like I said, my $.02.
@Lucy - Hi Lucy, I really appreciate you taking the time to comment. You make a lot of good points. Unfortunately this particular Burger King only has one menu board and one window, but it sounds like the problem is system-wide.
I remember when I worked in McDonald's (grill, not cashier, but I could see what was going on), it was possible to really get in a groove and handle the heavy volume when the restaurant got busy, but it was a result of a lot of training and of everybody really busting ass. I've never seen that kind of effort in any fast food restaurant in Brooklyn, ever. I once had to leave a McDonald's drive-thru line after paying but BEFORE getting my food. I was on my way to JFK to pick up my husband and kids and had an extra half hour to kill, so I stopped by a drive-thru near the airport. FORTY minutes later, I still didn't have my food. I had to leave when my husband texted me that they had landed.