Fastfood (Dis)service

In this country (yes, Philippines), the intensity of competing for the market by Jollibee and McDonald’s is very much like the “war” between Coke and Pepsi during the mid-80s. (Coke and Pepsi are still at it, yes, but since the 2 entities have been around for so long, people just drink their preference and leave it at  that. Nobody thinks of their competition anymore. That is my humble take on the softdrinks thing. Going back to the fastfood “war”, what can I say? Being  a Filipino, my heart of course is with Jollibee, this being a Filipino entity. HOWEVER, if I would really be objective about it- all things being equal, it’s McDo that I would go to. Why? All things being equal (read: quality of all foods being more or less at par with each other)…the deciding factor would be how the customer is treated. More to the point, how I am treated during the “dining experience”. You don’t know it, but I’m actually a professional fastfood diner. (Translation: at least for the past seven years, I have always eaten at a fastfood restaurant. At the very least four times a week. Name a fastfood in the country and I have been in it. Trust me.) At one time or another, I have done a customer complaint in all the fastfood restaurants- yes, McDo included. I can no longer give you the exact number of times, but the frequency in which I did a formal complaint at Jollibee stores far outnumber that of the times I did with the Mcdo restaurants. By a mile. I think that for 2012, I must have done no less than five occasions while I could not remember a single instance that I did for any Mcdo branch. Enough of that. Let me tell you of another case where I got frustrated over the service of a Jollibee store. (Hmm…I’d rather not tell you the exact branch, not even the city it belongs to. I'm not afraid of anything, but not being identified may serve as a motivation for the people concerned to clean up their act.) 

A couple of days ago, I dined in at this particular Jollibee store. Just the ordinary burger patty meal with Coke Zero. Of course, I had coffee (this is a constant in all my meals). The manager herself was the one manning the counter.  Presumably, because the lines were incredibly long for that time of the night (around 11:30) and the counter girl was a newbie. When I was paying, the manager (lady, late 20s) said the coffee would take 15 minutes and it would just be delivered to me. In a joking manner, I asked her “Promise?”- and she said yes. That was that. I went up to the second floor and took my meal. I finished it in less than ten minutes. I then killed time by thinking of the possible storylines for my next novel. I’m a writer after all. The promise given by the manager was like something hit by Captain Kirk's phaser. It disintegrated into ashes. The 15 minutes turned into 20, then to 30 and finally to 45 minutes. In that span of time, I have talked to two different crew members and asked them to follow-up the fu$%&ng coffee. Neither of them returned for any word about the mysterious coffee.  After 45 minutes I had enough. I went down and approached the same manager (name of Vanj, probably Vangie). I asked her what seemed to be the problem. The manager then apologized saying their coffee machine was having some problems. She said she tasked one of her staff to advise me of the situation and nodded toward a male crew member standing beside me. I told her that he never approached me to apprise me of the situation. (He however, was one of the two I asked to follow up on the order.) The guy then butted in and said that he “updated” me upstairs.  I then started seeing red and my voice rose to its I’m-really-getting-pissed-off-with-you mode. I told him he never said anything about the reason for the long delay but in the middle of speaking, I simply stopped and turned my attention back to the manager. I dropped the service crew guy from my radar because he was simply not worth it. He was simply making efforts to deflect any blame toward him. The manager would trash him later on (I presumed). She then asked me if she should just put it in a take-home cup and then reiterated that the machine was already working and the coffee would be ready in two minutes’ time. I was fed up…thinking this kind of thing never happened in any Mcdo branch I’ve patronized- at least not for the last five years. I told her I’d take it within the premises and left her to attend to the coffee order she would not forget for the next whole week. Before I left her, I definitely gave her a piece of my mind. I really did not care if she hated me for it. I find it a nice thing to make friends, yes...but it was definitely NOT a Dale Carnegie moment. Not for me. And surely not for her. It was probably an LOTR (Lord of the Rings) moment for her. She probably wanted to cut me with Gimly's axe, blind me with Legolas' arrow and impale me through the heart using Aragorn's incredible sword. All of them at the same time if she could.

That’s it. It may seem like a trivial thing to you, but really, it’s not. Glitches happen. Even to machines. It’s a fact of life. The thing that really aggravated me was being made to wait without them (both manager and the crew idiot) giving me the courtesy of being apprised of the situation. Most especially on the part of the manager, right? It showed a clear case of her professionalism. Or in this case, lack thereof. Well in fairness, she was the one who brought the coffee to my table…but that was the least she could do really. When she was putting the coffee on my table, she mumbled another apology but I did not speak a word. I was too pissed off to waste words.

Another thing, it could be argued that I should be more “forgiving” because the store was overflowing with customers at that time. Maybe so. But then again, maybe not. This is their business. This is their industry. The delay per se was not the one that made me see red. The manager should have approached me earlier on (after about 20 minutes of waiting) and given me the heads-up about a longer wait. Then, I would not have been aggravated. I would simply have picked up my cellphone and called a friend to kill time. That or observe amusing occurrences around me that would be worth including in a future short story (ie. like a romantic pair quarreling with voices raised to the heavens). But I would not have been frustrated. And this blog piece would not be here today.

More than a few times, I have told my friends that “fastfood service” is no longer applicable because of the “fast” part. There were so many times (Jollibee, KFC, Chowking, etc.) that I felt like waiting for the Lord’s Second Coming when I was in the queue to the counter. But that is another blog article for another day. In this case, “fastfood service” is getting to be questionable because of the word “service”.

My dear managers/ officers-in-charge/ franchise owners / mother company management people: look at your act. “Service” does not only mean that your customers’ hunger is satiated when they leave your fastfood store. It also means this: that they would never find a single cause to think of complaining- whether related to food quality, to the attitude of the service or counter crew, to the cleanliness of your restrooms, all the way to the sufficiency of your airconditioning temperature. Or in my case – your ability to truly care for your customers. “Caring” means giving the customer a heads-up about any situation that would force him/her to wait for a long period of time. Hey guys (I’m talking to you fastfood stores higher-ups), I am not a CEO of any firm whose every waking hour has to be accounted for by a highly-paid executive assistant. I have my bumming-around hours, but that is my choice. I do not appreciate being made to wait for an order without any explanation given by either management or crew. I am sure I’m not the only one with this kind of sentiments. Make a survey if you want.

I’m done here…almost. So, will I still dine in at a fastfood? Will I still patronize Jollibee stores? For the first question, of course I will. I am a bachelor (read: no wife to cook for me) who does not know how to cook any decent meal. Where does that leave me? To the second question, yes, I still will. There are still hundreds of other Jollibee branches everywhere. Will I still go to that particular store? Hmm…the jury is still out for that one.

Well, got to go. I’m going on coffee break. This one I’ll be doing myself. No stupid coffee machine that will break down. No neglectful manager to contend with. Just me and my own steaming hot coffee. Bliss.