Pickles and Salt

On a Sunday Night, I went into a McDonalds in Pompton Plains, NJ around 7:45 PM. There was a small line when I arrived, so I waited and approached the cashier to place my order. I ordered one hamburger with exactly four pickles and a small order of fries with no salt. The cashier at first did not find this request odd, and told me the total was over five dollars. I questioned the amount, and realized she thought I wanted four hamburgers. I corrected her and specified four pickles on one hamburger. She laughed discreetly at my request and told the cook in Spanish to place four pickles on my hamburger. She then went over to the deep fryer and began cooking a small amount of fries.

When she came back near the cashier, I told her I needed an itemized receipt stating my extra requests. She printed me a receipt which said no salt for the fries but did not say four pickles. I explained to her that I needed the extra pickles on the receipt as well, which seemed to slightly aggravate her. She questioned me on why I needed this receipt, and I replied “I just need the receipt to say a hamburger with four pickles and French fries with no salt.” She questioned me again, asking why, I just repeated myself and she began working on the computer. The receipt printed out momentarily and she handed me it with an underlying attitude. The receipt read said “extra$ pickle,” so I handed it back to her and asked her to write four next to this and initial it. She took it back and quickly scratched a four onto the receipt and handed it back to me. One could observe at this point that she was not happy with me, and impatiently waiting for my food to finish so I could leave.

After six minutes and twenty-four seconds from when I placed my order, the cashier came over and placed a bag of food in front of me and walked away. She did not wish me a good evening or thank me for visiting McDonalds. The cashier was primarily the only person involved in this transaction, besides the cook which she told in Spanish to place extra pickles on my burger. When I first arrived she was quite pleasant, but after each requests I made she grew more and more annoyed. She did complete my order correctly in a relatively timely fashion though.

Overall, the staff performed mediocre in this situation. The food was prepared in a reasonable amount of time without error. The fries were cooked fresh when I ordered them and given to me without salt, and the hamburger was prepared quickly with four pickles. The communication between the employees seemed to be done properly, but the cashier made a mistake while taking my order, thinking I meant four hamburgers instead of four pickles. She also failed to place both the pickles and the salt on the receipt the first time she handed it to me. The employees were quite coordinated, as the cashier knew exactly how to handle my request for no salt on my fries, and the cook did not have trouble placing exactly four pickles on my hamburger. The customer service definitely could have been improved, as the cashier should not have allowed me to see her frustration, and met my requests with a smile. She also should have wished me a good night after giving me my food. Since she works in a customer service position, she should be prepared to deal with situations when customers make odd requests.

If I was hired by McDonalds corporate to increase efficiency with special orders I would start by analyzing the POS (Point-of-sale) system. I would attempt to determine if it would be possible to include a keyboard option on the touch screen, therefore the cashier could write additional notes which would appear on the screen near the cook as well as on the receipt. I believe this option in particular would have made the special requests from this assignment very easy to handle by any cashier.