There's a growing issue at my local McDonald's. (This is not about the quality of the food, the waste or any other large-scale issue. This seems to be completely isolated from the corporate entity and is strictly the owner of my local franchise.)
The issue is speed. The management has implemented a system at lunch time. There is one, sometimes two, order taker(s) at the drive-thru. On the surface this looks like a great idea. There's no difficulty understanding the customer because of the microphone.
The problem is, that the person taking your order is nowhere near the menu. If you haven't got the menu memorized or say the right number, you're SOL. And heaven forbid you want something that isn't a value meal or a special order.
Next, there is a roaming money taker who comes to the car and takes your money or runs your credit card to the window. Here's the next fault line in the system. If they money taker gets off sequence, or heaven forbid you say cash when you meant to say credit the damage is almost impossible. The line is backed up for three or four minutes while they try to sort that debacle out.
Lastly, there's the person who's delivering the food. If you aren't at the window, getting ketchup or sauce for nuggets or sugar for your coffee is next to impossible. Just suck it up and go without.
Now, here are some of the things that have gone wrong with this system in place:
1) Not receiving the items you ordered, even though when you glance in the box might look right, that doesn't mean it is.
2) Not getting condiments. They no longer throw ketchup in the bags. Props for the environmental waste move. Boo for the customer service snafu. (Might be helpful if the girl handing out the food understood the English names for the condiments and sauces. I don't really care if she doesn't speak English as her first language as long as she understands it.)
3) Not getting charged the right amount on your card. This takes ages to fix. All the while the people in the cars behind you are getting anxious and upset because they have finished their transactions while you're waiting to get yours fixed.
The problem is that the management of this location has demanded faster and faster serve times without thinking about the fact that there are going to be more mistakes. The service people are harried and I'm sure they get in trouble when their little "order time" ticker takes longer to complete. They're artificially pushing the times down in the first place. And if you have a long order or a complicated one? Hello, I want to spend more money here and you're acting as if this is an issue.
The faster, faster motto is getting stupid. There's even a radio station that uses "you don't have to listen to slow washed out music" anymore. Their examples of slow and washed out? The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and The Rolling Stones. Yeah, right, instead you're making me listen to "Hey there Delilah." How is this an improvement?
Needless to say, I think I'm at the top limit of this insanity now. I'm going to have to take my business to one of the other restaurants for lunch or *shudders* bring my own lunch in.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Quote of the Week 07-14-09
"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office." - H.L. Mencken
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Quote of the week 07-07-09
"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity." - George Bernard Shaw
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Quote of the Week 6-30-09
I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist. - Sally Kempton
Books to Read June 09
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente (i09 Review)
The Strange Tale Of Panorama Island by Suehiro Maruo (i09 review)
Falconer on the Edge by Rachel Dickinson (Scientist, Interrupted)
Backyard Ballistics by Bill Gurstelle
Arsenic and Flamethrowers by Bill Gurstelle
Green by Jay Lake (i09 review)
New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear
Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer
Everyone in Silico by Jim Munroe (free download)
Postsingular by Rudy Rucker (free download)
Geek Mafia by Rick Dakan
Causing a Scene: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere by Charlie Todd and Alex Scordelis
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Lt Col Dave Grossman (Mind Hacks review)
Columbine by Dave Cullen (Janet Reid, Literary Agent)
The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff
Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey
The Strange Tale Of Panorama Island by Suehiro Maruo (i09 review)
Falconer on the Edge by Rachel Dickinson (Scientist, Interrupted)
Backyard Ballistics by Bill Gurstelle
Arsenic and Flamethrowers by Bill Gurstelle
Green by Jay Lake (i09 review)
New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear
Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer
Everyone in Silico by Jim Munroe (free download)
Postsingular by Rudy Rucker (free download)
Geek Mafia by Rick Dakan
Causing a Scene: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere by Charlie Todd and Alex Scordelis
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Lt Col Dave Grossman (Mind Hacks review)
Columbine by Dave Cullen (Janet Reid, Literary Agent)
The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff
Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Book Review: Made from Scratch
Made From Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life by Jenna Woginrich
Made by Hand is a charming memoir/ how-to book from Jenna Woginrich who is a city girl turned country girl. Woginrich has the decency to still have a nine to five job and to work with computers. It's what she does when she gets home that makes all the difference.
She talks about her aha moments and her mistakes in equal measures. This is the story of how she started tending bees, growing her own veggies, keeping chickens and rabbits, and training her dogs. It's also about discovering the pleasure of playing an instrument and the joys of being with friends. It's about the complexities of the simple life that is not so simple. As she says: "How complex is the simple life? Complex enough to make a Buddist-vegan kill a rabbit." You'll have to read the story to understand. It's powerful and worth the time.
Her descriptions are so true and honest that one can smell the bread baking in the oven and hear the dogs barking at the window. And that is also the problem. The memoir bits are so lovely and well-written even at their most difficult, that when she switches over to writing the how-to sections it's a jolt. I wanted to know her so much more than I wanted a how-to on using a needle and thread. I wouldn't have minded a few sources and what she thought of them, but I did not need twenty pages on training sled dogs. I already know how to bake and I know how to sew. I've been buying used for years. Don't tell me that. Tell me how the wax felt the first time you melted it to dip the candles you talked about. Don't tell me how to use the library.
Still, all and all, I found it an enjoyable, quick read. I think it's worth it for anyone to read. If you pick it up at the library, you can skip the how-tos without guilt after all.
Made by Hand is a charming memoir/ how-to book from Jenna Woginrich who is a city girl turned country girl. Woginrich has the decency to still have a nine to five job and to work with computers. It's what she does when she gets home that makes all the difference.
She talks about her aha moments and her mistakes in equal measures. This is the story of how she started tending bees, growing her own veggies, keeping chickens and rabbits, and training her dogs. It's also about discovering the pleasure of playing an instrument and the joys of being with friends. It's about the complexities of the simple life that is not so simple. As she says: "How complex is the simple life? Complex enough to make a Buddist-vegan kill a rabbit." You'll have to read the story to understand. It's powerful and worth the time.
Her descriptions are so true and honest that one can smell the bread baking in the oven and hear the dogs barking at the window. And that is also the problem. The memoir bits are so lovely and well-written even at their most difficult, that when she switches over to writing the how-to sections it's a jolt. I wanted to know her so much more than I wanted a how-to on using a needle and thread. I wouldn't have minded a few sources and what she thought of them, but I did not need twenty pages on training sled dogs. I already know how to bake and I know how to sew. I've been buying used for years. Don't tell me that. Tell me how the wax felt the first time you melted it to dip the candles you talked about. Don't tell me how to use the library.
Still, all and all, I found it an enjoyable, quick read. I think it's worth it for anyone to read. If you pick it up at the library, you can skip the how-tos without guilt after all.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Book Review: Crash Diet
Crash Diet by Jill McCorkle is a series of short stories.
See, I decided that I would break out of my genre and try reading some literary fiction for a change. I went to the fiction stacks and avoided all of the thrillers and serial killers and *shudders* thinly-disguised romance novels and found what looked to be a solid literary author with short stories that harkened back to my days of reading for the lit journal in college. It's the author's fourth book. The inside flap had some excellent snippets from the stories, so, since it was the library, I took the chance.
Oh boy, was I wrong. So, terribly, terribly, achingly wrong that nothing can save me from the unforgivable triumvirate of mistakes I made.
1) Literary fiction short stories. I read for a lit journal. I should know I don't like most of the tripe that the editors love.
2) Southern Female author. I'll grant, I read women writers all the time. It's just that they're writing in genres I like. And honestly, I have yet to read a Southern female writer. (For those non-US readers: Southern writers come from Virginia or below. This author is from North Carolina)
3) The blurbs were by people I don't know. I will give a short story author recommended by Neil Gaiman or Stephen King a chance in a heartbeat. If Poppy Z. Brite says "it scared me" I'll pick it up. Not being in the literary genre, I didn't know the writers of the blurbs. I'll know better the next time. If the NY Times likes it, I'll run the other way.
Now, I have obviously become enamored of silly things like plot and characterization. To paraphrase Mark Twain, stories should be headed to a climax and then a tie up afterward. The stories in Crash Diet are not stories. They are barely even vignettes.
Next, I should care about your characters. This does not mean that I should be willing to testify as to why their psychologist who has two lines should be kicked out of the field. I should also not want to bitch-slap every female in the book.
Again, going back to the most lauded Twain: One should be able to tell the characters from the corpse. Sadly, there is not one story in the book which could not be improved by the following sentences:
"And then the zombies appeared."
"And then she discovered that this was truly Hell."
In fact, they'd be fascinating stories if the women were all trapped in Satre's "No Exit." Because, you know, there'd be an over-arching story involved that started one place and built until the release of emotion when the next victim was thrown in or pulled out for torture.
Never again. I will not make this mistake again. I want plots! I want emotion! I want Dialog! I do not want to listen to the inner ramblings of women who define themselves by their relationships with the men in their lives and cannot seem to form a thought that doesn't revolve around men and how they've been betrayed, battered, or otherwise disappointed. I get it. Men are evil. Women are long suffering. I call bullshit.
Go swallow some more sweet tea or drown in a mint julep. Just leave me out of it.
See, I decided that I would break out of my genre and try reading some literary fiction for a change. I went to the fiction stacks and avoided all of the thrillers and serial killers and *shudders* thinly-disguised romance novels and found what looked to be a solid literary author with short stories that harkened back to my days of reading for the lit journal in college. It's the author's fourth book. The inside flap had some excellent snippets from the stories, so, since it was the library, I took the chance.
Oh boy, was I wrong. So, terribly, terribly, achingly wrong that nothing can save me from the unforgivable triumvirate of mistakes I made.
1) Literary fiction short stories. I read for a lit journal. I should know I don't like most of the tripe that the editors love.
2) Southern Female author. I'll grant, I read women writers all the time. It's just that they're writing in genres I like. And honestly, I have yet to read a Southern female writer. (For those non-US readers: Southern writers come from Virginia or below. This author is from North Carolina)
3) The blurbs were by people I don't know. I will give a short story author recommended by Neil Gaiman or Stephen King a chance in a heartbeat. If Poppy Z. Brite says "it scared me" I'll pick it up. Not being in the literary genre, I didn't know the writers of the blurbs. I'll know better the next time. If the NY Times likes it, I'll run the other way.
Now, I have obviously become enamored of silly things like plot and characterization. To paraphrase Mark Twain, stories should be headed to a climax and then a tie up afterward. The stories in Crash Diet are not stories. They are barely even vignettes.
Next, I should care about your characters. This does not mean that I should be willing to testify as to why their psychologist who has two lines should be kicked out of the field. I should also not want to bitch-slap every female in the book.
Again, going back to the most lauded Twain: One should be able to tell the characters from the corpse. Sadly, there is not one story in the book which could not be improved by the following sentences:
"And then the zombies appeared."
"And then she discovered that this was truly Hell."
In fact, they'd be fascinating stories if the women were all trapped in Satre's "No Exit." Because, you know, there'd be an over-arching story involved that started one place and built until the release of emotion when the next victim was thrown in or pulled out for torture.
Never again. I will not make this mistake again. I want plots! I want emotion! I want Dialog! I do not want to listen to the inner ramblings of women who define themselves by their relationships with the men in their lives and cannot seem to form a thought that doesn't revolve around men and how they've been betrayed, battered, or otherwise disappointed. I get it. Men are evil. Women are long suffering. I call bullshit.
Go swallow some more sweet tea or drown in a mint julep. Just leave me out of it.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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