Me encanta! (I'm lovin' it)

   When we first received this assignment as our extra credit I thought it was going to be a bit more challenging for me because I’m not the type of person to make a big deal out of a small mistake on my food orders. When I walked into the McDonald’s on Kings Highway (near the Q train in Brooklyn) I was nervous but a little relieved that there weren’t so many people. Every register had a customer and there were about five other people waiting on line but I only waited about two or three minutes before I was placing my special order.
   The girl taking my order looked like she was about my age (around 20), her name was Olga. I began by ordering my hamburger with five pickles. She didn’t make a big deal, she just told the people in the back that she needed exactly five pickles on this order. When she came back I finished telling her the order and ask her to make sure that the receipt showed this order exactly the way I asked for it. She simply nodded her head. Luckily there was a fresh batch of fries coming out of the fryer. She left and came back with a little bag and a small plastic container with my big mac sauce. I was surprised that she had filled my order so quickly and then she gave me my receipt. She had included everything except the five pickles so I told her I needed her to give me another receipt with the five pickles on it. She began to tell me that she couldn’t do it. At this point one of her fellow employees told her that she could do it and told her to hold on, that she would help her once she took care of her customer. I could tell that Olga became a little frustrated because she didn’t know how to fix my receipt and reprint it. So she decided to call the manager (or at least that’s what I think she was) over.
    The manager for this shift was an older Hispanic woman. Olga began to explain her problem with a frustrated tone of voice. She explained to the manager that I wanted a new receipt. The manager asked me what was wrong on the receipt and I told her I needed it to say five pickles. She began talking to me in Spanish tying to explain to me that she couldn’t do it because her register would be short of money at the end of the day. I guess she thought English wasn’t my first language so I went along and spoke Spanish.
     I really didn’t understand how that could be possible but I told her that I would pay again that way she could print the receipt the way I needed it. After all it was only $3. So the manager took the order again and I paid. Once again the order took less than two minutes to bag and everything was perfect (the burger, the fries and big mac sauce), except the receipt. The manager had already left thinking the order was done. When Olga handed me the new receipt it didn’t have the big mac sauce on it. I told her about the error and she started laughing, she was a little more annoyed this time but she didn’t take it out on me. Olga got the manager again and told her she forgot the big mac sauce. The manager was just as annoyed but she still kept a smile on her face. She kept sighing and began to fix the receipt. I guess this time she could fix it because all she had to do was add big mac sauce which was free. She than ran to the back and said (in Spanish) “don’t do that last order, ignore the last order”. When she came back she printed the receipt out and was looking it over and as she was giving it to me she said (once again in Spanish) “you guys came in here before right? I remember this order”. I just smiled trying to hold in my laughter and said no. The manager told me, still in Spanish, that two boys had placed this order sometime before but that they were very rude and they ended up leaving before getting the correct order. She left for a minute and came back with my order and finally everything was perfect! I thanked them with a big smile on my face and surprisingly they both smiled back, even though they probably wanted to kill me at the moment.
    Overall I think this experience wasn’t that bad. It only took about ten minutes to complete my order, but I think this was acceptable because the only error they were making was with the receipt. During the whole process of completing my order I was treated surprisingly well by both the manager and employee. I would have expected a little more attitude but I think because I am Hispanic, like the manager, she felt more comfortable talking to me.
     If I could change one thing in McDonald’s that would effectively help to better accommodate special orders it would have to be the registers. Obviously it is necessary to be able to type numbers onto the receipts. I’ve never seen a McDonald’s register but they must not be that pleasant to use because they had to print my receipt three times in order to get it right. I would also change training policies and make sure that every employee knew how to take care of special orders like the one I placed today.
     The overall communication between the manager and employee was good. Even though they were both frustrated they never caught a bad attitude with me. Although it was great that the manager helped Olga out I also would’ve like to see if her fellow employee would’ve helped her out just as well. As for the communication with me, the
customer, it was better than I expected. The manager did  a good job trying to explain why she couldn’t reprint the receipt.
      In conclusion I think leadership is an important aspect in most workplaces. If the manager hadn’t taken charge of my order there wouldn’t have been anyone else to help Olga with her problem. My experience at McDonald’s was probably better than most of my other classmates but I’m glad to see that there really are people who take their time to satisfy their customers.