Comment by ApolloFortyNine
3 hours ago
>If you delete the order off the screen, the computer that does all the metrics thinks you've served it.
I've noticed this at other restaurants too and have debated emailing corporate when it happens (since I'm guessing the manager of the restaurant also is on board).
It's not that I don't get _why_ they do it, but it just compounds the problem. Corporate will see the stats and go 'oh X employees is enough at Y hour' despite 10 people waiting for their order since it said complete.
The impulse to rat on low level employees for gaming the system just enough to keep their jobs is a wild one.
Employee games the system, people wait too long for food, people wait too long for food so they stop eating at the restaurant (this was my solution, it's fast food cutting it out is pretty much only a plus), people stop eating at restaurant so restaurant raises it's prices, more people stop going, restaurant closes.
The naive take is to think any one of these actions happen in a vacuum. Plus if this is happening at any scale at a restaurant then the manager probably told them to do it.
The impulse is to out the bad system, not the poor souls stuck in it. Thus the ultimate decision to say nothing, as there is no way to affect one and not the other.
You can just complain about seeing it at "every location you've been to" (because this is true, I've yet to find a McDonalds in my city that doesn't game the order system). It shows the problem is widespread without blaming anyone too specific.
I feel like I could think of a way to word a letter that pointed out the problem without pointing out specific locations or people.
I can’t imagine that kind of race to the bottom is too fun for the low level employers laboring under it. It sounds like gaming the system involves a lot of operational stress. And a manager who’s willing to cheat to screw the people above or beside them tends to be willing to screw the people beneath them too—whether the manager got that way on their own or whether the system forced them into it.
I could especially see it working to the low-level employees’ disadvantage if “the metrics” “prove” they don’t need as much help in order to “hit their numbers.”
But as long as everyone else is doing it, they realistically have no choice but to join in the chaos or be culled. That’s a letter the low-level employees can’t write themselves without jeopardizing themselves, but that an outside party could.
This reads like someone who either never had one of these jobs and is left to try to use their imagination, or someone who is knowingly misrepresenting what consequences are awaiting low-level employees purely by choice.
Either way, the conversation would be better without your involvement.
Oh, I've felt that when they marked my order done and hadn't started yet.
But, like you said, I realized what they were doing, and how they quite possible NEED to do it just to keep dumb management happy.
So of course I didn't say anything.
With each year it's more and more evident what 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires' is not just an observation but more like a medical diagnosis.
> The impulse to rat on low level employees for gaming the system
While waiting their <$20 fast, cheap food.