The Pickle Problem

When I walked in to McDonald’s in the afternoon on a Wednesday, there were not a lot of people, and I was immediately help as I walked up to the cash register. When I placed my special order (consisting of a small hamburger with EXACTLY 4 pickles, and a small fries without salt), the cashier didn’t seem to take notice of me but instead was busy with writing down my exact order on a touch screen. There didn’t seem to be any problem or confusion with placing this order or to get the exact receipt. The man who was taking my order did seem confused, not by my order, but something on the touch screen, and he called his manager who immediately sprinted to the scene. I’m not sure what the problem was, since they were talking in Spanish, but whatever it was the manager fixed it in a jiffy. I thereafter paid and got my receipt.

There was no communication with anyone else after my order was completed. Instead my order showed up on a TV screen behind the cashier, and became visible for the workers putting the hamburgers together. I stood to the side and started observing the manager, who seemed to do a lot of the work himself. He was very involved in both putting the orders together and helping with any problems the cashiers seemed to have. I think it is important in a place like McDonald’s that the manager is part of the process, and won’t mind jumping in doing any work that has to be done to make things run smoother.

The cashier who had helped me started to help other customers as more people started to come. I kept waiting and watching the manager put orders together as if he had done it his whole life. So far everything seemed to run like an oiled machine. After 5 minutes of waiting the cashier, who couldn’t help but notice my impatient waiting for my small burger and fries, asked to look at my receipt. He then said something to the manager, who again popped up right next to him in a nano-second, but the manager seemed to dismiss what the cashier said. It took 8 min before I got my order. It was the manager who gave me my food with a smile.

I think that placing my order went really smoothly, and for most of the time I find the communication over TV screens to be a very good idea. It creates a much less stressful atmosphere when you don’t have people running around screaming orders here and there. But there are flaws with this system. For some reason it always seem to me that the McDonald’s restaurants that use this system, where the cashier is basically only taking orders and then someone else is putting the orders together, run slower. To wait 8 minutes at a fast food chain like this one is too long. I think that when the cashier has to put the order together they tend to work a little faster just because they have the customer right in front of them.

I think the reason for my long wait was entirely because the people in the back wasn’t working as fast as they could/ should have. Because they don’t have either the costumers or the manager putting some pressure on them, they weren’t as efficient as they should’ve been. My recommendation to improve the effectiveness would be to promote one of the people working in that team, to become a type of leader of that part of the organization. There seemed to be so many workers both behind the counter and in the assembly line that you could easily divide them into two groups with separate managers. By having a manager among the people putting the burgers together, the pressure on the rest of the employees would dramatically increase and so would the speed and efficiency. Other than that I think that this particular restaurant was running very well. They had the right amount of employees and communication between them was open, but kept to a minimum. As a customer I also realized what a big difference you can make with a smile. After waiting 8 minutes for my burger I was feeling frustrated, but when the manager handed over my food with a smile, it was all forgiven.