Customer Service: Back With An Apathetic Vengeance

Although the recession is allegedly over, there seems to be a new wave of customer service strategies to bolster companies profits and keep customers coming back to their establishments. My recent personal favorite is the drive-thru customer-centered greeting. Starbucks use of this procedure pre-dates the recession (and are therefore not the target of my scathing comments), but many of the major fast food juggernauts, which had never done this before to my recollection, are now asking the all important question, “How are you doing today?” prior to taking your order in the drive-thru. Well, ginormous fast food company, I will tell you how I am doing. I am quite perturbed that you are using this blatantly transparent sham and are attempting to dupe the unsuspecting public into believing that you really care about their well-being, when you have never given enough of a @#*&! about us in the past 60 years to ask how we are doing. The only thing more obvious than your most recent ploy to improve your bottom line during an economic recession is the fact that your employees, who are being forced to ask this innocuous question, care even less than you do about whether or not our cups runneth over with jubilation due to having the greatest day of our lives or if we are one crappy life event away from disemboweling ourselves. This disconcerting level of apathy was on full display tonight when I went through the drive-thru at my favorite Mexican food fast food restaurant, Paco Smell*. (*name of restaurant changed to avoid any potential claims of libel.) I pulled up to the menu and heard from the magical speaker “How are you doing today?” I responded with “I am doing…”, and before I could get a fourth word out (and mind you that fourth word was going to be the descriptor of how the all-important state of my personage was at that very moment), the inconsiderate voice on the other end of the speaker cut me off with, “Order when you are ready.” If you didn’t ask me how I was doing, that would suit me just fine, but to make the query, and then not even allow ample time for a complete response, was like a complete slap in the face. As I pulled up to the window, I wanted to ask if the blatant disregard for my personal well-being came with a free side order of some type of bodily fluid or waste product maliciously added to my food as well. The least the corporate office could do for these obviously socially inept people is to write on the cue card they read from for all customer interactions some simple stage direction: (pause for customer’s answer prior to reading line #2). The only topper to the emotionally disconnected employee is the use of the recorded voice to ask how you are doing. First, the use of the recorded voice makes it quite evident corporate America’s fat wallet CEO’s care so little about the American public that they don’t even give you a real person to talk to. Secondly, and mind you I am not mad about this…I am just getting mad on behalf of a friend, it is totally deceptive for the company to put on some girl with a sultry voice asking some lonely, unsuspecting guy how they are doing, and then after the customer, who is genuinely thrilled that someone in the world may actually care about them even a smidgen, answers and asks the celestial being on the other end of the speaker how their night is progressing, onto the speaker comes Steve, a 40 year old chain smoker to say “Order when you’re ready.” Sometimes I feel like I would be happier if the fast food restaurants, along with their stellar employees, would just be honest about how they really felt about the customers :

OK, maybe not.  How about we just skip the small talk and you give me my bean burrito like old times.