June 15
Dear Sir or Madam:
This evening at 7:42 P.M., I made the grave mistake of I walking into the McDonald’s restaurant located at 7702 McKnight Road. I have my receipt in front of me: I was Order #219 at store #7445. I live nearby and I occasionally enjoy the convenience of simply walking down the hill and buying burgers to go.
In my past experience, this is not a very-well-run McDonald’s. It would be fair to say, perhaps, that in terms of quality of service, this restaurant challenges the general theory of standard deviation and plays Quasimodo to the bell curve. But hey, it’s cheap, right? And everyone knows what people who work at McDonald’s are like, after all.
I dealt with this insidious quick-service stereotype for years as a Subway employee. I know what it’s like, day after day and year after year, to be treated as if you were less than nothing by many of the customers who come to a food-service counter. I’ve also felt something of the quiet dignity that lives and breathes in the quick-service industry, however. At the end of each day, you know that you have prepared and offered a large number of people a meal, and that’s a lot more honorable than many other jobs in the world today. You look down at your hands and smile before you go home, because those hands fed hungry people safe food at a fair price.
Tonight, more than anything else, it was a lack of understanding of that quiet dignity on the part of the employees at McDonald’s that led to their providing such poor service. At all levels, from the server, who treated me as if I was a waste of skin and not a customer, on the young man making the sandwich, as if preparing my order was a needless expenditure of effort rather than the reason he is employed, to the young man on break who loudly laughed at his fellow employees’ lack of competence and treated their poor service skills as if it was some huge joke, to the manager, Trish, who, when I called to complain, told me that I must have the wrong McDonald’s, even after I told her I had the receipt in front of me.
It’s sad, more than anything else, that this group of people, some older, some young, have not been taught and shown how to hold their heads up and find the measure of pride in their jobs that is there. That’s a management failure, more than anything else, and it’s a real waste, in so many ways. Tonight, my poor experience could have been something very different: a moment to be proud about a job well done on the part of the employees, a pleasant visit on my part, a sales and service opportunity seized and acted on.
Instead, I’m writing this e-mail tonight to tell you that the people who were working at this restaurant tonight know little about professional courtesy and care even less about common courtesy. The restaurant was empty and quiet when I went in. It wasn’t a bad time and it wasn’t a bad day... It was just a bad job all around.
Copies of this e-mail will be distributed to the McKnight Journal, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette North Edition, and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. I am also forwarding it to the McDonald’s regional and national offices, the Pittsburgh and Ross Township listservs I subscribe to, and everyone in my Pittsburgh address book. I’ll be posting it on my condominium community’s web page, my blog, and my North Hills community service page.
If you make inquiries about the quality of service this local McDonald’s restaurant provides in general, you will likely come to conclude, as I have, that I’m doing you a favor.
And finally, If you would like more detailed information about the exact particulars of my visit, please don’t hesitate to contact me at any of the contact numbers and addresses provided below.
Sincerely,
Jim Karatassos
32 Maple Court
Pittsburgh, PA 15237
(412) 367-6158 (home)
(412) 897-1014 (cell)
jim. [email protected]
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