Having recently watched the documentary "Super Size Me" (which I highly recommend by the way, you can get it at Amazon), I have sworn off all fast food from McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and Taco Bell.  Which leaves, as my fast food joint of choice, D'Angelo's Sandwich Shop.  Last night some folks at a D'Angelo's pissed me off...

I showed up at 10:27 PM after a long day of work.  I would probably have assumed they were closed and driven right by but there was a big neon sign in the front window which proudly declared OPEN in glowing letters, the lights were all on, and there were staff at the counter.  So instead I pulled in, got out of my car and walked up to the door to find it wouldn't open.  Yep, they were closed.

I signaled to the lady behind the counter, and said "Your 'OPEN' sign is still turned on.  If you're closed, you might want to turn that off."  In response I got a blank stare and then a shake of the head.  She hadn't heard me.  So I tried again, shouting to be heard through the glass "YOUR 'OPEN' SIGN IS STILL ON."  She pointed at the small 6 inch by 6 inch sticker on the glass window by the door which displayed the restaurants hours  (they had closed a half hour ago, but still hadn't turned off the OPEN sign).  I tried not to roll my eyes, I mean, DUH I know they're closed, and I can read this rinkydink little sign NOW, but I couldn't tell that from the road.  "YES!  I KNOW YOU ARE CLOSED, BUT YOUR OPEN SIGN IS STILL ON.  YOU NEED TO SHUT THAT OFF."  I pointed vigorously at the sign to get my point across.  That seemed to do the trick, she looked over at the sign and I could see realized what I was telling her.  Then she looked back at me and shrugged, as if to say "What am I supposed to do about it?"

This time, I didn't succeed in keeping my eyes from rolling, and walked back to the car shaking my head in disgust.  Clearly, she didn't know how to shut the sign off without shutting off everything.

It occurred to me on my long, hungry, drive home, there are a lot of things about fast food places that irritate me... 

1. Learn How to Make a Goddamned Sandwich, Asshole
   
   I've done my share of joe jobs... flipping burgers, cutting lawns, and so forth.  Just because you don't like your job doesn't give you leave to do it poorly, and I'm fed up with getting sandwiches that fall apart because someone couldn't properly assemble a sub due to negligence, laziness, or an unfamiliarity with basic sandwich physics.
    
   • First of all, lettuce is a freaking GARNISH!  Don't pack huge fistfulls of shredded lettuce, or half a head of lettuce leaves into my sandwich for Christ's sake! Yes I know it makes the sandwich look bigger... practically bursting with flavor, or whatever else your boss told you.  Your boss is an asshole, and as soon as I get back to my car and unwrap your bursting-with-flavor sandwich, it will burst all over me and the interior of my vehicle. I asked for a sandwich, not a salad in a bun.  Relax with the lettuce already! One leaf of lettuce, or a sprinkling of shredded lettuce is plenty.  If the lettuce layer is thicker than the meat layer, you overdid it.
      
   • Secondly: mayonnaise and oil-and-vinegar are mutually ezclusive.  If I ask for my sub with oil and vinegar, it follows that I do not want mayonnaise.  At the very least ask me before you slather mayo on top of the oil and vinegar.  Jeeze... one slick of fat isn't enough?
      
   • Thirdly, speaking of mayonnaise, I'd like to call your attention to the fact that it is not a food group.  Please don't splorch a huge greasy half-pint glob of mayo on my sandwich?  Would you eat that much mayo from a bowl with a spoon?  No?  Then why would you put it on my sandwich?  There isn't supposed to be a liquid layer in a completed sandwich.  When you do things like this, the top bun slides off easily, and the sandwich quickly becomes a gloppy, drippy mess. Yeah, I'm talking to you guys that put together the Big and Tasty burger at McDonalds.  The driver's seat of my vehicle and some of my best jackets have been stained with the slimy goo your sandwiches squirt out.  Knock it off, already.
      
2. The Drive-Through -- Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here
   
   When folks are on the go and are in too much of a hurry to park, go in, stand in line, walk back to the car, and get settled, they often choose the drive-through, or as the mental dwarves who lay out fast food places call it the "drive-thru".  The general idea is that the drive-through is faster and more convenient than going inside and standing in line.  If you are charged with designing, managing, or staffing the drive-through it is your job to make this idea a reality.
   
   Design: Don't be a fucktard about how the drive-through should be layed out.
    
   
   • First of all, ditch the two-windows idea, it just creates confusion.  Yeah I understand that the idea is it is more efficient if the person taking the money isn't also filling your order, but the truth is that places that have two windows do not always staff them both, and it just makes using the drive-through more irritating.  Also, if the guy taking the order screwed up, it's more difficult to work it out at the second window.
      
   • Secondly, sweet-Jesus, please put the menu where it is clearly visible from the ordering station?  I shouldn't have to crane my neck or get all twisted around, or lean out of my seat to see the menu whether or not I'm in a little sportscar or a big pickup truck.  I once went to a McDonald's where the ordering station was around the corner from the menu.  Holy fuck!  How NUMB do you have to be to come up with that layout?
      
   • Thirdly, install a video screen that shows me at the ordering station what the person taking my order has punched in.  Some places are doing this now, and it spares me a lot of irritation and delays explaining to the guy at the window that I said "a number four with a large coke" instead of "four large cokes".
      
   • Finally, for the sake of my vehicle, please don't install annoying high cement curbs around a narrow drive-through?  Those things can damage my car, and besides, I don't WANT to be a captive audience.  If the higher-form-of-plant-life staffing the drive-through decides now would be a good time to explore catatonic nirvana, I'd like the option of bailing from the line.
    
   Operation: It's not rocket science folks.  If you are operating the drive-through, please do it right.
    
• If you are one of those fortunate places that has a video monitor which displays the order to the driver, please USE it.  Nothing annoys me more than placing my order and seeing nothing pop up on that screen and being told "Thank you, please drive up."  I half expect to be handed an empty bag when that happens.
   
• Say it with me "Will there be anything else?"  Remember that the guy placing the order is poring over a menu, and may have other people that he is ordering for.  If I say "I'll have a number two with a sprite..." the correct response is not "That's $2.57, please drive up."
   
• For the love of Pete, give me what is printed on my receipt.  It's either on a printed slip in your hand or glowing on the monitor by your register.  How hard is it to put together a burger, fries, and a drink?
   
• Related, please ensure that my order has those things in it which might not necessarily be printed on the slip but which are nonetheless necessary, i.e. napkins and a straw.  It's really really awesome to leave the drive-through and get out on the highway, get halfway through my salty fries and realize that you forgot to include a straw with my drink. It is *not* my job to make sure you got my order right, and it holds up the whole line if I have to sit there checking the order over before I can drive away.
   
• Monitor the syrup levels in the soda dispenser please.  The soda dispenser mixes canisters of condensed flavor syrup with soda water to produce the sodas that customers order.  Eventually the levels in a canister will get low, and the dispenser will start to produce something which looks vaguely like coke, but which tastes like bat urine.  Please don't hand me a cup of bat urine?  If I have to check the soda before I drive away, that's yet another delay in your drive-through.
   
• Don't try to shove things at me.  If you just handed me my change, I obviously cannot take the drink you are trying to thrust in my face.  I have to put the bills in my wallet, and the coins in my pocket or change tray, and then I need to put the wallet away.  Set the drink down and wait.  You are getting paid to wait, I am not.  If I was inside you wouldn't like it if I thrust a $20 at you before you had finished taking my order, so don't do that sort of thing to me.
   
3. Service with a Scowl
   
   It's a shitty job, ain't it?  I know--I've done it.  Largely thankless, stressful, and unrewarding in many ways.  The pay is crappy, you have to deal with assholes all day... there's very little to recommend such work.  But it *is* work, and that means you need to treat customers courteously.  In the end they are the paying, and you are the paid.  The paying trumps the paid--every time.
   
   If you can't accept that, you are in the wrong line of work.  There are plenty of other joe jobs out there which involve less customer contact.
    
   • Do not be impatient with the customer.  Your big hurry is not the customer's problem.  I don't care how keyed up you are, if it takes me a whole minute to decide what I want for lunch, tough.
      
   • Do not be lippy with the customer.  It's one thing to be lippy with your friends, your coworkers, or even your boss.  Employees who are lippy with the customer get FIRED, and deservedly so.  I didn't shell out 8 bucks for a pile of shitty food *and* your attitude.  Grow up.
      
   • If the customer is nice to you, be nice to them.  Nothing is more annoying that to say "Thanks so much!" and have the drive-through guy ignore you and shut the window in your face.
      
   • Do not be defensive with the customer.  If the customer becomes angry, the appropriate response is not "You know there's only the two of us back here." or "Well, it's not MY fault." or "What am I supposed to do about it?"  The correct response is, "I'm sorry I'll take care of that for you right now."  You always say you're sorry, even when it isn't your fault.  Doing anything else just makes the customer angrier and prolongs an irritating situation.  Call in your manager if you can't handle it.  The customer is always right... even when he's wrong.  I once stood behind a woman for five minutes complaining that she didn't get her "promotional monopoly game piece" with her diet coke at McDonalds.  I could understand the staff's frustration, heck I wanted to whack her on the back of the head and say "It's a friggin scratch card to win a bag of fries for Christ's sake... shut up, sit down, and eat your goddamned lunch."  But the staff did nothing to appease her.  They just kept dumbly shaking their heads and saying "Sorry, we ran out of game pieces."  The right thing to do would have been to offer her something... a coupon for a free burger, a refund for her drink, ANYTHING.  When she finally left in a huff, there was a whole line of irritated customers who were sick of waiting behind this lady... and we were all pissed off that we weren't getting any game pieces either. 

Believe me I know how irritating those kinds of jobs are.  I've done them.  But it's not hard to see how the level of service has gone downhill since I flipped burgers back in the early 1980's.  There are drive-through's I just can't go to because I *know* they will screw up my order.  They do it every frigging time.

I'm always extra-courteous to fast food workers.  I always have a kind word for them.  If there's any delay in my order I say "Don't worry about it, it's not the end of the world, it's just a sandwich."  If there's a tip jar on the counter, I always toss in a buck or two.  I rarely, if ever, complain, and when I do complain I do so in the most gentle manner possible (not in the manner I would really want to, such as I have done here).

I sympathize with you for having such a crappy job, and to a degree I can commiserate.  But that sympathy ends as soon as I am handed something I didn't order, or a bag with no straw, or a sandwich that is so poorly put together it is falling apart.