When buying in bulk is not cheaper
I also thought about titling this post “McDonalds employees have no souls”. You will soon understand why.
I have always been interested in how things work. I read books on Quantum Mechanics and other Physics subjects because I want to understand how our world and universe works. I read about medical subjects because I am interested on how the human body works. I read technology stuff to learn about new technology and how it works, you get the point.
Along that line, I have always been fascinated with how people think. Not on the IQ level, but more like what were they thinking or caused them to make a particular decision, etc. So, I sometimes perform “social experiments”, to help me understand other people. Sometimes this just takes the form of thinking about a situation after the fact, pondering what made them say or do what they did, and what could have made things turn out differently.
Sometimes, I perform a more active experiment, where I will setup a situation with the intent to observe the result. For instance, I will sometimes give someone an opportunity to screw me over, just to find out if they would do so given the chance. If the cost is low, I know now they cannot be trusted, and in the future will not trust them with something important. They think they got away with it, but actually they revealed their true nature.
I digress. Today I went to McDonalds with the intent to buy some chicken nuggets for lunch. I was pretty hungry so planned on getting a 20-piece. I know from past experience that a 20-piece nuggets costs around $6.50.
I entered the drive-thru, and was greeted with “Hello, would you like to try some Chicken McNuggets, which are on sale, 4-piece for $1.00″? I thought cool, I can get 20 for 5 bucks and save some money. I didn’t even know they had a “4-piece”, maybe it’s normally part of a kids meal or something? Anyhow it immediately occured to me that there was a (relatively) big price difference between the 5x$1.00 nuggets and the 1x$6.50 nuggets. So I wondered what he would do if I said I wanted 20?
So I said “Sure! But I’m pretty hungry, so I think I need more than 4…how about 20 nuggets?” ”Okay sir, 20 mcnuggets…please drive to the 1st window for your total”. Now I drive up, wondering if he blindly pressed the 20-piece button, or actually used his brain and rang up 5 of the specials. I was fully prepared to “lose” the extra money, just to find out if this guy had a soul or not.
I get to the window, and he gives me the total. Yep, he screwed me and charged me for a regular 20-piece mcnuggets! I watched the guy to see if he was snickering or had a manager watching him that made him feel like he couldn’t point out I could have gotten the exact same thing cheaper. Nope. He didn’t even make eye contact with me, just took my money and gave my change like a robot. Yep, this guy has no soul, and/or is just too zoned out doing his mundane job to even think about what he is doing. Sad.
On a semi-related note. I noticed they gave me like 10 containers of BBQ sauce, and on the receipt it said the sauce price was “$0.00″. Recently Alex went through the drive-thru, and asked for sauce, which they forgot to give him. He immediately went back through the drive-thru, and asked for only some sauce, and they CHARGED HIM for it…like 30 cents per sauce packet! Again, the exact same guy who not even 2 minutes earlier had looked him in the eye as he asked for sauce that he did not get, then looked him in the eye again and asked for money, and didn’t even occur to him that this was the same guy, or that it was strange that someone would come to a drive-thru and only ask for some sauce…LOL! If that is not proof that these ppl have no souls, or that they are at least big-time zoned out, I don’t know what is!
This post ended up being way longer than I intended it to…sorry 
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:20 pm
This makes me wonder if I have been involved in an unknown experiment and if I had passed. hehe
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:32 pm
I don’t think they’re motivated to give a shit, honestly. I mean they’re literally at a job where $8.75 is probably their rate of pay and they’ll work at the level that $8 bucks will afford. They’re not motivated to work any harder because they’ll get that $8 bucks regardless, unless they aspire to become manager. Pretty much very few companies get this: You get what you pay for.
And this is why, generally speaking, fast food places like McDonalds always have bad customer service stories. In addition, their managers probably micromanage and flaunt their superiority around as well.
Another idea I just came up with is… what if this kid is angry and this is his passive-aggressive way of getting back at the system…err customers.
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:37 pm
I think maybe he was just THAT stupid and didn’t realize that it was a better deal. He is a McDonald’s employee..
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:43 pm
I can believe all of that…but most amazing to me is what they did to Alex…that was just crazy!
February 28th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Dude – it’s McDonalds, they ain’t paid for their math skillz, even if it is math they should have learned in 4th grade. It’s like if it came to 6.26 and you gave them a penny so you could get 75 cents back instead of 74, they give you a look like wtf is thi for.
McDs here started charging for extra packets of nugget sauce too. They even have a sign on the drive thru window with how many packs are permitted depending on how many nuggets you get. I likey the sweet & sour for my fries but they totally get pissy about it.