Fries? With that?

November 8, 2006 1:29 PM

"Typically, fast-food workers who handle drive-through calls are multitasking, wearing headsets to take orders while filling drinks or bagging food. It's a high-pressure job and employees often are more concerned about rushing through orders than trying to sell more food or being polite to customers... The call-center employees, who earn about $8.50 an hour, are trained to urge customers to add items to their order and are timed on how long each call takes."
posted by reklaw (55 comments total)

God, that is depressing. The future indeed.
posted by jontyjago at 1:38 PM on November 8, 2006

If this means that I can place my order with someone who speaks and understands English, I'll be happy.

"WelcomeToMcDonaldsTakeOrder?" in broken English gets tiring after a while, and I don't have enough fingers to count the times I've had to say to myself "They got the order wrong again, but its not worth the hassle to go back through and try to get it fixed."
posted by mrbill at 2:13 PM on November 8, 2006

Also, if it means I get someone who is less rude, that's also a bonus. I can't count the times I've gotten a "What you want?" from the loudspeaker whenever I pull up to a drive thru.
posted by triolus at 2:15 PM on November 8, 2006

I first read about this being introduced a couple years ago on metafilter, nice to see an update. It's depressing but I don't see any reason not to do this sort of thing through call centres.
posted by bobo123 at 2:19 PM on November 8, 2006

mrbill: I have more than enough fingers to count the number of problems I've had in a drivethrough, but maybe it's because I listen to people rather than shutting off my ears. It's not too hard to understand what someone's saying if you, y'know, try. Outright rudeness isn't something I've ever seen either, but that's probably just luck.

Why is it so fast to have it off-site? Why not just a dedicated order-taker in the same building? Surely not all the inefficiency is from the late-night skimming described in the article.
posted by mistermoore at 2:21 PM on November 8, 2006

why not just make it a drive-through automat with an atm scanner?
posted by troybob at 2:22 PM on November 8, 2006

I've been to Burger Kings and McDonalds with automated ordering systems. That seems like the way to go. I love it at Home Depot and the grocery store.
posted by mullacc at 2:26 PM on November 8, 2006

though i'm opposed to drive-thrus generally due to the waste of energy, pollution, etc
posted by troybob at 2:30 PM on November 8, 2006

I don't know – I'm under the impression that fast food restaurants (where I've never worked) are somewhat worse places to work than call centers (where I have.) Maybe someone can correct this. I certainly don't have any romantic memories of the call center. So I'm not sure it's depressing to me.
posted by furiousthought at 2:30 PM on November 8, 2006

Why is it so fast to have it off-site? Why not just a dedicated order-taker in the same building? Surely not all the inefficiency is from the late-night skimming described in the article.

A dedicated order taker in the same building wouldn't make sense when it was slow (late at night), but one person in a call center could cover a few stores, making it more efficient.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:31 PM on November 8, 2006

It is my hope to never have to speak to another human being again. I know someday my greatest dreams shall come to pass.
posted by elwoodwiles at 2:32 PM on November 8, 2006 [1 favorite]

Sounds like a good use of technology. I approve.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 2:39 PM on November 8, 2006 [1 favorite]

Why is it so fast to have it off-site? Why not just a dedicated order-taker in the same building?

Probably because, like one of the managers mentioned in the article, it takes the pressure off of workers to both take orders and fill orders. I can recall driving up to drive throughs, and you see the guy with the headset running around like mad, throwing ketchups in various bags, running 3 sodas at once, while also taking an order on the headset. Plus what jacquilynne said above about having 1 person cover more than 1 location during off-peak hours.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 2:42 PM on November 8, 2006 [1 favorite]

mrbill: I have more than enough fingers to count the number of problems I've had in a drivethrough, but maybe it's because I listen to people rather than shutting off my ears. It's not too hard to understand what someone's saying if you, y'know, try. Outright rudeness isn't something I've ever seen either, but that's probably just luck.

Before you jump on mrbill, I'd say it's likely not a flaw in either the person taking the order or the driver making the order, it's the actual physical separation that causes problems.

You lose body language and you lose context, not to mention we're all kind of good at lip reading even though we don't know it. There's a local mexican place I go to a lot and the staff barely speaks english. If I go in and order face-to-face, they always get it exactly right, even though there is a language barrier. They can hear me and understand me and ask me questions. In the drive-thru, all of that extra info is lost, and my order is wrong about 3/4 of the time.

I suspect the people they'd want working in a call center to be really good listeners that can parse a lot of accents, ask a lot of questions, and get orders correct more often than a busy worker that is physically in the location but also trying to make fries and make change with the guy in front of you.
posted by mathowie at 3:13 PM on November 8, 2006

ThePinkSuperHero: Hence "dedicated". And yeah, I think jacquilynne's got it about the slow periods.
posted by mistermoore at 3:16 PM on November 8, 2006

of course ... the american people are perishing from hunger and lack of time ... they MUST get their food 30 seconds faster

God, that is depressing. The future indeed.

oh, yeah ...
posted by pyramid termite at 3:16 PM on November 8, 2006

Metafilter: it's the actual physical separation that causes problems.
posted by mistermoore at 3:17 PM on November 8, 2006 [2 favorites]

The problem I have at one local drivethru is not that I can't understand them, but that they can't understand me. My orders are consistently, and sometimes wildly, incorrect.

So I've started going to the next closest location, which is on the other side of the city and county border, which means I'm not spending locally. I guess it's a good thing it's only an occasional breakfast on the run, and not real money we're talking about. But I'd bet real money I'm not the only person driving slightly out of my way to avoid having my order fubared.
posted by padraigin at 3:21 PM on November 8, 2006

See, you should replace the call-centre workers with voice-recognition software.

Depending on how you want to think about it, it was funny or inevitable or symbolic that the robotic takeover did not start at MIT, NASA, Microsoft or Ford. It started at a Burger-G restaurant in Cary, NC on May 17, 2010. It seemed like such a simple thing at the time, but May 17 marked a pivotal moment in human history.

Now that would be truly cool.
posted by spazzm at 3:26 PM on November 8, 2006

I've been to Burger Kings and McDonalds with automated ordering systems. That seems like the way to go.

There used to be a burger place near the A1/A14 junction in Cambridgeshire called Megatron, which was decked out like a UFO. You walked down a ramp through some slidey doors into the main area, which was full of plasma balls and stuff like that. Then you placed your order on a touchscreen computer, which fair blew my mind at the time. And I'm pretty certain they had guys in robot suits to bring the food to your table (although that might just be my childhood memories inventing things). It was awesome.

A few years ago McDonalds bought it, ran it for a while as a normal McDonalds restaurant, and then closed it down.
posted by chrismear at 3:37 PM on November 8, 2006

I worked at a call center to get through a year of college. It definitely wasn't the job for me, but as far as part time work, you could do a lot worse. It also helped that (according to the old-timers there at least) our call center was one of the nicest call centers to work at.

With a few dedicated lines and a couple extra employees, I could easily see a call center that size taking over for a very large percentage of San Luis Obispo's (pop. approx. 45000) drive-thrus - or rather, a different city with similar population since we still don't have drive-thrus.
posted by Zaximus at 3:38 PM on November 8, 2006

Efficiency will put us all out of work, eventually.
Save for the lone 14-year-old working in some empty building in Cambodia somewhere...eternally pushing a button.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:39 PM on November 8, 2006 [1 favorite]

Because fast-food workers aren't alienated enough from their labour.
/Marx
posted by arcticwoman at 3:39 PM on November 8, 2006

On a related note, Hyatt hotels have recently introduced automated check-in and check-out kiosks that work like the ones the airlines have, and to my great surprise, I have found that I love them. I guess I had not realized exactly how much I resented standing in line to give a hotel my business, although more specifically I am quite painfully aware how much I hated having to show ID to a desk clerk to check in, and the ATM/airline style kiosks do not require me to prove that I show an additional form of ID to prove I am who I claim to be just so I can spend my fucking money with them.

That is all.
posted by kcds at 3:42 PM on November 8, 2006

eternally pushing a button

Haven't they made a TV show about that?
posted by chrismear at 3:50 PM on November 8, 2006

spazzm, that is a great little novella. Not the most masterfully written, granted, but well thought out and very enjoyable.

I have worked in a call centre and it was pretty awful. It was a survey research call centre, though, so that might have been part of it. I think it was also extra bad becuase we called Americans specifically (I'm Canadian). Not because Americans are more rude or anything (I'm not convinced that's true) but because Americans get WAY more telemarketing and survey calls than Canadians and have much more reason to be frustrated. Also because I had to listen all day to assholes (and sometimes even tell people via push polls) that Bush is God, the war is justified, Democrats kill and eat babies, and homos are going to hell. God, I hated that job. With that said, though, I would GLADLY take that job back if my only other option was fast-food. In a fucking heartbeat.
posted by arcticwoman at 3:56 PM on November 8, 2006

It seems like one potential complaint about the change is that it pulls jobs out of the area where the restaurant is, over to some call center somewhere else. Maybe this will help people hate fast food places a little more. America is pretty disastrously behind in its hatred of fast food places.
posted by gurple at 3:56 PM on November 8, 2006

On a related note, Hyatt hotels have recently introduced automated check-in and check-out kiosk

I am intrigued. How do they give you a key?
posted by smackfu at 4:03 PM on November 8, 2006

there's a Subway in Malibu, CA where you can order on a touchscreen computer in the lobby.

The computer asks what you want in a recorded voice. Some people find it amusing to make it say "6 inch or footlong?" over and over. Not me, of course.
posted by drjimmy11 at 4:08 PM on November 8, 2006

smackfu

Maybe they use keycards and spit them out through a device like those automated checkout lines at Fry's and Walmart and such.
posted by Target Practice at 4:13 PM on November 8, 2006

Also, there's an Arby's near me that has a fully-automated ordering system.

The thing I like about these things is that it's impossible for there to be a communication error. You might enter it wrong (though it gives you the option to check your order before paying), and it's possible the person on the other end will read it wrong, but there's not going to be an issue of being unable to understand you or something.
posted by Target Practice at 4:15 PM on November 8, 2006

See, you should replace the call-centre workers with voice-recognition software.

Better than that: touch screen monitors standard on the dash of every vehicle. You approach the fastfood drivethru (or the futuristic food-reception queue analogue) and a menu is downloaded and displayed. You tap in your order, it hits their system, your order is prepared without human or machine vocal transcription errors of any kind.

Just stay away from the soylent green.
posted by cortex at 4:42 PM on November 8, 2006

why not just make it a drive-through automat with an atm scanner?

Because they want the human workers to persuade you to buy the large fries and the large milkshake.
posted by Airhen at 4:52 PM on November 8, 2006

If we can please form two lines: here for the complaints department, and here for those in favor of solving the problem with 19th century technology. The rest of you just keep doing whatever it is you're doing here.
posted by snofoam at 5:08 PM on November 8, 2006

mrbill writes "I don't have enough fingers to count the times I've had to say to myself 'They got the order wrong again, but its not worth the hassle to go back through and try to get it fixed.'"

I resist the pavlovian urge to drive away immediately and check my bag immediately. It seems like 50% of the time there is a problem with my order. And I just never go to one franchise near me because they never get it right and half the time there interact is down. It's amazing they are still in business really.
posted by Mitheral at 5:19 PM on November 8, 2006

In China folks mostly just point at the picture and say "zhei ge" (this). I wonder how this is works since they began introducing the drive-thru to the People's Republic.
posted by Pollomacho at 5:43 PM on November 8, 2006

"but maybe it's because I listen to people rather than shutting off my ears. It's not too hard to understand what someone's saying if you, y'know, try."

Sometimes it is actually quite difficult to communicate with the folks that are taking your fast food order. Heck, the other day at a Quizno's, the clerk had to go and get someone else because she didn't speak enough English to take the order.
My order? "Honey mustard chicken sandwich on white bread. No onions or tomato." I'd have tried to order it in Korean but I'm already pretty tied up with learning Spanish.

mrbill probably *was* listening, but was just dealing with yet another fast food employee that simply doesn't speak the same language.
posted by drstein at 6:16 PM on November 8, 2006

Damn immigrants!
posted by Pollomacho at 6:26 PM on November 8, 2006

You could use blue-tooth to transmit the order screen onto people's phones and they could blue tooth their answers back. That'd work reasonably well if there was some kind of standard for setting a screen up.

Then you could save your recent orders on your phone and, if as many people do, you usually order the same or similar things you could just recall a recent order.
posted by sien at 6:55 PM on November 8, 2006

Does anyone use the little computerized order-taker at the supermarket deli line?

Personally, I'm a techno-nut but I don't use that. I like taking the number, waiting a line, and picking things out by what looks good.
posted by smackfu at 7:16 PM on November 8, 2006

For me, this is an amazingly positive article. I work as a consultant supporting the industry leader in call center quality monitoring software, and the call center industry is exploding. The simple fact is, guys, that when you move the call centers away from the storefront, you have much more control over what sorts of things actually are said to the customer, and it's much easier to get rid of the problem agents. You may not like the constant upsell, but if you complain into the phone, chances are that it'll get recorded eventually, and if enough people do it, managers will take notice. That's the beauty of it all - you get a better "interaction", and they get more feedback from you and from their agents. Win-win.
posted by TheNewWazoo at 8:32 PM on November 8, 2006

I don't at all get what people would find depressing about this... I mean, it's a fast food restaurant. Of course it's all assembly line and specialized. Do really get warm fuzzies from the thought that the person invisibly answering you via the drive-through speaker is thirty feet away instead of three thousand miles away, or that they might be the same person who's reheating and assembling the components of your food? Has this development taken the glamor out of fast food for you?

I actually find it kind of encouraging (and surprising actually), because it means that the artificial intelligence voice-response systems haven't yet progressed to the point that they can do the same thing. Now that's something that'll be depressing when it happens, not only in the aw-gee sort of way, but depressing to our service-career-oriented economy.
posted by XMLicious at 8:33 PM on November 8, 2006

Leo Getz: They FUCK YOU at the drive-thru, okay? They FUCK YOU at the drive-thru! They know you're gonna be miles away before you find out you got fucked! They know you're not gonna turn around and go back, they don't care. So who gets fucked? Ol' Leo Getz! Okay, sure! I don't give a fuck! I'm not eating this tuna, okay?

IMDB notable quotes lethal weapon 2
posted by bukvich at 9:04 PM on November 8, 2006

Good points, TheNewWazoo. Everybody knows that fast-food began scraping the bottom of the jobs barrel during the dot-com boom, but it really hasn't improved. The local high school kids no longer want to work fast food. The middle-aged immigrants and retirees, on the other hand, do.

I've witnessed two separate utter meltdowns of counter service in a McDonald's (this was after they ditched the bun-warmers and before they simplified the menu). The multitasking the workers do is crazy. It's very rarely the same person taking your order and filling it anymore, and very often you get more than one person filling different parts of it. Of course they long ago automated the "telling the kitchen the order" part through video screens. But anyway, the counter meltdowns in both cases were in large part caused by the priority the staff are required to devote to drive-through customers.

Why is it so fast to have it off-site? Why not just a dedicated order-taker in the same building?

Asked and answered, but in a word, training, and speaking English. Being able to cover (say) three locations with two people is a bonus -- you can "rightsize" your staffing throughout the day. But the order-taker will be someone who does nothing but take orders, and gets very good at it, or faces replacement. Most stores doing it manually will be stuck with whomever speaks the best English or putting the girl who always overcooks the fries on the order desk or whatever. You eliminate the multitasking, the forgotten parts of the order, the outright mistakes. You no longer have to have the manager taking and filling orders while somebody goes to the bathroom. And so forth.

And by improving the experience of the customer, you get more repeat business down the road. How many people have sworn off a particular restaurant because they always get the orders wrong? (At one job we sent a 20-person order to a Subway *by fax* and got back 18 incorrect orders, and that store lost the office business for six months.) By improving the speed with which cars go through, you shorten the line at any given moment, and you get fewer customers pulling up and realizing they don't have the time or patience to wait.

One possible downside I can see is that this will mean fewer employees in a store overnight (when applicable), possibly increasing opportunities for crime (internal or external). The shrinkage is probably less than some stores get now (per the article). On the other hand, a store with a full-time audio hookup to an order center will essentially be able to have police notified the instant something begins happening. Add a few cameras and a centralized security staff to the call center and you can cover dozens of stores with just a few people.
posted by dhartung at 9:38 PM on November 8, 2006

Cortex Writes: "touch screen monitors standard on the dash of every vehicle. You approach the fastfood drivethru (or the futuristic food-reception queue analogue) and a menu is downloaded and displayed. You tap in your order, it hits their system, your order is prepared without human or machine vocal transcription errors of any kind./em>"

I thought they already had this. Between the GPS and the digital radio, OnStar, and cell phone/WiFi I thought that this was already an option in some higher end vehicles.

Maybe I don't get out much and dream of my jetpack too much.
posted by Balisong at 10:25 PM on November 8, 2006

I can't wait for the day when I walk into a McDonalds and a robot will take my order. My burger, fries and caramel sundae will be delivered to me mechanically.

Preferably, I will be able to go there in my automated transportation device without making physical contact with anybody. Above all, I hope no non-English speaking being will have touched my food. Can you imagine the germs and diseases such people must carry?

Seriously, it is such a waste of my time and productivity to have to enunciate what I would like to order to some foreigner who doesn’t master my language. I would much prefer to enrich the overlord technological geniuses who have made my life so convenient than to support a miserable minimum wage underling.
posted by pwedza at 11:11 PM on November 8, 2006

mrbill probably *was* listening, but was just dealing with yet another fast food employee that simply doesn't speak the same language.

Bingo. The employees that work the breakfast shift are awesome, but if I go there at 3am... the wife and I joke that they make the janitor work the drive-thru window. It's that bad.

(McDonalds at 9601 1/2 Westheimer, Houston, Texas)
posted by mrbill at 11:28 PM on November 8, 2006

Sure, like the guy making your burger doesn't scrub the toilets down?!

And everybody knows them for-en-ers wipe don't use TP when they do what they do...

I'm telling you, Mr.Bill. Robots.
posted by pwedza at 11:50 PM on November 8, 2006

I work as a consultant supporting the industry leader in call center quality monitoring software, and the call center industry is exploding. The simple fact is, guys, that when you move the call centers away from the storefront, you have much more control over what sorts of things actually are said to the customer, and it's much easier to get rid of the problem agents. You may not like the constant upsell, but if you complain into the phone, chances are that it'll get recorded eventually, and if enough people do it, managers will take notice. That's the beauty of it all - you get a better "interaction", and they get more feedback from you and from their agents. Win-win.


What a dream come true. But I need more. Is there any way that we customers can obtain any sort of managerial status? Complaining is just not enough for me. I really want these people to fear me when I pull up. Their ultimate servitude is what we almighty customers should demand. I want to see beads of sweat on their brow telling me that they know I can have their asses shit-canned for one unwanted pickle.


I also propose that they display their immigration status on their name-tag. A phone on the wall to Immigrations & Customs Enforcement would also be handy.


But really:

I sincerely hope that the children of at least some of these horrible no-speaky-English people hit the books, get into elite universites, and rip the shit out of our obese, burger-snarfing, PS3 playing brats.
posted by pwedza at 12:10 AM on November 9, 2006

I sincerely hope that the children of at least some of these horrible no-speaky-English people hit the books, get into elite universites, and rip the shit out of our obese, burger-snarfing, PS3 playing brats.

The problem with that is that their kids vote Republican in droves.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:46 AM on November 9, 2006

I can't wait for the day when I walk into a McDonalds and a robot will take my order. My burger, fries and caramel sundae will be delivered to me mechanically.

It will have to be robots with telescopic legs to service the hover car drive thru lanes.
posted by vbfg at 1:43 AM on November 9, 2006

I wonder what happens if they lose connection to the call center and no one at the store can take an order.

I wonder, because i'm picturing lots of yelling, panic, running, thowing up of the hands, and other general pathos.

This mental image is really amusing to me for some reason.
posted by Hicksu at 4:11 AM on November 9, 2006

"DRIVE THRU CLOOSED"
posted by smackfu at 6:37 AM on November 9, 2006

At risk a "duh" moment, in my world there are two types of drive-thrus I visit: the ones that get my order right, and the ones that don't. There are enough of them out there that I can actually discriminate towards those that don't totally suck. (Taco Bell by I-45 & FM 1960 in Houston = don't totally suck). Anyway, either they get the order right or they just don't see me again.
posted by parliboy at 7:51 AM on November 9, 2006

I wonder what happens if they lose connection to the call center and no one at the store can take an order.
I wonder, because i'm picturing lots of yelling, panic, running, thowing up of the hands, and other general pathos.
This mental image is really amusing to me for some reason.
posted by Hicksu at 4:11 AM

It's just like trying to get correct change when the automatic change dispenser is out of order.
posted by Balisong at 7:24 AM on November 12, 2006