"If you work just for money, you'll never make it, but if you love what you're doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours."
-- - Ray Kroc, former CEO of McDonald's
My daughter is mostly non-verbal and has a very limited vocabulary. One of the few words she says is "McDonald's". It is the one she greets me with every Saturday morning.
Returning from donating platelets on a Sunday morning I decided to surprise her with her favorite lunch. I pulled into the parking lot and ordered five value meals for my family from the McDonald's app.
A few minutes later two employees knocked on my window balancing trays of food and drink. Seeing the confusion in my eyes, one of them said: "You didn't order a bag."
You have to look to find it buried behind the "Place Order" button, but McDonald's locations in Los Angeles are giving you the option of paying ten cents to place your items in a bag. Some are still bagging your items if you do not make the selection, but this franchise made me stack five boxes of nuggets, five fries, three chicken sandwiches, and the one burger they remembered to give me on the front seat of my car. At least they gave me a tray for the drinks.
Not only is this new policy inconvenient, it affects the quality of the food. Left in the open air without insulation, the fries were cold by the time I got the food home.
McDonald's is saying this new fee is in response to a law that took effect in July 2023 requiring them to either provide reusable bags or charge for paper bags. Other chains must be eating the cost because only Chick-fil-A has joined them in passing the charge along to the customer. While they are using this law to nickel and dime their customers, some franchises are ignoring the requirement that customers must ask for a straw:
Plopping unbagged food in a customer's lap is only one example of a lack of customer service in today's marketplace. It seems that while corporations have used the post-COVID period to extract record profits from the American consumer they have also cut the value of their products and services. Between shrinkflation and reductions in quality, we are paying more but getting less.
Another example is provided by the Six Flags chain of amusement parks. Never a shining example of putting customers first, the staff at Magic Mountain hit new lows when I tried to cancel my family's monthly memberships.
Deciding that we needed to take a break, I walked into the Season Pass processing center and was told that it was taken care of. However, I noticed a couple of months later that I was still being charged the monthly fee. When I tried to get a refund, I was told that they had no record of the cancellation. They would not give me back my money.
The company tracks visits to the park and could have easily verified that we had not visited since the date of my cancellation at the park. Instead, they were willing to bet that their money grab would not cost them future business. So far it has, as we have no plans on going back.
Royal Caribbean was also willing to sacrifice short-term gain for future profits. For my wife's birthday, the extended family embarked on a week-long journey to Alaska. The ten of us were having a great time and my wife and I were already talking about where we would like to sail next. Then we hit Anchorage.
Before our trip, we had pre-booked an all-you-can-eat Salmon Bake described as a leisurely meal in an idyllic setting. We were told that we could look forward to enjoying time next to a creek and cooking smores over an open fire.
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