The Story of Five Pickles and A Fries of Well Done with No Salt

its kinda disturbing when you look at a burger's inside...

            During the whole purchasing process, I had an overall positive experience with McDonald stuff. However, the whole process does take a while to proceed. It took almost 8 minutes which was the period of time from the start of ordering food to the moment received the food. The number of people involved for the whole process was three in total because two of the counter employees and one manager were involved in this order. As I start mentioning about the extra pickles for the hamburger, McDonald stuff first response was that I, as a customer, needed to pay extra twenty cents for additional ingredients. However, the real problem the employee encountered was the request of having the exact text of five pickles and well done, no salt fries to show on the receipt. The employee insisted the fact that she is not able to do so. After twice confirmation from her, I finally request to talk to the manager. She went and back very quickly to reply that “manager will be saying the something.” I questioned her if it is the words from the manager. She hesitated and went back to bring manager himself to me. As manager showed up, I repeated my request and he processed the order in a timely fashion without any hesitation. However, after I got the receipt and the actual food, I double checked the receipt and realized that the manager did everything correctly except he did not put the words “no salt” on the receipt. I called back the manager and informed him about such issue and he insisted this time that he could not go back to reprint it but he could, and did, write down “no salt” on the receipt for me. Because the requirement is not strictly “print” all text on the receipt but “appear” on the receipt, so I accepted the offer. In the McDonald, I doubled check the number of pickles and verified its number was exactly five.

            In considering with my experience, I can say that the McDonald that I visited shown sufficient politeness to the customer and proceed the order without too much delay. As a management consultant to the McDonald, I would rate the management processes of my extra special order as acceptable. I witnessed the whole preparation process. Apparently, they did not ready for such special order, because I did not get the ordered burger until the manager took my order and reordered it in the way I asked for since the receipt was not printed until my specifications met. That took around six minutes. However, they made it up quickly, and took only around two to three minutes to prepare for the order from the moment that receipt was printed. If I was to change the process and make it more organized, I would have accommodate the request from the special order’s customer immediately and satisfied him as quick as possible to prevent other customers to pay too much attention on the scene. The communication was the critical part for such special orders to proceed in a timely manner; however the manager, in my opinion, tried to get over with the customer by telling the employee to insist her ordinal claim—“such request could not be performed”. My second scenario is that the employee hesitated from actually asking the manager for the request and considered this issue was easy to solve. After I insisted to talk to him, the manager realizes the fact that the customer could be stubborn as I was. This cost unnecessary delay for the ordering process and actually, if I did it in an exact lunch hour, a long line will be accumulated behind me. Obviously, the employees were not well trained for such rare situations. The one who served me realized such functions for the touch screen ordering machine only after this incidence. I recommend McDonald to implement a through training and simulation practice for all employees for all situations once a year to help employees be familiar with all necessary functions of the ordering machine. Recall the observation in the McDonald, I did see that the manager is trying to implement his leadership influence since he was stay behind the counter’s employees and observing them in a frequent basis to ensure their service quality, though the manager may not be able to fully paying attention on the counter because he was helping out the delivery of food as the same time. On the other hand, I consider it could be a weakness in leadership influence since he could not leave the employees functioning by themselves during the non-busy hours without personal supervision.

Decision Making

                Last week’s decision making session was partially interesting and chaotic for the rest. I am a person who does not really interested in involving into decision making unless I feel the decisions that the group is moving toward may greatly against  my interest in general, or you can say a typical accommodative decision making  type. So at the beginning of the discussion, I got involve a bit by just shot out my desire of able to reserve both choice of curve and extra credit options. Then, the thing becomes interesting; several students went on the stage to try their best for “the common good” since unless there is 100% agreement between all attending students, we will get neither the curve nor any thing else. Unfortunately, I feel the discussion was once a while interrupted by different interest groups and the leaders tried to accommodate with everyone, or shall I say whoever actually said something aloud. Ends up that most opinions that provided by these participants have almost equal yet not enough people to support neither of the options. This resulting in a wide spread avoiding and accommodative mood among the students. The leader’s power rose from low to moderate and drop back to low from time to time, once in the middle there were just chaos between different sides’ interests against each other and fighting so hard and ends up both solutions were dropped because there was several students’ shout against. Finally, at the end after sense that the most agreeable solution may not ever emerge unless all available options are listing visually for all, they started to write on the board. Trust me that writing was one of the greatest advancement for the human civilization regardless in term of religious or scientific perspective. As time is ending, something more dramatic started. More students felt the crisis and the necessity to stand up for a last fight. The situation became two leaders split in two parts; however it did not last long since people quickly realized that there is no future for keep on fighting against each other but reach for a simpler solution. At the end, few minutes before the end of the class, leader’s power maintained at moderate level and group’s power as well since the group in this case has much stronger power therefore, it is rather impossible for a fellow student to emerge to lead all unless the one is extremely insightful. However, the leader made an accurate choice of accommodate only basic rights that all that had no problem at the very beginning. It ends up, we get we we wanted to get at the very beginning, all extreme thoughts and attempts disappeared into the dust of the battlefield. I think We would have done better job if we wrote down all suggestions and vote on them one by one at the very beginning and there will be less likely any chaos like what we experienced. Though I have to admit its kind of entertaining to see how people struggle for what they want. I believe our professor must enjoy such tournaments very much as well.