Reader Diana has always had small problems at her local KFC store in Los Lunas, NM. but never of this magnitude. After Diana returned home with her food, she realized that KFC had forgotten the biscuits. Because Diana lives nearby and is a fan of their biscuits, she returned to KFC to retrieve her missing food. Instead of a helpful and apologetic employee, she spoke to a rude and sarcastic employee who was convinced that she had included the biscuits and believed that Diana was liar. Diana recounts her conversation, inside…
On July 4, 2008, my guy and I decided some KFC extra crispy was in order, so we visited our local store. Now, every time we’d tried to order there in the past, there was always something wrong. Either they didn’t have any extra crispy at all or they were out of biscuits– lack of preparation it seems to me. I convinced my guy that this time it would be error-free. I was so, so wrong.
After ordering our meal and driving to the window, we were informed that lo and behold, they were out of certain cuts of extra crispy (thighs and legs I think). But, the manager on duty was quick to supply extra pieces of original as compensation. Cool. At home we discovered there were no biscuits. We were both starving, but since we lived so close to the joint I thought we could just drive though with our receipt, get what we paid for, then go and eat.
At any other establishment, we could have done just that, but this guy was unprofessional and irrational and would not give us the biscuits. At no time did he ever concede that his crew could have made a mistake. He insisted they “remembered” our order and had given us the biscuits. He was rude and tried to make sarcastic comments like, “Your chicken’s getting cold.” What does that even mean?! Of course I would rather be at home eating it, you jerk. He told us we could have other people at home that we’re trying to get biscuits for and that we would be surprised at how many people come through there looking for freebies. Proper customer service does not include telling irate customers they are wrong, simply because others are liars. Besides, the way we were treated those people were most likely telling the truth! Anyway, we refused to leave without what we paid for, he ignored us, customers were leaving the drive thru, we were yelling, “We want our biscuits”– it was ridiculous, man.
Finally, after at least twenty minutes, he shoved the biscuits at us saying, “Here. This is just so you’ll get the fuck outta here.”
I was livid. And my question to you is: What sort of chain-of-command exists in franchises? Are the owners the end of the line? This manager was the owner’s son, so I’m thinking there’s really no punitive action there. What kind of supervision do these franchises have, or can they just operate in whichever neglectful manner they please?
I would appreciate some help with this, Consumerist, because this was unacceptable, and I just want someone with authority to help them understand that.
Thank you.
If you can directly contact the owner, that would be a good first step, but there’s no telling if he would blindly support his son or be extra-tough with him. Occasionally, we’ve noticed that when some customers go up the chain-of-command at food joints, there is sometimes a person who actually seems to care a little. If this happens, consider yourself lucky. You can also fill out a customer comment on KFC’s website here. Additionally, they list their “Customer Satisfaction Number”–perhaps, it should be the customer dissatisfaction number: 1-800-225-5532. Good luck!
(Photo: kevindean)
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@iMike:
What they are choosing to eat really isn’t the conceren here. It’s about customer service. Who cares if they choose to eat fried chicken? If they messed up an order at a more health conscious restaurant would that change things? I don’t think so.
If I had always had problems with a particular KFC regarding orders, you better believe I would double check my order prior to driving off.
Just a thought.
@afrix:
“Problem number two: you don’t bother to check your order before leaving.”
Ah, so you are the dumb fuck that holds up the drive thru lane after they give you the order. Because the world revolves around you, right?
@iMike:
Same poster who says “i don’t fly so neither should you” when commenting on airline posts.
worthless.
@Dobernala: “KFC should have not mistreated the customer and should have not forgotten the biscuts. The customer is not at fault and going into the store does not change anything. You’re really grasping at straws here.”
No, the store should not have mistreated the customer.
But the store has been mistreating the customer on an ongoing basis, at least at some level. The store has been problematic all along.
I’m not sure what the customer expected after all those ongoing problems.
Albert Einstein said it best:
[www.brainyquote.com]
@Slytherin: ” “Problem number two: you don’t bother to check your order before leaving.”
Ah, so you are the dumb fuck that holds up the drive thru lane after they give you the order. Because the world revolves around you, right?”
You took that WAY out of context when you quoted me.
Remember, this is the restaurant that is problematic. With that knowledge, a consumer should bother to check his order prior to leaving the establishment.
In the case of other restaurants that rarely if ever get things wrong or cause other problems, the consumer can trust that his bag of food is what he wanted.
BTW, how does it negatively affect you if I take a few seconds to open the bag and see if my order is correct?
If you were in line behind someone doing that and you yelled at that particular consumer, that consumer could just as easily have said to you that you wanted the world to go YOUR way, regardless of what the consumer needed done.
“…world keeps spinnin’…” –Stewie
@afrix:
Really, that’s some of the worst “blame the OP” I’ve read on this site. And I often agree with the POV that some complaints on this site are short sighted or ignore how the customer themselves created the problem.
However, this is none of those. Going to a KFC does not require a full scale ritual of order checking in queue, nor is there any less merit to the complaint because this customer didn’t want to leave the car.
I was recently shorted chicken at a restaurant in Houston and didn’t bother going back to get the issue straightened out — instead I’ll just never give them my business again. So when a customer comes back through the drive through, they are giving the business a chance to KEEP a customer by fixing the issue. This KFC blew the chance. Sure, losing one customer is no big deal, but little did they count on their little dinky restaurant getting profiled and mocked here where a director of something or other will see it.
@mcjake: Sometimes that’s a failure on management’s part, sometimes it’s a fluke, sometimes an idiot in the kitchen failed to keep up on the marinades, sometimes an idiot manager failed to keep the kitchen staffed enough to keep up on the marinades. The failure either comes from not being able to read your patterns or from no one informing management/the staff of impending sales, coupons, or other special offers. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve asked another manager which fuckwit ordered our supplies for the week and it has been the resident fuckwit.
Ahh, true tales of working in KFC. Coleslaw, water fights, chicken baseball, throwing snow into the open fryers…
…and not pissing in anyone’s meal.
@bmamad: OK, now that makes a lot more sense. If you weren’t wearing shoes, I’d have just taken care of you at the window, probably by just giving you the biscuits, which you’d probably get anyway. Let’s just say that merchandise is cheaper than the Board O’ Health, though. Not that this tool wasn’t failing epicly from the start, mind you. If a customer is trouble, you don’t berate them, you get them gone and ask them to never come back.
Does KFC still have that number to call and praise/complain? If you haven’t taken that opportunity yet, I’d do it. And don’t let them send you coupons for KFC either. Considering how hard yours fails, I wouldn’t go back until the place was under new management for about a month or two.
@LostAngeles: Quoting myself, I’m not saying that you were trouble, I’m trying to make it clearer that the circumstances that would make that dumbass’s behavior acceptable most likely do not exist.
It is possible (albeit difficult) to tell a customer to fuck off and die with a smile, pleasant tone, and excellent customer service.
One time I went to a KFC and rode up the drive through to get some food. I really had a hankering for some fried chicken. I received the standard welcome to KFC can I take your order, and I started to order a whole bunch of food for me and my girl.
After ordering a whole bunch of stuff with acknowledgement from the girl, she says “we’re out of chicken.”
I sat there for a second, stunned. Out of chicken? Kentucky Fried CHICKEN? That’s like Burger King running out of burgers, or Taco Bell running out of tacos. Who the fuck goes to KFC and doesn’t order chicken? Half the shit on the menu is fucking chicken!
I was like uhhh… what? and she repeated it. I sat there, again, and pondered what had just happened. I then said “you’re out of… chicken?” and she said “yeah, that’s what I said.” I was like “Ok.. well obviously I didn’t come here for the soda since I tried to order chicken, ya know, at kentucky fried chicken, so nevermind.” Then she said “Ok, so cancel your order?” I rolled my eyes and backed up out of the drive thru so I didn’t have to see what kind of idiot this person was.
To the OP: I hope you didn’t eat the biscuits. I’m guessing they were prepared just for you.
@BruinEric: “Going to a KFC does not require a full scale ritual of order checking in queue, nor is there any less merit to the complaint because this customer didn’t want to leave the car.”
I’m not sure you read what I wrote.
Going to a KFC or anywhere else should not require a “full scale” (???? where did that come from?) ritual of checking your order. But in this case, the OP already made it plain that he has had problems with this restaurant in the past.
Is it not prudent, in the real world, for a consumer to act not as if the world were perfect, but instead as if the world is what it is?
He had a hankering for some KFC. Fine. He knew the restaurant had a negative reputation. That’s the real world. It’s prudent to check.
People can yell and scream all they want about how “it shouldn’t have to be that way!” but that won’t change the world. Yes, maybe it’s lowering your expectations–but it’ll get you home faster with the correct food.
And the drive-through isn’t for resolving customer service issues, whether it’s the chicken place or the bank. I’ll hold firm to that. Again, you may WANT the world to be different, but wanting is one thing, acting within the known REAL world is another.
KFC has rapidly declined in customer service, and product quality as well over the years. What used to be the pillar of the fried chicken restaurants has sadly sank to the bottom of the pit. This seems to have started when Harland Sanders sold the enterprise.
Their employees? They pull from the same employment pool as their competitors, yet they always seem to get the castaways. The rude, the loud, the unprofessional. Funny how McDonalds right across the street always seems to have the cute bubbly cheerful crew, and any KFC you find seems stocked with grumpy, rude, rundown, baggy pants off the ass, wearing, tattoed zombies.
As for getting out of the car to conduct business, I’d suggest you do that anyway. Walk in the average KFC, LOOK at the cleanliness of the employees, the floor in the prep area and you won’t have to worry about them shorting your order, because YOU WILL LEAVE.
Sort of reminds me of the old guard / prisoner psychology experiment except instead people are in the employee / customer role. The customer feels privileged, empowered, and if the subservient employee says “get the fâ—™ out” then by God, the customer is going to lose it.
@SkokieGuy: Excellent advice. When I was still a store manager, I would fix any REASONABLE problem without any fanfare, HOWEVER, if someone yelled at or cussed my employees, they were told to leave or I would call the police. On the other hand, if I heard an employee cuss a customer, they were fired on the spot.
And I just remembered something the op said about always having problems with this KFC. If this is true, then they need to go somewhere else.
When we go thru the drive thru at Taco Bell, we just check the amount of items we got. If we ordered 4 things, as long as there are 4 items in the bag, we feel we have come out ok. I can tell you why they sat there yelling about getting the biscuits. It’s because when you go somewhere like this and they keep not doing the job they are supposed to, over and over, you tend to get tired of it. If it’s because the employee only makes $3 an hour, then find a different job. Maybe they wanted chicken and this is the only place to get it. Maybe they really craved KFC biscuits (though I don’t know why I hate KFC).
I am going to play “devil’s advocate” here for a moment. I have several years of management experience, much of it at the store level in food service. And I have learned several things:
First off, mistakes DO happen. Orders are miss-made or items are left out. These people are under a great deal of pressure to get orders out as fast as possible. Working in one of these places isn’t as easy as some people make it out to be. They are quite often understaffed and that just increases the problems.
Second; you should be a considerate customer. Don’t come through a drive though if you have a $50 order. You will NOT get it quickly.
Thirdly; if you want to get fast service, GET OFF OF YOUR DAMNED CELL PHONE! All you are doing is increasing your chances of having a bad order.
Fourthly; be polite. How would you like it if I came to YOUR job and started screaming at you?
Now, as to this situation…both parties were wrong. I don’t like blaming the op but you never yell at workers in a fast food place. It can be considered “disturbing the peace” and you could be arrested. One the flip side of this, cussing out a customer is a very quick way of losing a job. I have fired lead employees for doing this sort of thing. One other thing, if the op always has problems with this place then the problem goes deeper than just the employees. There is a management issue here that isn’t being addressed.
@ MarvinMar:
Your Wendy’s has tacos? NICE! What state are you in?
@afrix: Must you really post a long reply (i.e. “last word” because of your lack of self-esteem) to everybody’s comment to you? After the first sentence or two we begin to lose interest. Just do what the Good Book says and turn the cheek. Ok?
@iMike: Referred to the mods for the commenter code. Congratulations, you might just have your own category there.
@afrix:
While I understand your point about events in the “real world,” this site really isn’t about languishing in the way things are in the “real world” in the sense that I think you mean it. This site is about prodding companies to improve customer service beyond the crappy way things are in the “real world.” This often means encouraging or shaming companies into making a better experience for consumers which also results in more sales for those companies.
To that end, when companies like KFC provide bad service — even to customers that don’t follow perfect complaint protocol, they deserve such prodding and often ridicule.
I never use the drive-thru at fast food places. The order will probably be wrong and sitting in a line of idleing cars makes no sense. Inside you can see how they are putting your order together. Also, always check the order before you leave.
@Slytherin: I’m posting individual replies to people who apparently only partially read my first post.
@BruinEric: “this site really isn’t about languishing in the way things are in the “real world” in the sense that I think you mean it. This site is about prodding companies to improve customer service beyond the crappy way things are in the “real world.”"
I agree–but let’s not try to boil the ocean here. This is very small potatoes to get worked up about (especially if you don’t know how to handle the situation properly) compared to so, so, so many other things, huge things, that badly need fixed.
If we let this kind of little thing grab our attention and effort, we let huge things go by.
@iMike: This sort of comment just isn’t helpful. Please try to keep the conversation on topic.
The image doesn’t have proper credit again.
@That-Dude: What fast food place have you ever been to that employed a janitor, numb nuts?
@iMike:
What do you propose that they eat the chicken alive? That sounds terribly inhumane and unappetizing. Biscuits are a wonderful form of sustenance, you would be surprised how long one can live off of biscuits and water alone.