Lets start Monday off with some math: If I buy food totaling 20.84 from Wendy’s and pay with two fifteen dollar gift cards, how many gift cards should I have left? Puzzling answer inside.

If you work at Wendy’s, the confusing answer is ‘2’. I personally ran into this on Saturday — my sister and I received Wendy’s gift cards for Christmas, and in this instance, she was willing to buy lunch for the whole family if I’d use my gift card to cover the rest. She’d exhaust her fifteen dollar card, and I’d dip into mine. Logical, yes?

Apparently, it is against Wendy’s policy. I ordered my food, handed the employee two gift cards, and a full five minutes of her fiddling with the credit-scanner, got my food. When I received my gift cards back, I received two, one with about three dollars and another with roughly seven, not the one with approximately ten. Curious, I asked why. Gleefully, the the Employee responded with “It’s policy to divide them up evenly between all the gift cards. That way, it’s more likely that you’ll come back!”

Frankly, I was stunned with the honesty. She took longer scanning and calculating the uneven distribution between the cards (making the four or five cars behind me wait longer for their food) and now I have to carry two cards instead of one. It’s a Minor inconvenience, but it seems like Wendy’s is going awfully out of their way to keep customers coming back. It’s a minor inconvenience, but it makes me think; if I buy something for, say, eight dollars, and hand them the two cards… how many do you think I’ll get back?

Pic:[mbeldyk]

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