KMOV channel 4 in St Louis doing a report on a Hardees

[ikojo]

restaurant where when a customer places an order at the drive up window they are actually talking to someone outside the state of Missouri. This should be interesting.

The report said that the person taking the order is in Anaheim, California. Hardees is currently testing the system with only one restaurant. The order is placed as usual at the drive up window but there is no human there. The person taking the order is on the phone in California. The order information is then sent over DSL lines to the restaurant.

How soon before orders are taken by someone in India or Russia where they can be paid pennies? It's all about maximizing corporate profits.

To think people thought restaurant work could not be outsourced! WRONG!

Sorry no link on the kmov.com website.

[booley]

1. I still don't get why they would bother

don't they stil have to have somebody on site to make the food and put the order together?

Not to mention, isn't there still somebody at the counter inside anyway?

[ikojo]

3. Many restaurants have gone to having two windows

at the drive up...one for placing the order and the other for collecting money and dispensing the order. According to the corporate spokesman, he said that the order taking "only took orders."

I think I read somewhere that McDonalds would like to experiment with DIY service at their restaurants. I may have read it in Fast Food Nation but since it's been a couple of years since I read that book, my memory may be shakey.

[Wapsie B]

2. Good lord!

Fast-food workers are some of the lowest paid people in the workforce, and that's still too much? If you want to maximize profits how about making a better product so people will buy more of it?

[ThorsHammer]

4. Great point

People are willing to pay extra for better food, even at places that are still fast food-ish (Subway, Steak Escape, etc). I do find it weird that Hardee's is the one pushing this, as they are more expensive than most other burger places.

[Rabrrrrrr]

5. Well, sweet mother of God.

So when the customer gets to the window, and the order is fucked up, the poor employee has to say "Sorry, your order went to someone in California. Bitch at them."

or the employee will need to try to fix it, and have to call up corporate national ordering clearinghouse in California, and say "I have an order from store # whatever and order # whataver and they ordered blah blah and got blah blah and I need to fix it - can you send an updated order for him, and make sure the order retraction gets properly sent to the order retraction national clearing house in Woodbridge, Ontario as well as a copy to my monitor (JHY-8347394GHQ01) and my manager, and readjust the accounting balance through the accounting clearing house in Kuala Lumpur with copies to the same places as the new order...."

And then the person in California says "The computer here says that the customer ordered blah blah, just as the order we sent says. The mistake must have been made by the customer. Tell the customer that he needs to take the food that was given him, and he can file a complaint over the Internet. Then, we'll go back and check the recording tapes, and if we find out that the ordering representative made the error, we will refund to the customer whatever the difference was in 6-8 weeks."

[ikojo]

6. What happens when DSL is slow and there is

a long line waiting at the drive up? Does the person in Anaheim (who they called Anna) work 24 hours a day?

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. "I'm sorry, everyone, the connection is down -

your orders will be filled as soon as we get a connection back. We don't know if it's here, or the one in Annaheim, or somewhere in between, but we should know in an hour or two and be up and running then."