(It helps to imagine the title screamed in Steve Dangle’s voice when he’s yelling “if you’re a goaltender, TEND THE GOAL!” 🙂 )
Yesterday evening, Katie met with one of her friends from middle school who now attends Sanderson High School who were the latest to demolish Enloe’s footy team in the Sanderson stadium.
It’s all good…you generally don’t go to footy games when Enloe is one of the sides that’s playing for the quality of the footy. Well, there was that one year they actually had someone who was talented and made the playoffs but most years…it’s a big AIN’T HAPPENING in the wins department.
Anywho, you go to hang out with your friends in the stands and for the marching band!
As it was their homecoming game, it had a late start and we had a bit of the mad munchies on our way back to The Nerdery. Unfortunately at 2300 or so, the choices aren’t all that hot in this area and we ended up at the New Bern Av Burger King. This store has never been my favourite for many years with customer service that ranges from indifferent to dodgy.
We give our order at the speaker box and we get the food without much of an issue.
Or so it seemed.
I was kind of surprised at the quoted price being a bit higher than I’d normally expect for what we ordered and after pulling away from the window, it was clearly apparent why I was having those grody feelings. The two “Original Chicken Sandwiches” were charged at their full price rather than the “2 for $6” plainly emblazoned upon the front of the building in a massive sticker that covers a rather large window.
I was more than a little irritated at this but as it was late at night and the New Bern Av area of East Raleigh is not the greatest after hours, I figured I’d sort it out the next day when it came time to take Katie to Clayton.
That’s when this story got to be truly surreal.
The next day, I stop at the Burger King and get the manager and show him the receipt where I was clearly overcharged and pointed at the window in question.
His response to that was to ask if I’d told the person on the headset about the “2 for $6” deal when ordering.
I told him no and he takes the position that it’s somehow my fault that I was overcharged in this instance and starts going on about how his cashiers won’t apply the discount unless you tell them about it.
That’s a reasonable position to take if I were using a coupon and you have the coupon at hand.
But I had no idea that the discount in question existed other than a vague sense that particular sandwich was generally a 2-for-1 deal that’s always in play…it wasn’t visible on the ordering board/screen and we had approached the store from the rear off Corporation Blvd so we wouldn’t have seen the massive sticker on the front window until after we’d already left the drive-through window.
But more to the point, it doesn’t actually have a coupon to receive the special discount!
Given I couldn’t have seen the sticker but anyone taking orders in that building and looking out toward New Bern Av could hardly miss it, I don’t think I’m taking a completely unreasonable position of believing that the cashier should have been well aware of the standing discount and applied it when I asked for “two Original Chicken Sandwiches”.
Then the manager turned to another potential line of defence by trying to suggest it’d be unreasonable to expect the cashier to do that if the drive-through is exceptionally busy or the hypothetical case of ordering one sandwich, ordering other things, and then adding another sandwich triggering the deal.
And that would be somewhat understandable though the cashier should have enough time in even the busiest of rush periods to review the order and fix any discrepancies before committing it to the kitchen especially in an era where almost all of them are forced to “suggest sell” or as if you want anything else even if you tell them “that will be it”.
His argument rather falls at the fence when you consider we were the only vehicle in the drive-through queue the entire time and no one was sitting in the restaurant so the cashier was hardly distracted.
The manager did end up processing the refund but I had never expected it to be such a complete hassle and be accused of doing something wrong to precipitate being overcharged. I get that he has to stick up for his employees (who I really wasn’t at all cross with!) but at the same time, blaming the customer because the cashier in question was at best thinking of their shift ending soon and at worse was just plain lazy and didn’t care is just not on.
I went out of my way to point out that I thought it was just a misunderstanding toward the end of shift and that I didn’t think it was some sort of nefarious plot though the manager’s reaction makes me wonder about that after the fact.
Neither of the other two nearby Burger King’s (the one on Poole Road that took a torpedo amidships as well as the one on Jones Sausage Road) are anywhere near as anal about getting the actual coupons, much less making you ask for the standing specials…they just apply the discount and carry on.
At least the food was nice and hot and tasted great!
I just could have done without the hassle and argument over what was a simple misunderstanding clearly obvious with the receipt and the front window sticker.
But perhaps I should have known better. After all, this is the location that when I ordered a couple of Whoppers…the guy at the window hands me the bag and then asked me if he could have one of them. I get it that he meant it to be a joke but there are just some jokes you really need to stay in your head rather than come out your mouth and that was one of them! I couldn’t even respond to that other than give him a look that translated as “are you totally *DERANGED*?!?”
Here’s a free clue for the New Bern Av location…if I wanted to get food from a clown, I’d pop through the drive-through at McDonald’s! 🙂