One of my jobs is in fast food. And of course we have online orders. Our store just places the finished orders on a rack with the receipt that had the order and customers name on them. No sealing, or checking in. It’s an honor system.
We are located in a small town and this has never been an issue, until last night.
Two orders came in, one due at 4:00pm for A and one due at 4:05pm for B.
We get both done, and Set them on the rack. Each order is in a different size bag and has the receipt stapled to the front facing the customers.
By 4:10pm one bag is gone, and another customer is wondering around the area not saying anything but looking lost.
So I inquire, and find out that it is customer A here for the order. I check the rack, it’s gone. But B’s order is still there.
I right away call customer B, and text both bosses on what to do. B does not answer, but A is here and wants food.
So I remake A. While im doing so B has shown back up with A’s order. B tries to give it directly to A, but they have none of that and point to me. I take the orginal A order and place it down, confirming with B that nothing was opened. At this point I had B’s order off the rack in the back.
I finish A’s remake and hand it off with a free drink for the trouble.
Then I turn to B. With Instuctions from big boss, I tell them.
" Ok so i have your order that’s yours. But we did have to remake A because of food safety, and we can not just trust that the orginal order is safe now. Boss asked that you pay for A’s order as well. You get to keep that food, and your orginal order of course."
To which B replys "Fuck it ill pay it"
So B pays for both and leaves with both.
I just feel icky. As a low ranking employee, if B paid or not doesn’t affect me in anyway. I wont see anything on my paycheck. But bosses will. Did I do the right thing? Am I an asshole for asking this customer to pay and extra 30+ dollars for their mistake? Or did I follow through with a code of ethics?
Your boss is a jerk. This is penny wise and pound foolish. He’s going to lose customers operating this way
NTA
NTA
You did nothing wrong.
Managment has come up with a LOW COST way of letting people pick up orders. This is clearly for Managment’s benefit. They are saving money not having people staffing this aspect. That is fine, but because THEY chose this system, they should expect mistakes. Your post suggests there are no problems with this system, so CLEARLY management has saved money, but when there is a problem, THEY should suck it up and not charge. Again, they did nothing illegal, but as a policy that is cheap!!
Sounds like you guys need to have a new system pit in place instead of relying on an “honor system”.
You’re NTA. Neither of the customers are either. B wasn’t paying attention, and obviously made a mistake, but they returned to try to make it right. The company policy/management sucks here because there should be a better process in place to mitigate confusion with pick up orders.
Boss is the AH You should have just fixed the issue and figured out a better system to ensure this doesn’t happen again … like putting their names on the bags very clearly or handing orders to people who placed them ahead of time. You likely just lost two customers.
ESH.
Mistakes happen. Just because it hasn’t doesn’t mean the shit system isn’t a shit system. There’s a reason verification for pickup orders is standardized across the industry.
Business should have eaten the cost.
YTA
Your place of business has a bad system for ensuring orders are picked up correctly. An employee should be handing food directly to the person who bought it. This isn’t “customer made a mistake” this is “business doesn’t know how to run a business.”
You followed the instructions you were given, and it isn’t your place to ignore instructions.
NTA.
Having said that…if your fast-food restaurant is filling $30 pickup orders, the management needs to have something in place to prevent this type of mistake. (Given that it’s fast food, I’d probably do something like “If your order was more than $X, please ask for it at a register”…)
NTA because it’s not on you, but that’s incredibly stupid. If the business isn’t going to properly check orders and serve the food to the right people then they should be eating the loss when shit happens.
This kinda depends on how old you are, but kinda ESH. It’s the restaurants job to make sure that the orders are being picked up by the correct people, so you shouldn’t have charged B, especially since they did come back with the order meaning taking it was probably actually accidental. Should B have been more aware of which order they were taking? Yes, which is why they kinda suck too. Your bosses obviously suck for having this procedure in place and for making you be the one to execute it.
That’s why your age matters, if you’re a kid at your first job I could understand why you might have just done what your boss told you to do about it and I would say you personally (and A) are NTA.
NTA because you followed your boss’s instructions. Your boss however is a big AH.
NTA, but your boss is. This is just a cost of doing business. Either hire more staff to manage online orders, or just accept this as an occasional business loss. Customer shouldn’t be “punished” for this kind of mismanagement even if it was partially their fault.
Lol if I was that customer I would have told you no ill take what I ordered and nothing more. It was a legitimate accident and shit happens. We’re you instructed on what to do if they refused ? I mean because if they said no and just wanted their food …. were you going to hold their food hostage?
When you are in food service and someone takes someone else’s food you cannot guarentee anything has been done or the cleanliness of that person.
You remake the food and they don’t pay extra. You fucked up letting them take the wrong order.
Its called the risk of doing business, look it up, risk and fixes are on the establishment.