Please stop telling me what you don’t have, won’t do, or are not able to do.
Me: Hi, I’d like to order a double cheeseburger meal with a Coke to dr….
Stupidity Fountain/Loudspeaker: We don’t have that.
That’s a perfectly adequate answer if your job was to prove or disprove my beliefs about what was on your menu. If you’re working on passing a test of the new menu for your management team, they’d be pretty excited, as this is probably one of many trick questions designed to ensure you’re paying close attention.
However, if you’re working the drive through window your primary responsibility, presumably, is taking orders. You may even be expected to perform this duty with some degree of speed or accuracy. If you’re progressing along your career path and have earned the right to wear a restaurant-branded London Fog jacket or no longer wear a visor or paper hat as part of your uniform, you may be expected to maintain both speed and accuracy.
The problem with “we don’t have that” is that it doesn’t further any of your goals. For example:
You’re not taking my order, are you? You’re challenging my knowledge of the menu. Maybe I’m just not as smart as I think I am, and you’re just the one to prove it.
You’re not making this very quick, either. So I’m sitting here wasting time, and that shake machine isn’t going to clean itself, so what’s the hold up?
You’re missing the point of this accuracy thing. The goal here isn’t to tell me how wrong I am, but to enter my order correctly so you can take my money from me when I pull around to your closet and drop my spare change into your little Hannibal Lecter transfer box.
So you do know…
- You are supposed to take my order.
- You serve double cheeseburgers, which I want.
- What a ‘meal’ typically consists of, and that I want one.
- You know what I would like to drink.
Knowing this, which of the following is the most appropriate response?
- Tell the customer you don’t have a double cheeseburger meal. (“We don’t have that.”)
- Tell the customer you don’t serve double cheeseburger meals, and then list as many foods you can think of which you also do not serve, so they don’t make the same mistake twice. (“We don’t have that, or pizza, or cucumber salad, or fried rice, or…”)
- Pretend you didn’t hear the customer, and hope they drive away or change their order when you ask them to repeat it a minute or two later. (“I’m sorry, what?”)
- Punch in an order for something you do have, then take your break immediately after completing it to avoid any headaches. (“That’ll be <mumble mumble> pull around for your total.”)
- Explain there is no meal or combo, but you do serve all of the things the customer wants, you’ll just have to charge them separately.
- Crayon. Shoes. Can of soup.
In closing, just remember that telling someone what they can’t do or can’t have doesn’t move the conversation forward, and just makes you look like an asshole. Take a chance and offer a solution instead of taking this one opportunity to feel smarter than….well, almost all of your customers.
And by closing, I don’t mean the time you take out the garbage and clean the… Oh fuck it, nevermind. Just give me a number one.
