The Night of the Blank Stare
My wife is one of those rabid fans of McDonald's McRib, so when she got a craving for one the other night, love took the place of common sense and I ventured out to the local Mickey D's to fulfill her wish.
Upon arriving at our neighborhood fast food palace, I couldn't help but notice that none of the exterior lights were illuminated at seven o' clock on a dark winter night. Not even the iconic golden arch towering high above the roofline. If I hadn't known the place was there, I wouldn't have known it was there. So, when I entered, I brought this to the attention of an employee, a young female who was rather desultorily mopping the floor. And in response, I got my first Blank Stare.
Now, for the sake of being a general nuisance, I have been known to speak Italian to employees of Olive Garden and other pseudo-Italian places. But, here, caro lettore, I assure you I was speaking perfect, unaccented English. For all the response I got, however, I might as well have been speaking Italian. Just a Blank Stare. For all I know, I could have informed her that her shoes were on fire and I probably still would have gotten the same Blank Stare.
Moving on, I stepped carefully over the staring girl's handiwork and made my way to the counter in order to order my wife's McRib. You know, McDonald's actually discourages such behavior nowadays. They would much prefer that you order through their app or use that oh-so-personal ordering kiosk positioned right where you can hardly avoid it. But if you really must be old-fashioned and insist on actually speaking to a flesh and blood person, there are still a few of them around to serve you. All you have to do is find one and then get their attention. Easier said than done.
In retrospect, I think this is McDonald's way of admitting defeat. They know that the personality level of their employees is roughly equivalent to that of an automaton so they just put an actual automaton out front to begin with.
Anyway, there were at least four uniformed people “back there” that I could see and I know that at least two of them saw me step up to the counter because they made eye contact with me. They knew I was there. But they apparently couldn't have cared less. I guess it wasn't their job to man the counter, ergo, it similarly wasn't their job to find the person or persons whose job it was. So they just gave me the Blank Stare as I stupidly stood there waiting for service.
Eventually, from somewhere “back there,” someone in a management shirt appeared. “Ah,” I thought, “she is going to wait on me.” Alas, no. She was obviously focused on something having to do with the ice cream cone in her hand. She stood with her back toward me, intent on addressing the aforementioned Blank Starers. Whatever they were all discussing was evidently more important than taking my order as they all discussed it for quite some time. Finally, when I heard someone else “back there” shout out, “There's somebody at the back window,” I took the opportunity to chime in with, “There's also somebody at the front counter!” Well, that startled them all into noticing me. And giving me a Blank Stare. No greeting, no apology; simply a look that said, “who the hell are you and what are you doing standing there?”
Management person moved slowly to the register and stood there waiting for me to explain myself. Apparently, in lieu of anything along the lines of “hello,” or “may I help you,” her mere acknowledgment of my presence was all I was going to get. So I opened the one-sided conversation with the same observation about the lack of exterior lights causing me to almost miss the entrance. Surely, I thought, the manager would be interested in knowing this. Nah. I just got another Blank Stare. Not even a grunt.
Okay. I soldiered on and placed my order. A mumbled, “Is that all?” demonstrated that she could, indeed, verbally communicate, but when I said “yes” and proffered a gift card as payment, she merely pointed in the general direction of the POS terminal and said, “right there.” Ah, how foolish of me not to have noticed.
She came around a few minutes later to inform me that my order would be another couple of minutes because they were cooking the fries. Gamely attempting to be personable, I said, “Oh, good. I prefer them that way.” Blank Stare. Not even a smiling Blank Stare. Just the kind that said I was really being annoying by wanting something remotely resembling friendly, competent service.
Ultimately, my bagged order was placed on the counter in front of me and a guttural noise was made that could perhaps have been interpreted as “thank you” had I been in a more generous frame of mind. By now, though, I was more of a mind to interpret it as, “get the hell out of here and stop bothering me.” Especially since the utterance was delivered with the now-to-be-expected Blank Stare.
Sadly, this was far from an isolated incident. Somehow, the default setting on the faces of most fast food employees these days is flat affect, a clinical term defined as “a lack of emotional expression or response, often symptomatic of a mental health condition or of medication side effects.” I don't think that's the case in most cases. Rather, I think it's just a symptom of infinitesimally small and woefully inadequate social skills, caused, no doubt, by too much interaction with an electronic device and not enough with an actual person. After all, screens don't particularly care if you smile at them. But people do.
Now I'm not expecting the red carpet treatment or Michelin star service at a fast food joint. These are entry level jobs being filled by older teens and young adults with very limited social interaction beyond their own peer groups, groups where the things the rest of polite society consider to be rudeness are merely the accepted norm. But surely these young folks can muster something better than a sullen stare for the people who are financing their livelihoods.
Some fast food places can pull it off. Chick-fil-A, for example. I don't know how they skim the cream of young job seekers there, but I can unequivocally say that I have never had a bad service experience at a Chick-fil-A, a franchise where smiling faces and eager attitudes abound. And I'm not alone in that regard. Survey after survey has found that Chick-fil-A rates at the top of the service scale among fast food outlets. And the home of the Big Mac, the shiny Golden Arches, and the surly Blank Stare consistently ranks at the bottom of such surveys. So it's not just me. Seems that when McD's kicked their happy, smiling clown mascot to the curb, happy, smiling employees followed.
I don't know the answer. Chick-fil-A tends to pay its starting employees a little more than average, so maybe there's something there. But, in general, I think it's a matter of attitude. Young people just entering the job market seem sorely disappointed when they don't start at the top and it shows in their attitude. They seem to feel that they are doing their employer an immense favor by simply showing up for work and then they proceed to make their customers feel like impositions upon their paid social time, which, apparently, is what they consider their jobs to be. And I don't know how to solve that problem.
This is where I could come off as the curmudgeonly grandfather and say, “Back in my day, we worked for a dollar an hour and we were glad to get it!” Which is true, of course, but not really germane to the current issue. Which is either how do we get McDonald's employees to behave more like Chik-fil-A employees do or how do we get Chick-fil-A to start selling McRib sandwiches?
In the meantime, would you like fries and a grumpy Blank Stare with that?
