Felt inspired to tell this story by a comment talking about the binary natures of customer reviews being split between 5/5 or the worst thing ever.
Back in 2017, I worked at McDonald's. Corporate for all the Canadian branches wanted to change the image since they wanted to capitalize on that 18-30, starbucks-y type demographic. They introduced things like artisan coffees, larger bakery selection and “Guest Experience Leaders”
I was hired and made the primary GEL for weeknights. My job was to clean tables, get condiments, open doors, get confused for the manager and take the shit, and get reviews. I was supposed to get reviews by bribing customers with shitty coupons and bakery items we were about to throw out.
The problem is they wanted 5 perfect reviews a night and most people didn't want to do them. Sometimes I'd get people to do them and we'd get a 4 out of 5 stars and corporate would bitch out the manager so the manager would bitch out me. I got sick of it so I started printing off random receipts throughout the night and doing the reviews myself on my phone while randomly pointing out some coworkers for doing great jobs. Eventually they introduced limits of how many reviews you could do on one device so I brought in spare phones and would borrow co workers phones. I didn't care and neither did they. I think my manager knew but he kept quiet because it was benefiting him too.
Eventually we were acknowledged as the best mcdonalds in that region because of the reviews and I got promoted to shift lead. I quit a few months later on and the GEL program was discontinued shortly thereafter.