had a frustrating experience with wendys today. made a mobile order coming home from work and went through the drivethrough for pickup. the kid in the window looked like shit… probably had been getting abused all day because they were out of buns (not a great thing for a burger chain). he offered to do my sandwiches with lettuce wraps but i politely declined and said i would cancel my order. parked in the lot to cancel the order on my phone but for some reason the app wouldnt let me.
all these fast food places have a really bad application model. as a tech person its frustrating how badly it's designed. no integration with the restaurants point of sale except sending the order. no features allowing the restaurant to interact with the order (like if they were out of something) other than confirming it or even the ability to initiate a refund. but thats a rant for another time.
anyway i called their customer service line while sitting in the lot thinking it wouldnt take that long. after 10 minutes in the queue i got frustrated and went to another place to get dinner because i was late getting home. ordered my food, got it, and drove all the way home still listening to wendys hold music. finished my dinner still on hold. went on their website to try and use the complaint form… still on hold. i was getting really frustrated but i was trying to remember that its not the customer reps fault and not to be unpleasant when or if they picked up.
finally got to a human after 70 MINUTES on hold. the lady sounded more frustrated than i was but still tried to be courteous. im sure she had been getting an earful previously about the hold times. fortunately she was able to quickly resolve my issue but before i hung up i mentioned my hold time and asked if this was a corporate thing like deliberate understaffing. she went off on wendys lol. management purposefully understaffing customer service under the guise of “budget cuts” and even though they knew that would drive up wait times and piss off customers they just turn it back on the reps for not working hard/fast enough. i felt really bad for her and tried to sympathize and also mentioned antiwork but i dont think she knew what reddit was. i didnt want to keep her too long in case she got chewed out but i guess getting to vent to a customer for a bit is better than the next complaining boomer in the queue.
anyway… fuck wendys. fuck their stupid tweets. fuck the way they treat their minimum wage employees.