The customer's always right... Wrong

I think whoever came up with the phrase "The customer is always right"
has never worked with the general public for any real time. As most
of my readers know I work for McDonalds. I one day I see tons of
examples of the customer being wrong. In some cases we don't have to
tell them, but often we do. I figured going through a few would make a
good blog post.

One of the most recent examples would be a customer I just had come
through drive thru. He ordered two hotcakes, two hashbrowns, and two
sausage patties. I was nice/smart enough to ring in the hotcakes &
sausage platter to save him some money. His total came to $10.79. As
he pulled away I heard him grumbling about the price. When he reached
my window he told me his order is never more then eight something. So
I read his order back to him. He informed me the reason it higher was
because I put the hotcakes & sausage in together, and they should be
separate. So I did some quick math and told him it would come to
$10.76 before tax. He told me to do it that way to save him a few
cents. Again I informed him that was the pretax amount and it would
be more after tax. So then he asked about the prices, and when I said
$2.00 for the hashbrowns he said "well there's the problem, I didn't
want four hashbrowns." So I explained the fact that our hashbrowns
are $1.00 each. He argued that every other time he's come through
they were two for $1.00, and wouldn't believe me that ours have been
$1.00 each for about two years now. By this time a manager came back
to see what the hold up was, and she had to reexplain everything to
him again. So that's one example of a customer who was wrong.

Another example is our change over from breakfast to lunch. Unlike
most McDonalds we switch to lunch at 11:00am instead of 10:30am. I
hear a lot of arguments on this. I think my favorite one is "I was
here yesterday at this time and got lunch." the normal repy I like to
give is, "I'm sorry this location has served breakfast till 11:00 for
at least the past ten years." Some people change their story, others
keep arguing. Then you have the ones who after being told we're still
on breakfast, start ordering lunch items anyway. I've had a customer
go through about fifteen different lunch items already. It really
makes you wonder if they are seriously that unintelligent or if its a
joke, or if they think arguing will get them lunch.

Another example would be the customers who order specials that aren't
at this McDonalds, or food that isn't sold by McDonalds. A good
example right now is various restaurants, excluding McDonalds as far
as I know, are running their fish sandwiches two for some amount. Now
we keep getting people who order two fish sandwiches and when they
aren't the lower price they argue. Then you have to explain that
they are thinking of a different restaurant. Or you have the ones who
order a fish sandwiche on friday and expect it to only be $1.00
because they saw an ad for McDonalds in philadelphia and assume
everywhere has it. But one of the best ones i've seen was the girl
that came in and ordered a frosty. Now anyone who knows fast food
restaurants knows that McDonalds doesn't sell frosties, but she
started by arguing that when she was here last year we sold them.
When I tried explaining to her that its Wendy's that sells frosties
she argued that all the McDonalds in her area sells them.

So you see there are many areas where the customer is really wrong,
but good customer service says you should just smile and make them
think they're right even when wrong...