Extra Credit Assignment

In order to complete the extra credit assignment, I had to do something that I have not done in years and something I wasn’t planning on doing anytime in the near future—go to McDonald’s. When I did go to a McDonalds so that I can finally do the extra credit assignment, it was on a Tuesday afternoon around 1pm. I live in Staten Island so the McDonalds that is located not too far from house was not very busy at all at this time. There was practically no line to wait on as there was only one person ahead of me on line, and it took probably no more than thirty seconds before I was being helped. When the cashier asked how she may help me, I said I wanted a regular cheeseburger, but with only four pickles, at that point she looked up from the register with a puzzled look on her face and asked me to repeat what I just said. After I repeated my order, still with a puzzled look on her face she said “four pickles?” when I said yes, I noticed that she kinda rolled her eyes at me a little bit, and then she stepped away and called someone from behind the kitchen counter and told them to only put four pickles on the burger. Then when I said I also wanted small fries with no salt, she looked up at me and gave me a little smirk, and then told the person that was standing next to the french fries to make a batch with no salt. After I paid her for the food, I took a step to the side while waiting for them to complete my order. There wasn’t anyone else in line behind me, so she didn’t have to go back to helping some other customer, so while I was waiting for my order she asked me if the four pickles on the burger was an OCD thing. I didn’t want to lie, so I told her no, and then told how it was an assignment for school. When she asked for what class and I told her management, it turned out that she’s also currently taking a management class at College of Staten Island, so we briefly ended up talking about our classes and school until my order got complete. After I received my food, I opened up the burger to see if they put four pickles, and ate one of the fries to check if they got it right, and indeed they did. I used the timer on my phone to see how long this process would take, and from the moment I began placing my order till when they finally handed my food it took exactly three minutes and thirty eight seconds.
I think the staff did a very good job at accommodating this unusual order. I could tell that they were unconvinced by this order, however they still prepared exactly what I ordered. At first I felt like the cashier was a little confused at my order, however after I ended up talking to her for a little bit and told her how its just an assignment for class she actually thought it was a pretty cool and interesting idea. Seeing how this was a very unusual order, she did a good job at communicating with the other workers to make sure I got the food made exactly how I wanted it. However I think the fact that it was very slow at the time that I came in helped a lot because they weren’t busy and weren’t dealing with a bunch of different orders at the same time. I am sure that had I went to a McDonalds somewhere in Manhattan in the middle of lunch time rush they would have a much more difficult time communicating with each and getting my order done because they would be dealing with a lot more customers and the place would be a lot more hectic. If I was a McDonald’s consultant, the only thing I would recommend them to accommodate these types of unusual orders is make their register be more equipped to handle special orders. As of right they have options that allows to put it orders like onions/no onions; cheese/no cheese, etc. So maybe they can add an option that if some one wants more pickles, they can add the exact number of pickles using the number pad on the register.