I don’t normally blog about consumer experiences. I did once before I got popular as a blogger, but *sniff* I was young and needed the money. Today however, I had a consumer experience so annoying I feel compelled to share with you.
I went to Q’Doba for lunch, a place I go to probably once a week out of convenience, and because I like their vegetarian nachos. There is a Q’Doba near where I live; it’s in downtown Royal Oak, so it’s always busy, but it’s super quick to get in and out of.
Then there’s the restaurant by my office. Seated within one mile of my office (one of the largest ad agencies in the US) and the GM Tech Center, it gets a good lunch crowd. It also seems to have half the staff required to run it, and those that bother to show up for work seem pre-occupied with something other running a restaurant. I suspect the rays from the Mother Ship are foiled by Q’Doba’s shiny aluminum surfaces.
For the past three weeks, I have come to Q’Doba on a Monday. Little did I know, Mondays are Two-for-One Slack Off Days. You get two employees to do nothing for you instead of one.
Today, there were only 13 people in line in front of me. Not bad, but I was in line for 39 minutes. Now before you stop me and say, “Hey, that’s only three minutes per person. Is that bad?” Yes, it’s bad. There was not a single person assigned to the register. Apparently at Q’Doba, you are required wait by the register until your expression looks pathetic enough that one of the employees saunters over and rings you up. I’m sorry, that was a lie. They wait on the carry out orders first, and then are guilted into ringing you up.
What is 39 minutes in line at Q’Doba like? Well, it’s like standing in line to vote, but it smells a little better. I can tell you one thing. While I was in line, I actually had time to research stopwatch applications at the iPhone App Store, download a few and test them out before being waited on. There were only two people ahead of me when I decided to do this.
I figured I could start the stopwatch the second Emo-Boy asked for my order and end it the second Suicide Girl rang me up. That took over nine minutes. This is on top of the 39 minutes I’ve already donated to Q’Doba’s Kill Your Lunch Hour With Us Fund. So now, with 48 minutes of my lunch hour spent in line, I have less than 2 minutes to eat and jump back in the car.
As for the food, they rocked it. My nachos looked like they did on the menu and that’s saying something. But, oh boy! There’s not a napkin to be seen. As I approached the counter to inquire where I might grovel for one, another customer beat me to it. Like the hand of Death itself, the skeletal finger of Emo-Boy indicated the rear of the restaurant. I actually saw ectoplasm emenate from his mouth when he croaked out, “Uh, I think there’s some left back there, dude.”
“Why not get off your scrawny butt and refill the other five containers,” was my first thought. Listen, Dave. You just slow your roll. That’s not how we do things at Q’Doba. We don’t refill napkins until every last one has been sneezed on, rubbed apart, chewed, torn or spat on. First things first, y’know? You and your pathetic 60 minute lunch hour. Make me sick.
All in all was this a horrible experience? Not really. It was just so damned disappointing compared to how swift their other restaurants are. Will I go back? Sure, the next time I have a 500 minute lunch hour to kill.
Happy meal next Monday!!
“I Don’t Like Mondays, I want to shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot the whole damn town.” Dave, was there an 800 number on the receipt , bag, or on the window of the restaurant? Call ’em. Let the management know; perhaps he can send in a secret shopper and get those slackers fired. What’s sad, is he’s probably some 60 year old guy, owning a franchise, putting his pathetic grandchildren to work, because in this economy, who else would hire them?
They could always rename the eatery after its service quality.
b’N’Dova.
I’d go postal.
Dave – So sorry you were having a bad lunch “hour”, especially on a Monday. Have a :kiss: on me! The rest of you…Don’t get any ideas! I’m just being nice to Dave!
Funny, last Saturday I spent 25 minutes in line with only 4 people in line in front of them.As you said they were concentrating on drive thru orders.One man got into his car ,went through the drive thru and beat all of us to a seat.I calledtheir head office rec’d an apology and 2 free meals
A few years ago we were in a steak house that was truly awful.30 minutes to get a waiter,and another 30 minutes to get our drinks and order our food. After 45 minutes my lunch mate called a local pizza delivery place around the corner and had a pizza delivered to his table!The management went nuts but calmed down when he handed them a business card (lawyer )
Lunch hour? Oh yeah! I remember those. As I recall, any time away from work was pretty nice. Then I went management. You would think that, now, I should have time for frivolous things like breaks and lunch. But noooo. Honestly Dave, that is a crappy way to spend your lunch. Work is bothersome enough without haveing to deal with inept young pukes. That is YOUR away time; you should be able it embrace it and recharge the batteries. So very sorry.
At least you had your iphone to play with. I probably would have reached into my pocket and played with something else.
My vote is with Janeeto- vote with your wallet! Call the Customer Service number, complain like hell, insist that you’re entitled to a voucher for a free meal and assure them you will be dining with their competitors until you are compensated and satisified. However, if the ying yang twins do get fired, their replacements will probably be worse. More likely, a regional manager type guy will be in the store for a week retraining them and that will suck even worse than being fired for them. Revenge thy name is Davezilla!
[quote comment=”628423″]Dave, was there an 800 number on the receipt , bag, or on the window of the restaurant? Call ’em. Let the management know; perhaps he can send in a secret shopper and get those slackers fired.[/quote]
Judging from my past experience with Toho, posting this complaint to my blog will get far more results than a phone call. 🙂
[quote comment=”628429″]Lunch hour? Oh yeah! I remember those. As I recall, any time away from work was pretty nice. Then I went management. You would think that, now, I should have time for frivolous things like breaks and lunch. But noooo. Honestly Dave, that is a crappy way to spend your lunch. Work is bothersome enough without haveing to deal with inept young pukes. That is YOUR away time; you should be able it embrace it and recharge the batteries. So very sorry.
At least you had your iphone to play with. I probably would have reached into my pocket and played with something else.[/quote]
Yeah, I’m management, too. Lunchtime away is a rare thing indeed so losing it in line is disheartening.
You have far more patience than me Dave. 5 minutes is it, tops, that’s the total amount of time I will wait in a line, I don’t care what their excuse is, either serve the damn food when I’m there or go to hell! 5 minutes.
I guess this explains my taking lunch to work everyday. I have no patience with morons or fast food outlets. It is a privilege to serve me, now goddamn it, act like it! *punt*
I’m not familiar with this Q-Tippa place, but unless those nachos are being served by a hot Zillaworthy babe who’s going to hoover me under the table while I eat, I’m not waiting any longer than 3.9 minutes in line.
As for bad service, it’s the same as bad food and I’ll give the place a second chance; unless of course I got food poisoning from the last meal. Normally, I’ll give a place a break on food or service since anyone can have a bad day. Do it to me twice and unless the manager has bent over backwards enough to see his own ass, they won’t see mine walking back in again anytime soon.
There was a recent news story about a company that had 700 applicants for a janitorial position. If these poor excuses for douchebags working a Q-Tips were the best that they could find in this economy, I don’t think I’d even waste giving them a second chance for a long time.
Ha!
Now you Amerikanskis have socialist president, you must get used to soviet-style customer service and wait in long line for the bad-quality meat. I recommend you the ice-cold vodka and singing depressing ballads to pass the time, along with imitation sable hats and sitting on hood of Trabant to avoid freeze to death.
Ha!
Now you Amerikanskis have socialist president, you must get used to the soviet-style customer service and wait in long line for the bad-quality meat. I recommend you the ice-cold vodka and singing depressing ballads to pass the time, along with imitation sable hats and sitting on hood of Trabant to avoid freeze to death.
[quote comment=”628442″]You have far more patience than me Dave. 5 minutes is it, tops, that’s the total amount of time I will wait in a line, I don’t care what their excuse is, either serve the damn food when I’m there or go to hell! 5 minutes.[/quote]
I normally do too, but at a certain point, you realize that you’ve now invested a certain amount of time. Will leaving and going somewhere else actually add even more time?
are the seats at q’doba made of fine corinthian leather?
It sounds that you are a food masochist if you are willing to be standing for 500 minutes next time you go there or the food is unique and of great flavor….. I might sound like what i am :geek: but what are vegetarian nachos made of????
I haven’t had any bad fast food experiences lately, but I did wait in line for two hours today to get Kat Von D’s autograph. Even though I was starving by the time I got through, it was totally worth it!
Actually, you know something Dave, now that I think about it. It’s Karma that got you, yep karma for posting that picture the other day of the claw creature.
Think carefully next time you go to do that or something far more sinister may happen like one of the clerks barfing into your taco bag or putting earwax on the straw.
Maybe we should bring back the two martini lunch?
[quote comment=”628472″]Maybe we should bring back the two martini lunch?[/quote]
it never went away over here dave! 🙂
I remember Qui Pasa, your friend gets served and you dont…………………
Why dont you want the burger? Is it wrong? says the waitress.
Club burger? Wery Nice Wery tasty! says discount newly employed manager.
My response…………….
Yes……..I dont doubt it, but times have changed……….2 hours ago I DID.
NOW I dont……..
Peace Out
ReV 😉
[quote comment=”628455″]I haven’t had any bad fast food experiences lately, but I did wait in line for two hours today to get Kat Von D’s autograph. Even though I was starving by the time I got through, it was totally worth it![/quote]
Who the blithering hell is Kat Von D? :wtf: 😛 😈 👿
[quote comment=”628489″][quote comment=”628455″]I haven’t had any bad fast food experiences lately, but I did wait in line for two hours today to get Kat Von D’s autograph. Even though I was starving by the time I got through, it was totally worth it![/quote]
Who the blithering hell is Kat Von D?
:wtf: 😛 😈 :evil:[/quote]
Who’s Kat Von D? Only the hottest tattoo artist on TLC! LA Ink dude, check it out!
If you have it, post the phone number to customer service, and we can all call and complain. We will tell them that the service you received hindered you ‘creative expression’, causing you to post about your experience rather than pictures of my extended family found on the internet.
If Davezilla ain’t happy, no one’s happy!!!
We have Q’Doba’s here in Reno. I get the impression that they are related to Jack In the Box. I see their ‘site maintenance’ trucks running around with both company’s logos on it’s side. Maybe that has something to do with it…
So.
I work at this Qdoba, Dave.
And little do you know what was going on that day. It’s funny. I wonder if you’ve ever worked in a fast food place?
I didn’t work that day, however my General Manager told me of it. Our Cook didn’t show up, so the manager had to be cooking and whatnot instead of manging and helping on the line.
While our motto is 40 seconds for each customer, and usually that happens during our lunch our, it definitely gets hard between people on the line and the crazy large carry out orders that we get.
Not only are we making you food in front of your face, as apposed to having these things ready to go beforehand, unlike say – McDonald’s, we also have to restock the beverage station and your napkins and whatnot.
Suicide Girl? Her name is Amber, she is far from that.
Emo Kid?
Well, it’s okay, we call him emo kid too and he left for another store, so don’t worry about it.
We are only allowed so many people on each shift, and not nearly as many as we need usually, to keep the hours low. I work night shift and we usually are only granted three. Four on truck nights when we recieve our shipment if we are lucky. We’re forced to run the line, close the restaurant and do prep all at once.
We get dumbass people in the store all the time who are incredibely rude, and in trying to keep a large smile on our face and happy tone in our voice while we serve sorry people, we realize that we have a grease fire on the grill, or we ran out of pico, (OH NO, NOT THE PICO! < Trust me, it’s happened before), or the Loyalty Service is down, or we ran out of chicken, or there are no more cups, or someone is waiting for their carry out, or someone is complaining because they’re food they didn’t touch for forty minutes is now cold, or someone wants more limes and lemons or what have you.
We have so many things going on at once, you wouldn’t even know.
So I appologize on behalf of Qdoba for you coming in on a day where it was slow. My manager knows what happened and remembers the day you came in.
We do what we can.
Understandably, you wrote a “journal entry” about it, because hey – I’d probably do that too.
However,
I find it insulting to refer to us as less than humans and insult work that we attempt to do diligently.
Thanks,
and have fun.
Oh,
“Call the Customer Service number, complain like hell, insist that you’re entitled to a voucher for a free meal and assure them you will be dining with their competitors until you are compensated and satisified.”
We get silly complaints like that all of the time. It hasn’t stopped us.
I just want you to know. It ends up hurting us, rather than help us. We actually do have a very good staff that works hard. Our new GM is particularly into pleasing our customers. It just seems so silly how you have all these people wrapped around your finger in the fact they want to uproar our restaurant?
Also, Qdoba has no apostrophe nor s.
And I would like to applause you on your eloquent way of describing your terrible experience. Anyhow. I just wanted to add that. 😉
[quote comment=”628869″]I wonder if you’ve ever worked in a fast food place?[/quote]
Yes, I certainly have.
[quote comment=”628869″]Suicide Girl? Her name is Amber, she is far from that.
[/quote]
Suicide Girl was a playful poke (actually a compliment) that she looks like one of the Suicide Girls. Most of them are cute and have pink hair and tats. That’s why I capitalized it. Most folks online more than 10 days have heard of them.
[quote comment=”628869″]However,
I find it insulting to refer to us as less than humans and insult work that we attempt to do diligently.[/quote]
Where in the post did I do that? In fact, I complimented you on how good the food was.
Also please remember, this is a humor site. Everything I post is meant to be silly. K?
[quote comment=”628870″]It just seems so silly how you have all these people wrapped around your finger[/quote]
Huh? No one is wrapped around my finger. My readers think for themselves. 😉
[quote comment=”628870″]Also, Qdoba has no apostrophe nor s.
[/quote]
Fair enough. While we’re getting grammatically correct, you can’t “uproar” a restaurant, nor is it “applause you,” it’s applaud you. 😛