#2 Kentucky Fried Chaos

I eat at KFC more than I should. So the following rant is slightly intensified as there are more possibilities of me entering such a chickenry then maybe the regular man. But a visit to the local fried palace has spurred me to make this my weekly post which I will also forward on to the official complaints email address of KFC so apologies of there is less spicy language than what you're used to.

QUEUES

For those of us that frequent KFC, it won't come as a surprise that the first image I saw when I entered was a line of angry carnivores. A queue in KFC is like saying goodbye to all your relatives at a family function, you know there's gonna be a lot of them and you know it's gonna take a while. So I wasn't too angry when I saw the line but when I saw the front of it I was. There was ONE chicken-barista on the till. In other lines of work, the 'rush' can happen anytime by usually between 12-3pm so in preparation we have as many staff available at those times as possible. In the case of the food industry they have the advantage of knowing when their busy hours are cause they've been set in stone for about 2000 years! One person on a till serving 10 waiting customers will only lead to Kentucky Fried Chaos.

Now it's worth knowing that I am friends with a manager at KFC and I know that he wouldn't have allowed such things to happen IF he could help it and i don't like to bemoan staffing levels as (like in my line of work) the hours aren't set by the manager but by the regional or even head office. It's the tried and tested retail formula which I'll try to explain now...

BEATING TARGETS? DO IT ON LESS HOURS THEN!

NOT BEATING TARGETS? YOU DON'T DESERVE MORE HOURS THEN!

As far as I could see there was one lad selling chicken to the masses and another 3 frying it but there was also two other individuals who had a different role.

DRIVE THRU

For those that have the option, in recent years you can get fat without leaving your car. KFC know this which is why they have the ability to serve chicken right to your car door. However it became clear that if you had such an option you were receiving your chicken faster than the people who put one leg before the other. In retail it's widely known that your prioritise your customers into those who made the trip in the shop and then those who aren't in the shop (phone, email, other). I see this as a similar situ but in this case it was reversed. Right what's next?

MESSY BASTARDS

That's right, we the consumer are messy bastards, we think its OK to leave mess cause we think its part of the experience and that's understandable as long as the retailer know that too. But KFC in Litherland and many others fail to realise that. Families who wandered in, after seeing the queue then saw the multiple tables of old chickeny conquests and said to their partners "lets take out this place is fucking rank". That's another member of staff's role to clean up after us and therefore they're ignoring a vital bit of fast food law....typically when we purchase food, we tend to want to sit down and eat it.

STOCK

Finally when I got to the front of the line, you start to hear all your KFC favourites being communicated between the pass. Classic lines such as "8 minutes for fillets" and "How long on Wicked Zinger?" Then it dawns on you, I want some fillets and a Zinger so you know that the end of your order will then involve an apology with many minutes attached, but my apology included 2 extra minutes. Does it take 2 minutes to cook one fillet? But rest assured, you can sip minuscule amounts of your preferred beverage as you wait? "Sorry, we have run out of Pepsi, we have Pepsi Max."

Why have you run out of your most in demand beverage? However they know that you're unlikely to just walk out after putting so much time in this adventure, you'll simply cave and take the flavourless Max drink cause you have to have something.

Back when the Wii games console was released, the good friends at Nintendo decided to forgo the supply and demand strategy on launch and decided to go with plan B which was entitled 'Thousands needed, dozens delivered' to create hysteria. Nowadays they can't even shift their new 'wave your arms' console the Wii U. Maybe that was a sign that customers don't like to be forced into a second choice. Take note Sanders! 

IRONY

The final straw is the sign I see through the staff only entrance, posted next to other posters of encouragement and pictures of staff handed awards, probably for taking the most shit off angry mobs.

"The world we live requires great courage and patience" - Teo Te Ching

That poster should be on our side of the wall as I had by then waited 25 mins for service and 10 minutes for the actual order. I turned away with my bag of meat and my wife was nowhere to be seen. She had gone outside for some fresh air. I left the restaurant and saw her.

"A bird shit on me" she said.

And on that note, our trip to KFC came to an end.