Outsourcing at the drive-thru

[Alex]

On the one hand I would never work in a call center because for the most part unless you are in executive customer service it is most certainly soul sucking dehumanizing work.

On the other hand I understand the urge to drive every inefficiency out of call center operations. A department I work with (no involvement by me really) recently rewrote a simple script so that it is four seconds shorter. It is expected that this will save $300,000 over the course of a year.

I know it sucks but it is just like working an assembly line (which I have done).

As for McDonald's doing this for drive-thru, so long as it works I don't really care but it won't impact me much anyway. Regardless of quality of the drive-thru order taker I don't trust them to put my order together correctly anyway so unless that's all that is open I go inside and order so I can watch it come together.