United Breaks Guitars

This Rocks!

Reminder from the home of the Big Mac

If you are trying to take care of your health, its hard to justify a trip to McDonald's. Now I know they have made a valiant effort to offer more "healthy" menu items, however; the real killer for them is their inconsistent customer service. For my family, there is only one reason we would go to McDonald's -- speedy service. My 3 year old daughter likes their double cheeseburgers, plain, and in a bind, we cave in to a quick drive through.

We recently went and found ourselves parked out front waiting 15 mins after we paid (in the drive through) to get our order, then they messed it up. So what does this mean for a big, multi-billion dollar company? Well, they might reply that many locations are franchises, and "shit happens". It does, I get that. But knowing a little bit about the fast food industry, and how operations work at a place like McDonald's, its really hard to screw up on this level.

Who cares you say? What if I never go to McDonald's again? I doubt they care if I do or don't. The real lesson her is that no matter how great your business model is, how strong your brand, or how many burgers you sell in a year, you are only as good as your front line employees. In the case of a company like McDonald's, that means thousands and thousands of minimum wage, barely speaking english customer service reps that have no stake in the overall brand's success.

Fix it.

iPhone and AT&T

So like 21 million others, I too desire an iPhone. I don't need one, I covet one. I have even let my 12 year long relationship with Sprint slip past my contract renewal date putting me and my account in play, like a free agent if you will. In order to switch however; I'll need to deal with AT&T.

I'm told by people in the know, that AT&T's coverage sucks in places I frequent, like work, home, and lots of other important destinations. I am also told their customer service sucks, but alas this is hearsay. Then I tried to buy the phone. I was told I couldn't go to an Apple store to do it, because my current number, is of an area code outside of the state in which I currently live. I don't want to give up my number, many people have it and someday someone may call me. I then went to an AT&T store and found out, after waiting 30 mins for the one person that worked there to get to me, that they are all out of inventory. Counting this blog post, this is more time than I should be spending on my mobile phone needs. I guess I'll wait for 4G...