I work at Dunkin Donuts. I usually love it there, but with me starting College, it's becoming a pain to wake up at 3 am to walk to work on weekends. Especially with a cold. Anyway, I was about to write about my SCs, but it turned into a rant on the inconveniences of my workplace, so into General Work Chat it goes.
Saturdays. Are. Busy. They are the busiest day of our week, and I work every weekend. Saturdays range from Barely-Manageable to Chaos. Front Counter (FC), you're in trouble because you have to figure out if you should help someone take someone's order, go make food at deli, make sure coffee is running or take someone's order yourself. Drive Thru (DT), you're in trouble because there is constantly 3+ people in line- if you take the order, you're generally on your own to remember it all.
Hot Cocoa
We have a very, VERY temperamental Hot Cocoa machine. It likes to delude you into thinking that it has different sizes it will dispense, but it is lying. LYING. You have to stand by it and SHOVE your finger into the button and keep it there, damaging your finger in the process as it dispenses delicious cocoa. Or if you somehow manage to get the button to work, you can't turn away from it because it won't dispense the size you want it to. Actually, I don't think it dispenses from any size, it just realizes what size cup you put under the dispenser and promptly makes sure it overflows. Or just doesn't stop dispensing. Either way, I love the little red stop button on it. But I will cry the day that stops working too.
As a result, I hate it when people order hot cocoa.
The Deli
The Deli. I love working the Deli, because I don't have to talk to people. But what I don't like is people sending me back and forth from the Deli over and over and over when my coworkers just got done telling me NEVER TO LEAVE THE FC REGISTER EVER. But when they're all working on orders, I'm on my own. I hate this more than our hot cocoa machine.
Hashbrowns
I hate Hashbrowns more than running back and forth from the Deli. Hashbrowns can't be cooked with anything else but Hashbrowns, so it takes up an entire oven to cook one kind of food only. One order of Hashbrowns takes 35 seconds to cook. This is a long time for one of the two ovens to be used, especially when DT and FC have 3 orders of sandwiches EACH to complete.
Coolattas
I hate Coolattas more than Hashbrowns. They're messy things, and the lids take forever to get on correctly. It's mostly the lids that spawn my hatred. Or maybe it's because it's not a quick process and you can't multitask while you're making a Coolatta like you can anything else- Save for Munchkins and Boxes of Joe.
Munchkins
I hate Munchkins (Donut Holes) more than Coolattas. I hate people that want Munchkins. Because we almost always run out of them before 10 AM. I'm not sure why we never make more, probably because after the morning rush, no one wants any. Either way, it's really annoying to hear "Wow! Really!? I can't believe you're out of Munchkins! You must have been busy!" I don't understand HOW they are always shocked that they can't get Munchkins 5 hours after we're guaranteed sold out.
Munchkins generally are sold 25 or 50 per box- you can order less, people just don't since those are the prices shown on the menu. They also cost much less than I would ever price them- 7.50 or so for a box of 50. For the demand, that's pretty cheap. I also hate when people order Munchkins because it takes a good 3-5 minutes to count them out as you get an assortment into the box (I tend to pick two from one flavor, then two from the next, etc. It takes a while). At my job, this is an eternity, especially when there's a line 7-8 people deep at front counter.
Drive Thru Timer
I hate the Drive Thru Timer more than Munchkins. We have a timer that shows how long a car has been waiting for an order. This timer estimates 2 Minutes and 40 seconds per order. This is two minutes and forty seconds to:
-Wait for the Customer to decide what they want
-Listen to and confirm order
-make order
-ring order up
-deliver
-wait for customer to leave
This doesn't seem so bad at first... But most things on our menu take at least a minute to make.
NOW added to everything else, this is bad. It doesn't help that we might get written up for being late too often soon (Our manager has been putting up warnings that we need to speed up at Drive Thru, which is more or less impossible). Drive Thru timer also has a percentage sign showing a percentage of how many orders were completed 'on time'.
Box o' Joe
I hate Boxes o' Joe more than the Drive Thru Counter. Why? Because a Box of Joe is equivalent to about 2 pots of regular coffee. At Front Counter we have 6 pots of coffee brewing, one pot of decaf and one pot of hot water for tea. Boxes of Joe also take more time to get because when it's busy, between FC and DT coffee can go pretty fast seeing as it's our most popular order, and that usually means we have to wait for coffee to brew while taking other coffee orders. Also, you have to be REALLY CAREFUL pouring coffee into the box, because the outside of the box is cardboard- if even a little coffee spills on it, the box is completely ruined and will fall apart.
Overflowing Coffee Filters
I hate Overflowing Coffee Filters more than anything in this entire list. Getting an Overflowing Coffee Filter is the equivalent of rolling a Critical Miss in D&D. You don't see it coming, but the damage it causes is insane. You get an overflowing coffee filter by running the coffee machine without changing the filter (How we managed this twice last Saturday I'll never know, but I still have a burn mark on my shoulder). You don't know it's overflowing until you start to pull it out. Coffee grinds go EVERYWHERE and you usually have to remake all of the currently brewing Coffee, get new filters, change the sugar bowl, restock the coffee lid shelf, mop up the floor and clean the counter off (and later on, the cupboards below). On top of this, you're usually hit by scalding hot coffee along with everything else..
I don't like Crit Misses in Dunkin&Donuts, can you tell?
And now I go to write on the customers. -wilts-
Saturdays. Are. Busy. They are the busiest day of our week, and I work every weekend. Saturdays range from Barely-Manageable to Chaos. Front Counter (FC), you're in trouble because you have to figure out if you should help someone take someone's order, go make food at deli, make sure coffee is running or take someone's order yourself. Drive Thru (DT), you're in trouble because there is constantly 3+ people in line- if you take the order, you're generally on your own to remember it all.
Hot Cocoa
We have a very, VERY temperamental Hot Cocoa machine. It likes to delude you into thinking that it has different sizes it will dispense, but it is lying. LYING. You have to stand by it and SHOVE your finger into the button and keep it there, damaging your finger in the process as it dispenses delicious cocoa. Or if you somehow manage to get the button to work, you can't turn away from it because it won't dispense the size you want it to. Actually, I don't think it dispenses from any size, it just realizes what size cup you put under the dispenser and promptly makes sure it overflows. Or just doesn't stop dispensing. Either way, I love the little red stop button on it. But I will cry the day that stops working too.
As a result, I hate it when people order hot cocoa.
The Deli
The Deli. I love working the Deli, because I don't have to talk to people. But what I don't like is people sending me back and forth from the Deli over and over and over when my coworkers just got done telling me NEVER TO LEAVE THE FC REGISTER EVER. But when they're all working on orders, I'm on my own. I hate this more than our hot cocoa machine.
Hashbrowns
I hate Hashbrowns more than running back and forth from the Deli. Hashbrowns can't be cooked with anything else but Hashbrowns, so it takes up an entire oven to cook one kind of food only. One order of Hashbrowns takes 35 seconds to cook. This is a long time for one of the two ovens to be used, especially when DT and FC have 3 orders of sandwiches EACH to complete.
Coolattas
I hate Coolattas more than Hashbrowns. They're messy things, and the lids take forever to get on correctly. It's mostly the lids that spawn my hatred. Or maybe it's because it's not a quick process and you can't multitask while you're making a Coolatta like you can anything else- Save for Munchkins and Boxes of Joe.
Munchkins
I hate Munchkins (Donut Holes) more than Coolattas. I hate people that want Munchkins. Because we almost always run out of them before 10 AM. I'm not sure why we never make more, probably because after the morning rush, no one wants any. Either way, it's really annoying to hear "Wow! Really!? I can't believe you're out of Munchkins! You must have been busy!" I don't understand HOW they are always shocked that they can't get Munchkins 5 hours after we're guaranteed sold out.
Munchkins generally are sold 25 or 50 per box- you can order less, people just don't since those are the prices shown on the menu. They also cost much less than I would ever price them- 7.50 or so for a box of 50. For the demand, that's pretty cheap. I also hate when people order Munchkins because it takes a good 3-5 minutes to count them out as you get an assortment into the box (I tend to pick two from one flavor, then two from the next, etc. It takes a while). At my job, this is an eternity, especially when there's a line 7-8 people deep at front counter.
Drive Thru Timer
I hate the Drive Thru Timer more than Munchkins. We have a timer that shows how long a car has been waiting for an order. This timer estimates 2 Minutes and 40 seconds per order. This is two minutes and forty seconds to:
-Wait for the Customer to decide what they want
-Listen to and confirm order
-make order
-ring order up
-deliver
-wait for customer to leave
This doesn't seem so bad at first... But most things on our menu take at least a minute to make.
NOW added to everything else, this is bad. It doesn't help that we might get written up for being late too often soon (Our manager has been putting up warnings that we need to speed up at Drive Thru, which is more or less impossible). Drive Thru timer also has a percentage sign showing a percentage of how many orders were completed 'on time'.
Box o' Joe
I hate Boxes o' Joe more than the Drive Thru Counter. Why? Because a Box of Joe is equivalent to about 2 pots of regular coffee. At Front Counter we have 6 pots of coffee brewing, one pot of decaf and one pot of hot water for tea. Boxes of Joe also take more time to get because when it's busy, between FC and DT coffee can go pretty fast seeing as it's our most popular order, and that usually means we have to wait for coffee to brew while taking other coffee orders. Also, you have to be REALLY CAREFUL pouring coffee into the box, because the outside of the box is cardboard- if even a little coffee spills on it, the box is completely ruined and will fall apart.
Overflowing Coffee Filters
I hate Overflowing Coffee Filters more than anything in this entire list. Getting an Overflowing Coffee Filter is the equivalent of rolling a Critical Miss in D&D. You don't see it coming, but the damage it causes is insane. You get an overflowing coffee filter by running the coffee machine without changing the filter (How we managed this twice last Saturday I'll never know, but I still have a burn mark on my shoulder). You don't know it's overflowing until you start to pull it out. Coffee grinds go EVERYWHERE and you usually have to remake all of the currently brewing Coffee, get new filters, change the sugar bowl, restock the coffee lid shelf, mop up the floor and clean the counter off (and later on, the cupboards below). On top of this, you're usually hit by scalding hot coffee along with everything else..
I don't like Crit Misses in Dunkin&Donuts, can you tell?
And now I go to write on the customers. -wilts-
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