A complaint about complaints.

[Spectre General]

No I'm not linking to anything funny, my problem is that I want to complain about something, but in this case I have a complaint about how complaints are handled!

This is sort of a long story...

It was 2:00 AM and I was hungry, so I go out in the car and drive to the nearest Taco Bell, thinking they're one of the only places open. I get there and pull up to the drive thru, and nobody comes on to say anything to me. Believe me this is not at all unusual.

What is unusual is that I can clearly see in the building, and inside are about five people, maybe more, with a bunch more people in the parking lot. Of them two are wearing the Taco Bell uniform, and they are busy socializing with the people who aren't. Now, I look around, and see on the window that Sun-Thurs Taco Bell closes at 2 AM, so I've just missed it. But if this restaraunt is closed to drive-thru customers, and you're not even going to bother to come on the intercom to say that to me after I've been sitting there for 5 minutes, why are you going to let your friends into the building and have a party?

So I pull around the drive thru lane intending to leave...only I can't because sitting at the window is another car. Now, that car has been there longer than I have, and I don't see anyone inside making food, I then sit there for 5 more minutes hoping that the car in front of me will leave, but it doesn't. Meanwhile the party inside continues. I eventually threw the thing in reverse and backed out of the drive thru (which was difficult) and decided to go to 7/11 since it's about the only other place open.

Well lo and behold when I get in there, the two employees on duty are busy having an argument with each other and yelling at each other across the building about the fact there there may or may not be enough change in the register. The woman who I can assume was the manager seemed to be not at all concerned about this, the cashier, on the other hand was being exceptionally rude, and I wasn't the only customer in the store.

Well so far this just sounds like fast food horror stories part 508 but where it really gets interesting is that I decided I was too pissed off to let this go unnoticed. I mean, so what if it's 2 AM, I deserve basic customer service, and the sad part is, there's nothing to guarantee I would have gotten it at 2 PM either. That's just what America has come to.

But anyway, I went to the two companies websites to file a complaint about both of these incidents (which I've never done before) and they won't let you do that without collecting pretty much all of your personal data. Now I understand their need to do so, but I have two problems with this, one 7/11 is actually nice enough to tell you that they may sell this data to third parties (what bullshit!!) I'm positive Taco Bell does the same thing, it's basically standard practice among websites, but it's retarded, I mean, I'm telling you I'm dissatisfied with your services, and you're gonna send me what? A default response piece of paper it takes 2 seconds to print and a coupon for a free meal? And in return you're gonna sell my email address to whoever is buying! Then you're profiting of my misfortune at the hands of your poor customer service and I get nothing but spam emails for the rest of my life.

Part 2 is this, Taco Bell says they will contact the manager of the store about the complaint. Well, I live in Richmond Virginia, otherwise know as "the ghetto." There can be no guarantee that the manager wasn't in fact one of the culprits involved in this situation. And beyond that, if that is the case, why do I want these people to know where I live? Next thing you know I'm gonna be the victim of a drive-by cause someone got chewed-out for not doing their job. The stupidest thing about this is that there's no way these people should be able to get away with what they were doing, but if I want to complain to their superiors, I get dicked over at least one way. Utterly bullshit. This is what America has come to, F- customer service and absolutely no one on the corporate level who gives a shit. I guess I just have to sit back and take it like everyone else, after all these clowns aren't getting paid enough to care about their jobs, it's probably the 10th one they've had in their lifetime too.

The sad part about this is, I passed two cops when I left Taco Bell about a block away, I almost pulled over and told them what was going on, now I wish I had. Then again, this is Richmond, I've literally seen the cops get swarmed by crowds of people while attempting to do their job, I didn't stick around long enough to see what the result was. I guess there's just no way to win.

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Pebbs 4 Life