Friday, August 12, 2011

What the F' was that, Qdoba?

Dear Qdoba,

I've been a big fan of yours ever since I was first handed a burrito the size of my face and told that it constituted a "serving." Sure, there are those on Team Chipotle, but I'm fairly certain all of those people liked the Twilight movies (personally I gave up when I realized this was a satire and not a trailer) so I don't care. I've been down with you since day one.

That's what made it so exciting when I got this in my email.
Free guac is just another word for nothing left to lose.
After talking my work lunch crew into walking over we waited in line for a solid five minutes while the person who appeared to be in charge aggravated her entire team whilst in the midst of preparing some enormous faxed-in order. Eventually (and professionally) I was built a pork-filled, aluminum-wrapped happiness torpedo and at the end of the line I produced my coupon, my Club Card, and my cash.

Things quickly went south when I was told that the coupon wouldn't ring up. The person who appeared to be in charge descended on the helplessly polite cashier, looked at it for a minute, told her there wasn't anything she could do about it, gave the cashier a dirty look, looked up at me and said "Yeah, this promotion is all screwed up. You'll have to call the helpline." and then immediately went back to being an a-hole to her subordinates.


 The cashier to her credit (who was VERY obviously not allowed to, you know, not charge me for the buttery green ambrosia that I was supposed to be getting for free, was super nice about charging me for it but went out of her way to print an extra receipt and get my phone number so SHE could call the helpline on my behalf. She (and everyone but the person who appeared to be in charge) were super nice and professional during my whole visit.

 

I guess what I really want to get at, though, is what the f' was that? I'm sure you guys lose the avocado-equivalent of the Greek national debt every day in people stealing flatware and picante sauce from over near the soda fountain, but would it seriously cause investors to start shuttering locations if you had some sort of policy where you accept the coupons you send to people? Could we just make that money up by only offering lemons or limes when I grab my napkins?

 

I'm definitely still not into Chipotle (they're a little too pretentious about only using organic tin foil to wrap up their burritos), but this did shake my commitment to Team Qdoba. Can you work on this? I don't want to have to use the nuclear option and start going to Moe's.

 

Fajita vegetably yours,

Jamie Oswald

3 comments:

  1. "Sure, there are those on Team Chipotle, but I’m fairly certain all of those people liked the Twilight movies" Haha, I love your writing and I really feel that more businesses need to be called out when they give bad service, if your spending money you should be getting good service--I mean your helping pay that persons wages.

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  2. Agreed. There are those that would say "they only make $8/hr, why should they care." I say "because they make that $8/hr to care."

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  3. Yeah, whatever. Team Chipotle and I *hated* Twilight. I only watched it under duress to review it for a geek website. Long story....

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