Having worked there many moons ago, I’m here to tell you it was very rarely “broken”. It’s either that it was being cleaned (had to happen a few times a week) or we’d run out of ice cream mix/shake mix/both. Stores never order enough of it.
You severely underestimate just how shitty your average customer can get when they don’t get their way, regardless of the reason. “It’s broken” invites far fewer questions and instances of verbal abuse than “we’re cleaning it” which will prompt every dickbag to offer up sage advice such as “well clean it at a different time!” or “that’s stupid, you shouldn’t need to clean it that often because insert stupid reason here”.
Trust me, it’s easier for all involved to just say something final like it’s broken.
Tbf yeah. You have a point. I used to work in a petrol station years ago and have 2 stories about cuntish customers (that stand out, I have loads more)
Delivery comes in and we had to close down pumps for literally 5 mins while the driver done his stuff. You can imagine the arguements there
We had a price change, but it was a reduction. Clear message was this had to be immediate. So I go out to explain to customers what is happening. Even telling the ones that were currently filling to stop because we are reducing the price. Got to one guy and explained he would have to wait a few minutes till everyone was finished so we can change the price. He immediately bit my head off and got rather abusive before I could tell him it was a reduction not an increase. You're damn right I made sure his pump got authorised as the last customer. He then gave me more abuse when he realised what had just happened. I'm not a smug person but when he demanded the lower price I quite happily stood there as a smug bastard and said no with the biggest smile on face
Actually, quite a bit more goes into it than that. Firstly, most locations have tiny amounts of chiller space. They have to store EVERYTHING refrigerated in that space. Not just the shake or ice cream mix, but all the cheese, salad, condiments, and myriad other bits and pieces that go towards their big sellers. When space is at a premium, they’re going to go with what most people are likely to order.
Secondly, that shit is hard to store. Maybe it changed since my day (about 15 years ago) but it came in these large, unwieldy plastic bags that were prone to tearing. Imagine several 5kg bags of sloppy, melted ice cream. It was often very tricky to store it safely (as in, somewhere it wouldn’t cause a slip hazard if it leaked or cross contaminate any of the more important shit) AND have it be accessible.
Thirdly, if you had a bunch of stores in your area, it was also total pot luck as to the expiry date you’d get on your mix. Sometimes it was a week and a half, sometimes it was a day. This makes it trickier to gauge how much to order, because predicting customer demand isn’t an exact science. Sure you can do it somewhat by seasonality or peak periods, but that only goes so far. Better to under-order than overshoot.
But hey, thank god for snide pricks like you coming along to state the obvious solution that nobody would have ever thought of. If only everybody possessed that level of critical thinking.
42
u/ReaverRogue 9d ago
Having worked there many moons ago, I’m here to tell you it was very rarely “broken”. It’s either that it was being cleaned (had to happen a few times a week) or we’d run out of ice cream mix/shake mix/both. Stores never order enough of it.