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Steak n Shake Complaint - Too Busy? Seriously?! - Not staffing the drive thru box-refusing to take my order
Not staffing the drive thru box-refusing to take my order - Complaint
LAKE IN THE HILLS, ILLINOIS -- Hubby wanted Steak n' Shake for lunch, so I drove there to get it (I had to get gas anyway). When I got to the drive thru, there was a car in front of the box, just sitting there. I didn't understand what was going on, so I was calling her a few choice names to myself when she finally pulled up. I got to the box and....nothing. I sat there for 5 minutes and no one came on the speaker. I called the restaurant and someone picked up the phone and hung up. So, I parked and went inside. I practically had to tackle a waitress to have her get the manager, but when he finally came up (of course he had no name tag on), he made the excuse that they were too busy to staff the drive thru. Just by looking at the place, there weren't that many customers, maybe 4 or 5 tables at the most, there were two waitresses in the dining room and I counted at least 4 kitchen staff that I could see. The manager was rude and unapologetic about the whole situation. He threw me the phone number for the comment line and told me to call them. I asked if I could at least place my order now, and he told me if they got caught up, sure, but right now they were too busy to take any orders.
So, I called the comment line and told them about it. The woman on the phone took my name and number and said she would forward the incident to upper management. Don't know if I'll ever hear back from them, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
In this economy, no business can afford to alienate ANY of their customers. Steak n' Shake's loss today was Arby's gain (not that they're much better but at least they answered their box).
So, I called the comment line and told them about it. The woman on the phone took my name and number and said she would forward the incident to upper management. Don't know if I'll ever hear back from them, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
In this economy, no business can afford to alienate ANY of their customers. Steak n' Shake's loss today was Arby's gain (not that they're much better but at least they answered their box).
Comments:
Posted by Justice-4-All on 2011-09-11:
I've never been to a Steak-n-Shake, let alone ever recall seeing one, so I couldn't add any input positive or negative from personal experience. But based on your account...that is ABSOLUTELY unacceptable, and should not be tolerated. I wouldn't rest until I received a satisfactory resolution. Good review!
Posted by trmn8r on 2011-09-11:
I am kind of in the same camp as J4A here - never been to one. It is not intuitive that the drive up "box" would be unstaffed. If this is like an Applebees or Red Robin, where they added take out to their usual dine-in, I could ALMOST understand. But there should at least be a sign warning you that the "box" is closed.
Posted by GreenstarYT on 2011-09-11:
It could be a call off situation where the people who are trained to run DT (which is not everyone in the store) called off or are unavailable to come in. Faced with having the manager staff DT by themselves or just closing the DT, I could see why they'd make that tough call. They didn't do it to make you personally mad.
Posted by clutzycook on 2011-09-11:
Greenstar, I'm not saying that they did. If it's a case of no one knows how to do it, then they should have done that trmn8r suggested and posted a sign. At the VERY least, the manager could have apologized for the inconvenience.
Posted by clutzycook on 2011-09-11:
I just got off the phone with the district manager. I'll give him props for calling me on a Sunday. He wasn't exactly the epitome of courtesy, but he did apologize for the handling of the situation and told me he would get to the bottom of it. I'll probably never hear anything further, but at least it got bumped up the ladder instead of tossed into file #13.
Posted by Alain on 2011-09-12:
Good review, Clutzy! We have a Steak n Shake down at our Waterfront shopping area. I haven't been there in a few years. They were slow with little help, too, as I recall. Looks like I haven't missed anything!
Posted by GreenstarYT on 2011-09-13:
Posting a sign would have been the smart thing to do, for sure.
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