Fast Foods

I became a curious observer of fast food restaurants as a result of my stint as Service Manager for Sweda cash registers. The first cash registers of McDonalds when it started in the Philippines were mostly Sweda electro-mechanical models. These were used equipment purchased from McDonald stores abroad that were replacing them with electronic cash registers.

My affection for the behavior of fast food workers remained even after I left the office equipment industry and more fast food stores opened. In my mind's eye, I could see training programs for the crew taking customer orders. I also noticed the queues and the possibility of reducing customer waiting time. After all, this was fast food and how fast should include the time spent queuing, a very classical operations research application.

But store owners seemed more concerned with maximizing the number of customers served than with reducing customer waiting time. I say this because the effort to reduce turn around time became obvious. I don’t know if they were subjected to assertiveness training but if you dilly dally in placing your order you would get an unsolicited “How about a cheese burger?” so I learned to “Please don’t hurry me up. I’m still trying to decide what I want.”


As a productivity advocate I think these guys are doing great guns. But talk of customer satisfaction and this may be a case of diminishing returns. The effort to improved efficiency can run amok. Do we really want fast foods?