I had an extremely unpleasant interaction with Wendy's store #1921 in Lake City (FL) yesterday, 2 August 2022, at 9pm. I walked into the lobby and saw 3-4 employees standing near the french fry station chatting amongst themselves and seemingly ignoring the job completely. There was also an employee there who was handling the drive-through. I walked up to the counter and waited patiently for a minute, and all of the employees ignored me completely, even though they could all see me standing there, as I was only 10 feet away. I finally spoke up and asked them if they were still open, wondering if maybe the lobby was closed and they had forgotten to lock the door or something. One of the employees looked at me, had an insulting look on his face and pointed a finger in the direction of the drive-through, then turned around and walked away.
I was just about to leave and go somewhere else for food, but just then a young lady named Hannah ran up to the register. She apologized for my wait, said that she had been cleaning the bathrooms so she didn't realize I had walked in the door, and asked me "how are you this evening". I was still very insulted by the way her coworkers had refused to even acknowledge my presence, and I told her that. She took the time to apologize for the way I was (not) greeted, and she appeared to be quite sincere. I ordered 2 Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers and a large fry from her. When I received my food, I thanked her for her professionalism, and then raised my voice and let the other employees know how offended I was that they had ignored a customer, and that I intended to follow up on this incident with their store manager. The other employees actually jeered at me and tried to shout me down. I was astonished. I have never seen this level of rudeness or unprofessionalism in a workplace before.
I walked out of the store with my food and proceeded on down the sidewalk, heading to work. I heard somebody shouting at me, so I turned around and saw that an employee was leaning out the drive-through window and was shouting insults at me, in between 2 vehicles at the drive-through, one having just gotten their food and the one behind them that was driving up to the window. It was a completely brazen display of hostility towards a customer, and I've never seen that before in a workplace. I couldn't hear specifically what the words were that he said, but I'm certain they were not an apology. read more