Random Acts of Patronage (RAP!) | Teaching the Fast Food Industry a Lesson

I've got a new Fight Club style of limited anarchy in mind, bear with me...

Ok, so today I was standing in line waiting for six people in front of me to get their food at Arby's.  It took a ridiculous 25 minutes to get my food and a quick peek outside showed approximately 10-15 cars waiting in the drive-thru at any given time.  There were no special orders, there were plenty of people working, and there appeared to be a large portion of the food already prepared and waiting in the warming trays that we all know and love.  This got me to thinking, with the "processes" in place at most major fast-food places to ensure that people get their food quickly, how do these things still happen?  Is it poor management, a lack of skilled workers, lack of worker motivation, or simply a lack of multi-tasking skills needed to calmly and systematically handle a large number or orders coming? 

Regardless of the cause, we all know the effect - you drop by a fast food joint to get something familiar and quick so you can get on with your daily business, then WHAM...life comes to a grinding halt while you wait for your order.  God help you if a tour bus shows up at the same time!  Chances are one of the following will occur:

• If you haven't already ordered, you're the lucky one.  RUN NOW!  Leave and go find someplace less-crowded and able to deal with multitudes of people
• You've already placed your order and handed over your hard-earned money...be prepared to wait forever to get your now cold food - leaving is futile because you've already paid and by leaving you've admitted defeat and they've gotten your money for no goods or services in return
• You wait out the absurd amount of time to get your cold food, run out the door because there's now no place to sit and guess what...yep, you know what's coming...YOUR ORDER IS WRONG!  Back inside to wait for another 10 minutes for one of the frantic crew to even acknowledge you're standing there and hopefully make your order right.  Chances are you can get your order fixed if you just got the wrong food, but you're screwed if you got overcharged for something because trying to walk through 2nd grade math with these people is like explaining to them why as you get closer to a black hole time slows down...not going to happen.

So, as I stood there watching person after person leave and "donate" their money to restaurant without receiving any food, I got to thinking.  Wouldn't it be great to stage some sort of random appearance of multitudes of people in order to teach these restaurants a lesson - something like the pranks where a ton of people stop mid-stride and remain frozen?  Only this prank would have numerous benefits:

• Customer/Participant Benefits
  • Pure entertainment - have you seen how frazzled the employees get when a tour bus arrives?  Bring your video cameras and film away!  Throw it on YouTube and see what group causes the largest level of panic for the restaurant crew scuttling around trying to make sure all the fries are done.
  • Empowerment by knowing that you're not only sticking it to the man, but in the long run hopefully ensuring a better dining experience for yourself and others.
  • Sweet revenge for all those times you had to wait simply because they were either goofing off or incompetent - you're now waiting with a purpose and watching them sweat!
  • What other entertaining things do you really have to do on your lunch break?  C'mon.....c'mon.....c'mon c'mon c'mon...seriously, c'mon!

• Restaurant Benefits
  • By flooding a particular restaurant, the process of taking the order, preparing it, and delivering it is tested far beyond the stress loads it normally endures.  This would help to identify bottlenecks in the process very quickly and hopefully some witty manager will recognize areas that could use improvement and act on them.
  • You're still giving the restaurant your money for lunch - there is no negative financial impact for the establishment.
  • If the place is wise and thinks outside of the box, they could use the event as publicity by writing an article for the local paper telling what happened, how it helped them find some improvements, and now show how much better they're capable of handling orders and large crowds.

So there's the idea, cause confusion and minor havoc by simply getting a bunch of people to patronize a particular fast food restaurant at the same time.  I'm sure there are other benefits that would come of this, but these are just off the top of my head.  Of course, just as in Fight Club, there need to be some ground rules:

• First rule of RAP! is you don't talk about RAP!  Don't let anybody that works at the restaurant know about it.  Organize off-site and show up as a hungry mob.
• Pay & stay for your food - part of the experiment is to make sure the staff has to go through the whole process and to see if you get your order right.
• Be cordial - you don't need to be angry or rude because things are taking a while...just the number of people will be stressful enough.  That being said, don't be afraid to challenge if your order is wrong or cold and don't be afraid to ask how much longer they think it'll be.
• Have fun & remember that this isn't meant to be harmful, just a lesson in service.

If anybody else tries this, make sure to leave a comment here with links to your pics/videos of the event.  Let the anarchy begin!