One More Pickle!

As i stepped into McDonald's i immediately observed that the cashier counter only had three cashier registers. the three lines of customers extended to the eating tables. it took a good ten minutes before i was finally called by maria and was quickly greeted with "hi,can i take your order?" i stressed to her that my small hamburger must have four pickles and exactly four pickles on it while my small order of fries must have not even an ounce of salt. As she placed the order, i noticed she didn't really pay attention to detail to my request. She kept punching buttons on the register, but i brushed it off, because i already pointed out to her exactly what i wanted. Once maria charged me for my order she turned around and said something to the person making the burgers, and then went on to tell the manager to hold the salt she was about to put on the fresh batch of fries.She turned and asked why, and maria told her it was because her customer wanted no salt on his fries. the manager glanced toward Maria's register and saw me there, and gave me what looked like "the rocks eyebrow lift". I guess i held her up because she seemed like she was taking lots of customers in a hurry. i couldn't help but laugh a little thinking about the project and all my other classmates that might be going through the same situation.
she told me to hold on to my fries and wait just a bit longer for the burger. I waited there for about 3 more minutes on top of the 2 minutes i was with her on the register. while she finishes with the client after me and calling the next one, here comes my burger."done with this part of the extra credit," i say to myself. She goes ahead and stuffs my burger in the bag, and says have a nice day.
Now i know i could have just left, taken my receipt that says "1 pickle", and the professor would have understood i went through with the project, but i was curious. I moved to the side and opened my burger, and i found 3 pickles on it. I called maria while she was getting some barbecue sauce for somebody, and told her there was a pickle missing on my burger. While i showed her the burger with 3 pickles on it she said,"you said you wanted extra pickles right?" i nodded and told her i wanted exactly four pickles. She took the burger nicely from my hand, but i noticed she squeezed the hell out of it while she was bringing it back to the burger maker.
The little burger goes back, and it adds 1 more minute to the process.
I finally get the burger back and look at it once more,and it has exactly four pickles on it. The bun looks like it hasn't been pierced, but when i opened the burger, i noticed that the squeeze she put on the burger pierced the beef. Real bad service, but i didn't want to stir things up again with the line being so long. I thanked maria for her service, and she gave me the "get out of here look". It took about 4 people in total to complete the order.
The manufacturing process to which my order went through was not great. Although she was helpful at first, it was not enough to rescue the rest of the processing method. I observed that her registers operating system was not well equipped to register the four pickle order as maria had to physically walk over to the back to instruct the hamburger preparer to place extra pickles on my order. McDonald's salts all fries in the expectancy that all customers are in need of it. It might be fair to add that Maria's, as well as her crews delay in processing my order was heavily influenced by the large traffic of customers during the time frame in which my order was placed. As far as the operational skills of the McDonald's crew i would rate them to be effective but not efficient.
In order to work out the kinks that brought down the overall service performance, as a consultant i would advise McDonald's to begin with acquiring an operational system suitable for today's versatile customer. As more and more people discover the meaning of the phrase " the customer is always right", scenarios like these might be more prevalent and the ratio of disgruntled customers to below par performances will became higher. In addition, McDonald's would be better suited to offer a higher rate of customer service if they train their employees to understand how to effectively and efficiently communicate with not only the ordering system but also with one another. Communication is key to excellent customer service, especially in high-traffic environment like McDonald's where one slip could stop the whole flow of operations

My vision,my goal, my future.

Ive had so many different goals for myself throughout the years,i consider myself to be a person who likes to encounter and experience different things. Most people have a certain trade or hobby that they turn into something profitable in the future, but me i think i've tapped a little into everything,kind of like your all-around player. Not specializing in anything but knows a little of everything. With that said, my first vision that i have that i want to build on the next 3 to 5 years is my career as an accountant. I really want to help people with their financial situations especially lower income families around where i live.Taking action by pursuing my education here at baruch, and hopefully a C.P.A. notch to back it, i can come out guns blazing and just turn things around for people and also companies who need some financial help.Second on my list of goals for the next 3 to 5 years is my poker career.. Its something i picked up as a hobby about a year ago, and as i've been playing noticed that i wasn't bad at the various games that it offers. Poker is very analogous to the every day life struggles we experience. It's hard to explain but if you give it a try, maybe you'll see what i mean. you have to take calculated risks, and sometimes go beyond that,a mantra i like to go by is"you have to be willing to die,to really live". This class has helped me with my bankroll management which is vital to a career at poker.I try to committ at least an hour or two a day if i can at my favorite poker site,fulltiltpoker.com.My bankroll has grown considerably since i started playing and i think its something that i want to pursue, with the vision of being semi-pro in about 2-3 years,and if things go really well,maybe i'll think about making it a full time thing,MAYBE, lol(but I gotta have a lock on at least $500k or more for that). My third goal within the next 3 to 5 years has to be developing my own business. I think primarily i would go towards opening a business embodying whatever degree i get, in my case accounting. Knowing myself though i can go as far as a restaurant, or even a massage therapy business.It's one of my most important goals, that goes the furthest out of all of my goals.Through family members and a few business clients at the bank, ive learned different types of business structures, and how to go about opening one.

A decision to avoid....

I personally chose avoidance to deal with the situation in class. One of the reasons i picked it was because i felt, like it says on the "avoidance" bullet, that there was no chance of winning after a while. It got systematically more hectic further into the class. i believed i chose this because even if i had a point that made some sense,it would get swirled into the clutter of an argument and it would just get so repetitive that it would not even help. I watched most people stay quiet and avoid the whole chaos just like me. As much as i would like to compete to win, knowing myself and how i observed communication in class i would pick collaborating as the best choice.

The class had to UNANIMOUSLY come to a plan, and this made it extremely hard for it to work without a structure laid out for us as far as leaders are concerned. If the class was broken down between 3 and no more than 5 groups, i believe that we would have come to a more balanced, efficient conclusion, with head speakers in front of class having no more than 20 mins each to have all groups agree on a plan.This would help clear any problems a single person has with the package,and make it possible for us to finish in time and arrive at a solution.

Eggselent try, unsuccessful outcome.

Our team went through step 1,step 4, and step 5. After some discussions about what approach to take, we came to a conclusion about the design we wanted to implement, and how difficult it was going to be, satisfying step 1. After that, we started physical design on the egg, with each team member taking a role in it,ex: cutting tape,bending straws, taping together straws, and maintaining the egg in its cradle. Halfway into the project we all noticed that we were way ahead of time.Step 4 was satisfied but i believe step 5 was not fully completed, at least on my part.We took action and measured our time that we had available, but i noticed that all of the resources given to us were'nt being used to the extent that we actually needed them. I noticed at least 60% of tape not used, project was done in half the time alotted to us.i didnt take corrective action.

Steps 2 and 3 were bypassed by our team,by not generating alternative resources and what can happen to each alternative, and also not identifying all the resources.Our performance in terms of getting the idea actually implemented was flawless,but we suffered because of not thinking of other ideas, or other ways to get the job done. i believe if we all sat down, used a good portion of the resources(time,tape,etc), i believe we could have found the optimal way to approach the project.