This is such a weird mindset. How much interaction do you think the person hearing your response has with the person in corporate that made them all ask that question?
Being rude or hostile to service people, even just mildly, because of corporate decisions is not only ineffective, but it's also cruel.
Rudeness in hostility is in how you state your position. Having a position (that you dislike and won't participate in a corporate sales funnel is always OK, and it's always OK to politely express that to representatives of the corporation. Even if they happen to be employees of the franchise owner, they're wearing the uniform and promoting the brand, rather than representing 'local burger restaurant.' Of course, you can just not eat there at all (I don't) but in that case no communication is taking place. Many people are OK with McDonalds' food offerings but not with their invasive app marketing.
Trust me, no communication is happening in either situation. Your complaint is not being run up the corporate ladder. All you're doing is making someone's day a bit worse in order to get some fleeting feeling of self-satisfaction for voicing your opinion. You're of course free to be that person, but the rest of us are free to judge you for it.
In the modern corporate world that leadership has entirely insulated itself from customer feedback - if it was plausible to voice your opinion through more appropriate channels I'd advocate for that but many companies have purposefully shut those channels down.
What is the better option to pass along that message than modestly increasing retraining costs for that position?
I treat service workers with respect, personally, but I am struggling to see what other venues of communication are still available.
Like I said in my other comment, this is missing the point. This approach won’t be effective. Nothing is actually being communicated to the people making decisions. The difficulty in finding another more effective approach doesn’t change that fact. If you feel passionate about this issue, you should try some of the suggestions by the other commenter.
I do not trust you, because I have been a food service worker and actually know what I'm talking about. A customer expressing a preference has never bothered me if they weren't rude about it. If it happens often enough it does get passed on, even though the individual impact of any counter conversation is low. You are trying to turn normal amicable commercial interactions into some kind of moral purity test.
> I have been a food service worker and actually know what I'm talking about.
Same here.
> A customer expressing a preference has never bothered me if they weren't rude about it.
A lot of people are seemingly skipping over OP describing their behavior as creating a “hostile atmosphere”. That is inherently rude.
> If it happens often enough it does get passed on
But we aren’t talking about just telling your manager. There are so many layers of management and bureaucracy with larger corporations, especially ones with a structure like McDonalds’ franchise model, that these complaints will not make it to the decision makers.
This read to me like a poorly-chosen phrase from a non-native speaker. I had no impression OP intended to communicate hostility, just rejection of the corporate practice.
But we aren’t talking about just telling your manager. There are so many layers of management and bureaucracy with larger corporations, especially ones with a structure like McDonalds’ franchise model, that these complaints will not make it to the decision makers.
They will eventually. Years ago Starbucks used to insist that customers specify 'tall, grande, or venti' for their medium, large, and x-large cups, to the point of arguing with the customer if they just asked for the large. They abandoned the practice some years ago, presumably due to feedback from their counter staff.
>This read to me like a poorly-chosen phrase from a non-native speaker. I had no impression OP intended to communicate hostility, just rejection of the corporate practice.
This is also incredibly weird to me. There is nothing in that post that shows any indication of them not being a native speaker. You just agree with their underlying point so you're giving yourself leeway to ignore the parts of what they said with which you disagree. However, you can't actually admit that bias to yourself or to me, so now you're completely fabricating stories about them being a non-native speaker. It doesn't matter to you that this justification is entirely circular, they didn't mean "hostile" because they're a non-native speaker and they're a non-native speaker because they said "hostile" when they didn't mean it.
Wrong on all accounts: I am indeed a non-native speaker, and reading it again I do see a few indications myself, and my definition "hostility" (and I'm sure I am not alone on this) is a spectrum so you are also giving yourself leeway to interpret things in your preferred way, for example furrowing your brow for a couple of seconds and then looking away is a hostile behavior, if you get on the train and look a stranger like that they would likely describe you as "a bit hostile", maybe I am using it too much as a synonym of "aggressive", which according to the dictionary it is, if instead I were talking about war or politics it would be crystal clear we are talking about the "hard" flavor of hostility but here we are talking about a simple client-customer interaction to get some food.
Well way back in the day, I worked at Radio Shack in college. We were suppose to ask for a phone number and address as part of the payment flow. People complained, I said it was corporate policy. I really didn’t give a shit about their complaints. I got my little minimum wage, sold useless warranties and got a $5 spiff and went on with my day.
Whether it bothered you, it was useless for the customer to complain
No. I call bullshit on your oddly protective stance in favor of how corporations do things.
The pushback has to start somewhere and if it means being mildly rude to some poor cashier for a second, well, that's part of their job and you're not some kind of asshole for making your dislike obvious. You came in there to buy something specific and simple after all, and being pushed on something else is rude too.
You can't be expected to write a strongly worded letter to corporate every one of the many times in an average day that you'll encounter some new, blandly packaged parasitic data harvesting or price gouging practice from some corporation.
On the other hand, if you and enough others create a pattern of responding with a bit of hostility at the customer service end of things, you're nearly guaranteed to fuck up some KPIs somewhere, and raise enough eyebrows to make the executives at X corporation reconsider a few things.
> but the rest of us are free to judge you for it.
FALSE.
In today's economy and politics of normalized and systemic dark pattern enshittification, fomenting discord toward the turtles all the way down is a responsible civic duty of a disgruntled public captured and corralled by corporate monopolies with no exits.
We shouldn't be rude or hostile to people, but expressing your disapproval or displeasure definitely can (and in my experience, has) caused a chain reaction enough over time the corp makes changes.
Fair enough, but where do you draw the line? What if they ask you for ID for a burger? What if they ask to see your browsing history? Or your medical history? At what point is "I will never give that to you" or "Ha ha, no" justified?
At some point you just buy your burger elsewhere. "Can I see ID!" is absolutely across that "go elsewhere" line. No need to be rude, just stopping giving your money to them.
These questions are missing the point. The person you're talking to has no control over the policy so any response directly to them is not going to impact that policy which means the objectionable nature of the policy and your desire to change it are irrelevant. If you're so deeply offended by the question, either stop patronizing the business or voice your criticism in a more constructive manner like trying to reach out to corporate or organizing some consumer action. Don't go the easy and lazy route of attacking the messenger.
No, I see the point, I just don't buy the argument that people working retail have been stripped of all agency, and so therefore your reaction to them must always be a calculated indifference. At some point, you've got to stick up for your dignity. Maybe it's not this case, but it's not far off.
The problem is that your response is precisely what the corporate decision-makers rely on to insulate themselves from criticism.
That doesn't mean that you are wrong: there is no point protesting to a cashier. My point is that there is no realistic or effective way for us to actually communicate to the corporate decision makers that rule our world. This becomes even more true as corporations consolidate power, which is precisely the "enshittification" that Cory Doctorow has been writing about.
It's really evil that corporations closed all ways of giving feedback, and the ones that remained are considered bad manners because "think of poor employees".
No one said to be rude, let alone cruel, to service people. Talk about a weird mindset.
No one said anything that evenr remotely implied the cashier has the ear of the ceo. Talk about a weird mindset.
It's entirely valid, in fact it's positive, being helpful by being informative, to tell a business what you want or why you are not going to buy their product, instead of simply not buying their product.
It's for damned sure valid to tell them what you would preferr if for some reason you are forced by circumstances or priorities to buy their product under duress.
This whole comment is only 2 sentences yet manages to have like a dozen different facets of weird mindset if you unpack it all.
The original comment talked about intentionally creating a “hostile atmosphere”. Doing that for no other reason than making yourself feel better is rude and cruel to the people who have to deal with your hostility.
when you go through the drive-thru the question is asked by an automated voice with the same weird inflection every time you drive up, not a human service person.
Being rude or hostile to service people, even just mildly, because of corporate decisions is not only ineffective, but it's also cruel.