Darlo's World

It’s probably been about 25 years since I last woke up and thought “what’s that smell? Oh shit, have I shat myself?”, so when I woke up this morning to the stench of sewage rather than the smell of just a student bedroom (which for the record are actually different) I was caught a bit off guard. The smell was accompanied by the noise of some kind of contruction work outside, but as my road is currently being dug up for lamp-post rennovation that part didn’t really shock me too much. I stood up on the bed, but unfortunately the higher I got the stronger the odour became. I headed over to the window.

“Oh … shit!”

DrainsAid (yes they remove the space between the two words because … um … no I couldn’t find a reason either) had two trucks and were up the road doing … something. But this ‘something’ meant that not only was I going to miss the bowl of Shreddies that I was looking forward to (after I went and got milk the night before specially for it), but I also had to get the hell out of my room, lest I wish to vomit into my laundry hamper and further stink up the place.

I opened my bedroom door and was punched in the face with a brick-like fist of something I can only describe as a mummy’s arse, and the worst part was that my mouth was open. After wretching somewhats nastilly and giving all my inner strength to keeping the contents of my stomach down (I had eaten a mars bar during the night), I threw myself back into my less odour-filled bedroom and quickly shut the door. I threw on some clothes, any clothes, it didn’t matter which. I jotted down DrainAids phone number on a post it and shoved it in my pocket, took a photo of one of the trucks from my window, grabbed a can of air-freshener from the cupboard, stuck my head under my blanket and took a deep breath, and ran through the house spraying every cubic centimeter of air I could. After feeling faint, I crawled back to my room and stuck my head back under the blanket. Taking another deep breath I headed downstairs, where the smell had yet to have much of an impact (our toilets are on the middle floor, my floor), and was then out the door.

I wanted to call DrainsAid to find out why we hadn’t been given any notice that our house would be given the delightful aroma of swine-sphincter, but couldn’t stomach the idea of making a phone call on the middle floor. As they have a freephone number I headed to the phone box around the corner. Unfortunately there was someone already in there when I arived; a dying bee. Having already been subject to a wasp attack back when I was a lad, I didn’t fancy sharing any space with a pissed-off stinging thing-a-mi-bob. I popped to the next phone box along, only to find his equally dying and pissed off twin brother.

I took a walk down the road to my next nearest phone box. No bees in this one, just a lovely pile of sick. It didn’t smell though, and as long as I watched my footing I didn’t step in it; I really didn’t fancy looking for yet another phone box.

I got through to a guy at DrainsAid at about 2:10pm. I gave him details of what was happening and asked him why we weren’t told about it in advance. He said that he couldn’t find it on his system, but would give me a call back when he finds out. Poor guy sounded so downtrodden, perhaps they’re sorting the drains out outside their offices too, I thought.

I headed down to the Unipol (my landlords) office to see if they’d been told anything about works in the area, but again they’d heard nothing. They said that they too would get in touch with DrainSaid and see if they could find something out. Good ol’ Unipol. They asked me to get back in touch with them if the house still stank at about 4 o’clock, so in the meantime I headed to the Union for a bit of a nose.

While in the bookshop, nosing at the old crap that people don’t want section (aka 2nd hand books, three of which I ended up buying today), my phone rang. Unfortunately it stopped ringing before it had chance to actually make any noise. I had my phone in my hand so felt it vibrate, but it stopped just as I looked at the screen. I couldn’t even call them back, the buggers withheld the number. I knew it wasn’t Unipol (they don’t withhold their number and they actually wait for you to answer the phone), so I had a hunch it was DrainalAids.

I went back to the house and gagged on the smell of sewage and over-excitable air-freshening. Thankfully the drainage guys had left so the rancid smell had begun to subside. I went back to Unipol to let them know the scented-situation.

DrainAid explained to Unipol that they had drainage work scheduled in the area either on Monday or tomorrow (I won’t lie, I don’t remember which), so it couldn’t possibly have been them. Oh DrainsAid, don’t be so silly. You know in this day and age everyone hates liars (and also carry phones with cameras). I explained to the guy at Unipol that I had taken a picture of one of the vans, to which he said he’d call them up again and then give me a call. After leaving the office I had a good look at the picture to see if I could see the license plate as well. My first camera phone wasn’t as good as this.

I had a call not too much later. Apparently DoughnutAid had indeed been working up the road on an Emergency call out due to some of the flats accross the road getting flooded. Now to me that’s a good enough reason for not giving us notice. There’s no need to claim that they weren’t there and there’s definately no need for the half-arsed attempt of “calling you back”. The only result from this is that DrainsAid now look like an unprofessional organisation who don’t even know where their own staff are.

Silly buggers.

I went to the pub and caught the end of the South Africa Vs Mexico match (it is World Cup time after all), before heading home to air out the house a bit more.

As usual with my complaints I invite DrainsAid to comment on here and will send them an email to let them know about the entry. It’s getting a bit late so I’ll probably do the Japanese version to this in the morning.

Ok, let’s be honest, McDonalds isn’t synonymous with top Michellin Star restaurants of London in terms of customer service, but on the whole it’s not too bad. Generally when you go to a fast food restaurant you expect to be served relatively quickly (queue and time dependant of course) and be given your food also relatively quickly. This of course is under the assumption that you keep faff to a minimum by not ordering customised items (no mayo for one). Generally speaking this is the same for drive-throughs.

As a mystery shopper myself, I’d definately say that Leeds has one of the best McDonalds I’ve been to as far as customer service is concerned. The staff at the St John’s Centre branch are normally polite and I have at times had a couple of good conversations with staff members without holding up the queue. In fact one time I entered the restaurant in a foul mood and left with a smile on my face.

Donnington in Telford on the other hand is a bit of a different case however, at least today anyway. On the way back from shopping we decided to pop through the drive through to get some food. There was already a bit of a queue when we got there, and soon other cars also joined the queue behind us. The first problem came to be at Window 1 (this McDonalds drive-through having 3 windows). On arrival the window was closed and the only staff member visible seemed to be chatting to someone at Window 2. As we had to wait there in the queue for sometime anyway, we presumed the reason they hadn’t opened the window and served us was because service would begin at Window 2. Unfortunately the same thing happened at Window 2, and as I looked back to see the car behind being served at Window 1 I knew that we’d end up having to order at Window 3.

Normally the only action to take place at Window 3 is the collection of food, so when we arrived at the window I had to explain that the food laid out for collection wasn’t for us and that we still needed to place our order. A member of staff (seeming to wear a more senior member uniform) came over and asked if we were paying by cash or card, and that if we wanted to pay by card we’d either have to come in the store, or drive all the way around and rejoin the queue.

After agreeing to pay in cash he then proceeded to take our order … in his own special way. I can appreciate that there was a queue behind us getting longer, but making us rush with your face right next to the car window won’t make us speed up at all. And yes we told him that. This (possibly) senior member of staff had one of the worst attitudes I’d ever seen when dealing with customers, especially considering there was a young child in the car. We told him what we wanted and he tried to memorise it. I’m presuming here that he would have to ring the order in at another till. He recited our order back, but seemed to add menu items. For example, part of the order was a hamburger, medium fries and a small chocolate shake. He referred to this as a “burger meal”. When I asked what a burger meal was, he said it was like a Big Mac meal, but with a burger instead of a Big Mac. We then asked if they actually did a burger meal, to which he said “no”.

Eventually, he took the money over to the till and came back with our change, at which I asked his name. This member of (possibly) senior staff didn’t even wear a name badge, though claimed his name was “James”. I also asked what this particular branch number was, as I knew I’d want to take this further. Rather than give me this, he did say I could speak directly with the manager (though he didn’t make it apparent if this was the branch manager or duty manager, I doubt it would have been the franchisee).

The manager by contrast to “James” was completely sensitive to what was going on and listened to exactly what had happened and appologised. She said she would send me an email to let know the outcome of the situation, so I’ll let you know how that goes by when I get it.

To be honest, this experience hasn’t put me off McDonalds totally (especially as I’m going to head back to Leeds soon), but I know this has put me off the Donnington branch. Though I wouldn’t say the training at that branch needs more focus on customer service (because I’ve not worked there and don’t know how the training is done), if the same experience we had was also experienced by other customers, this could have a much more negative effect to the branch.

Still have no idea why we weren’t served at Window 1 though, if we had this could have never happened.