My Radical Blogs

I would just like to take this opportunity to announce the arrival of our fifth daughter in the home. As usual, my other half doesn’t waste time.

She went into labour a little after 11pm and bubs was born 40 minutes later. Mother and daughter are doing fine. With five daughters, father is investing in a large stock of whiskey to get him through the teen years.

It may be our fifth, but as you can tell, I am just as excited as if it was my first - thanks for letting me have this brag. 

Time for a rant again. The Olympic Games are great and the sportsmanship so far has been pretty good. The performances have been even better. When you start getting world records in heats and semi-finals you know you are going to be in for some great action in the finals.

Unfortunately, one of the things that irks me about big events such as this is the quality of the television coverage. I get really p**sed of when these same coverages then win awards at the end of the season. I can understand that, with so many events happening at the one time, that coverage can be difficult.

However, if I want to sit down and watch the gymnastics, or the equestrian, or perhaps even the swimming, then that is what I want to watch. At present we get snippets. A little bit of this and little bit of that. It can be very frustrating.

I don’t know how much of the Olympics the rest of the world are watching, or in what format. Here in Australia we are very backward when it comes to television broadcasting. Often you need to subscribe to pay tv if you want to watch anything decent.

The Olympic broadcaster for Australia is the Seven Network. I am not sure about the rest of Oz, and I would love to hear from others, but I receive five different ‘channel 7’s’. We get the standard local channel 7 along with channel 7 HD. We also receive the new channel Seven-1, Seven-2 and Seven-3.  Now to my rant. If Channel Seven can split into three broadcasts, why is they are not using this facility to deliver a much fuller coverage of the games.

One channel could deliver their snippet broadcast (as it does now) whilst the other two could be used to deliver extended broadcast of individual sports. Thankfully a second broadcaster is able to pick up some of the sporting events and does broadcast them in full - they even provide a schedule of what is going to be broadcast and at what time - the Seven Network seems to find that a little difficult as well.

The games are about the athletes and that is what I would love to see more of them. To all the athletes - all I can say good luck to them - Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie - oy oy oy - Go for Gold!

It seems that McDonalds, the famous (or infamous) family restaurant that prided itself on staff training and customer service has now joined the ranks of most other corporations and put profit ahead of customer service.

I am in Australia so I don’t know how they operate in other countries. In the past the burgers were basically massed produced. You ordered and you had your burger immediately. They have now changed to making the burgers while-u-wait. I don’t have a problem with that. Service is a little slower but the burgers are fresher, you know they haven’t been sitting there for ten minutes and for McDonalds, it cuts down on waste.

That is fine, like I said I do not have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the lack of coordination and the frequency of ‘getting orders wrong’. I have a largish family. When we order Macca’s its for six people. Over the last six months I have not had an order given to me that has been right. There is always something missing. If your getting take out it can be a problem to arrive home and unpack and find components missing.

Is this a problem with the staff, the training or the system? On the last few occasions I have paid particular attention to what is happening, trying to follow my order and catch any problems before I walk away. It isn’t easy. I have to say it is the system that is wrong.

In our local store, the service area where they collect the burgers for packing is about two feet square. You have four or five operators all trying to access this area and build their orders, at the same time you have drive-thru barging in taking priority for their orders. It is absolute chaos. There is no system for checking orders as they are put together. Once you complain, they are very polite and apologetic and the next time I order they will replace the missing items for free (free - I have paid for them!!!).

McDonalds at one stage had the reputation for having the very best in customer service standards. Today, at least in my eyes, they have lost that reputation. It was once suggested I use drive-thru - my experience there was even worse. Getting order right should be the number one area of customer service - for that you need a system - and McDonalds, the king of systems, have let their customers, and themselves down in that department. Good thing Hungry Jacks (Burger King) have now opened up in town.