Speaking Up

Sometimes a little complaining helps. Take last night. I stopped at the Forest Lake KFC for some hot wings. I've developed a fondness for them, and the 10-pack is just about perfect for a full meal, minus some of the coating. I figured I could eat them while driving home to make the Planning Commission meeting. Time was tight.

I bit into the first one. Or rather, I tried to. It was overcooked, the meat was dark brown all through, dry, stringy, tough, and flavorless. Not exactly what I had in mind for my $7. I tossed it and tried another. Then another.

It dawned on me that they weren't going to get better, that the first ones weren't an anomaly.

Dang! I tossed the boxful.

When I pulled in the driveway, I dragged out my receipt and called the phone number on it. The manager answered. I vented. I asked her if they were cooked yesterday and held over because nobody could eat them? I told her I didn't know what was wrong with this branch. It wasn't my first time I got overdone chicken here, just the first time I bothered to complain. Stillwater's KFC can get it right, Vadnais Heights can get it right, Mounds View can get it right, Wayzata can get it right, St. Croix Falls can get it right. Why not here?

She kinda snickered when I started listing all the stores where I'd happily gotten good hot wings. This increased my ire. I was going to have to go to a meeting, the reason I'd gotten them in the first place, and didn't have time to fix something else. I would have to go without supper. (Actually I convinced Paul to nuke a couple weiners quick-like, but why spoil a good rant with extraneous facts?)

She apologized, and offered to put my name on a list, and when I came back, I could receive double my original order, i.e., 20 hot wings. That seemed fair, even though it didn't solve my immediate problem. But would they be fresh next time? When asked, she offered to have me call ahead so they could put some in the cooker just for me so they'd be perfect just as I arrived.

I told her that she should be running her store well enough so that they didn't have to do that. They should be in good condition all the time. Further, I'd take her up on her offer, but that I'd sit in the drive-through lane and inspect the wings after they passed them out the window. And if they again weren't any good, I'd keep sitting in the drive through lane, stopping customer traffic, until I got some that were satisfactory.

She said that would be OK.

Tonight I stopped by on my way home to pick up my 20 free wings. When I got the box, I looked through them. They were OK. I described my experience from the night before, and the employee serving me suggested that they were really, really old to have been that dried out and overcooked. I informed her that the manager denied that they were old, just somehow got cooked too long. I was asked if it was a woman. When I said it was, she casually informed me, "Oh, she just got fired."

Sweet.