5 ms·

> But if someone is trying to game the system to make corporate believe they get everything done in record time, they can control the system to fake the times.

> But if someone is trying to game the system to make corporate believe they get everything done in record time, they can control the system to fake the times. I find this so incredibly annoying. KFC and McDonald's near me have screens up saying when your order is being "prepared" and when it is "ready to collect", except the "ready to collect" column is totally useless because they always put it in "ready to collect" long before it is actually ready to collect.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
e_i_pi_2 4y ago
I think this is a side effect of "what is measured is managed", combined with people always trying to game systems. If you establish a system to measure how fast people make meals you're just going to get false estimates. The solution I've seen is to trust and then actually manage people if they aren't doing well.
- tough 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - thaeli 4y ago
    Except that gaming these metrics is in the interests of so many people up and down the chain. The "park everyone strategy" for getting drive thru times down should be a blatantly obvious cheat in the data, but no one cares to go looking for it because it makes the stats look good.
    - xattt 4y ago
      They are going to run out of parking spaces very quickly in my local McDonalds if every customer in the drive-thru decides they want Filet-O-Fish. (All the times I’ve ordered it, it seems to take the exact time it takes to cook it)
      - orange_fritter 4y ago
        I thought I was the only one in the world who ordered it. Catfish and American cheese never tasted so good. Cheers
        explaininjs 4y ago
        Lent-followers love it! Jack In The Box releases their fish sandwich at the start of Lent and retains it until supplies run out afterward. That one’s Alaskan pollock instead of catfish though.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      Exactly. I worked at a McDonalds in high school and we would only park cars if someone ordered a dozen sandwiches. The other day I waited 10 minutes for an egg McMuffin even with a prepaid mobile order. This kind of crap is everywhere. My father in law is a former fire chief of a city department and we live next to a firehouse. They start the clock for response when they accept the call - back in his day the clock started when the call went out, and target response time was 5m. Modern Taylorism and the institutional stupidity of computer automated processes is the worst.
  - earlyam 4y ago
    [flagged]
paxys 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law Workers are instructed that they must get order times down. What's the best way to do that? Simply marking the order as done whether it is done or not. Numbers are soon looking good and the bosses are happy. Sure the customers aren't, but that was never the metric they were asked to track.
wolongong942 4y ago
A Pizza shop near me recently got terminated by the franchise for faking their pizza delivery times to collect bonuses. It's only a matter of time before somebody is jailed for pizza delivery fraud.
arkitaip 4y ago
I noticed the same thing at a Burger King here in Stockholm, Sweden. Very annoying to go to the counter and realize that your "ready" order is far from being so.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

e_i_pi_2 4y ago

I think this is a side effect of "what is measured is managed", combined with people always trying to game systems. If you establish a system to measure how fast people make meals you're just going to get false estimates. The solution I've seen is to trust and then actually manage people if they aren't doing well.

tough 4y ago
[flagged]
- thaeli 4y ago
  Except that gaming these metrics is in the interests of so many people up and down the chain. The "park everyone strategy" for getting drive thru times down should be a blatantly obvious cheat in the data, but no one cares to go looking for it because it makes the stats look good.
  - xattt 4y ago
    They are going to run out of parking spaces very quickly in my local McDonalds if every customer in the drive-thru decides they want Filet-O-Fish. (All the times I’ve ordered it, it seems to take the exact time it takes to cook it)
    - orange_fritter 4y ago
      I thought I was the only one in the world who ordered it. Catfish and American cheese never tasted so good. Cheers
      - explaininjs 4y ago
        Lent-followers love it! Jack In The Box releases their fish sandwich at the start of Lent and retains it until supplies run out afterward. That one’s Alaskan pollock instead of catfish though.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Exactly. I worked at a McDonalds in high school and we would only park cars if someone ordered a dozen sandwiches. The other day I waited 10 minutes for an egg McMuffin even with a prepaid mobile order. This kind of crap is everywhere. My father in law is a former fire chief of a city department and we live next to a firehouse. They start the clock for response when they accept the call - back in his day the clock started when the call went out, and target response time was 5m. Modern Taylorism and the institutional stupidity of computer automated processes is the worst.
- earlyam 4y ago
  [flagged]

paxys 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law Workers are instructed that they must get order times down. What's the best way to do that? Simply marking the order as done whether it is done or not. Numbers are soon looking good and the bosses are happy. Sure the customers aren't, but that was never the metric they were asked to track.

wolongong942 4y ago

A Pizza shop near me recently got terminated by the franchise for faking their pizza delivery times to collect bonuses. It's only a matter of time before somebody is jailed for pizza delivery fraud.

arkitaip 4y ago

I noticed the same thing at a Burger King here in Stockholm, Sweden. Very annoying to go to the counter and realize that your "ready" order is far from being so.