McDonald's - 4 Pickles and NO Salt Please

I approached the counter at a McDonald's in the food court of a nearby mall after work one evening. The line was relatively small considering it was dinner time and the mall was crowded. A very polite woman behind the counter with a clean, pressed McDonald’s uniform greeted me with a smile and said “Welcome to McDonald's. May I take your order?" Not knowing what to expect and holding back a grin, I began ordering a cheeseburger with four pickles. There was a slight pause and a look of confusion on her face before she asked me if I only wanted four pickles on the burger and nothing else. I quickly explained that I wanted a cheeseburger with everything on it in addition to the four pickles. She smiled and said “okay” in a very understanding voice. Her response immediately made me believe this was going to go smoother than I first thought it would. As I was about to give my order of french fries with NO salt, the woman politely stopped me for a moment to relay my cheeseburger order to the two preparers in the back. She quickly did an about-face and held up four fingers to the make sure the food preparers knew she needed a cheeseburger with exactly four pickles. I couldn’t help but think to myself what was going through the workers minds when they received my order. Anyway, after that short delay, the woman returned to the register and at this point, I ordered a small fry with NO salt. She punched in this part of my order in the register and then asked me if I would like anything else. After responding "no", she relayed my request to the manager who was manning the fry station. I watched as the manager placed a set of newly cooked fries to the side before mixing them with the existing fries. To my surprise, he cleaned the fry scoop of all the salt before putting my fries into the small container. While I was waiting for my order to be completed, I gave my money to the person behind the counter and asked her for a receipt. The manager then placed the fries into the bag that was already set up with my cheeseburger and handed it to me while the order taker took the next customer. I checked my order after leaving the counter and was happy to find that EXACTLY four pickles were placed onto my cheeseburger.

I thought the whole management process at this particular McDonald's was very efficient. The order taker was kind and courteous and understood what I wanted. She was very organized and showed leadership abilities by communicating clearly to the other employees working on my order. She was able to devise a good plan on how my order should be completed by asking me to wait before I continued my order. In my opinion, I didn't think my order posed any sort of challenge for the staff to complete. There was no delay in my order at all because the whole process took about three and a half minutes from start to finish. However, I would have liked the person behind the counter to simply punch in my order including any special instructions and not have to leave the register to make sure the order was relayed to the food preparers. All in all I had a pleasant experience and I believe the management process worked well.