Interesting read. Personally I'm not a huge fan of fast food chains either but when I do it is pretty much exclusively Maccas these days (thanks to their coffee and their app with its reward points they have really suckered me in). Maybe you were unlucky or it was just a badly managed store but I generally find their customer service to be quite decent.

My experience at a Maccas in Morriset en-route to Newcastle over the long weekend was the opposite, and in stark contrast to the generally average standards I have been subject to. The food was fresh, prepared well, and handed over in good time.

Sorry to hear about your experience @Summer12

I'm on the road for work and frequent many different Maccas across SE QLD and as a whole I've been very impressed with the quality of coffee, the occasional food purchase and overall service. The one complaint I would have is it's fairly pricey for fast food but maybe that's me anchoring to the cheaper costs I was used to growing up in Canada.

Maccas costs are substantially more than they used to be.

I remember when I was younger Maccas was cheap, but KFC a bit pricey.

Now (providing you get one of the good app offers - ie., cheap as chips), I tend to find KFC quite reasonably priced, but Maccas extremely expensive for what it is.

I just don't get why I'd go to maccas and pay $15 for a meal, when I can go to a takeaway store and get an excellent burger and chips (convenience is the reason I guess).

That's odd with the shakes. I still like them and haven't had one that tasted substantially different unless it seemed to have double the syrup in it or something.

This I can totally agree with, but it's a sign of the times in general. Very hard to find value in this environment, in anything.

This is pretty well a story about any business. Service costs, but politeness doesn’t.

There is always a balance - you cannot offer a Rolls Royce service on a Holden product. - equally that old chestnut:

customer, you can have any two of these words but not the third

GOOD - FAST - CHEAP

Where a real conflict becomes obvious is when the duty to the client assumes a greater prominence at law than does profit, or the future of the business.

Take Shine Justice ($SHJ) which has been handed its bum on a plate by the courts in the female implant case. The duty to the client was more important than duty to company and its shareholders. Simply put, the company was in error in borrowing money and paying interest (admittedly at a rate that would please Al Capone) and claiming this as a cost of running the case, whilst shovelling free cash to shareholders as dividends.