Well, we didn’t go to any fish fries this year (hey, with my own fryer, we can have our own quite easily now…) but we did take Momma Linda and ourselves up to the Brazilian steakhouse (Em Chamas) while they were having their seafood-Fridays/$10 off promotion. De-lish, and the service was utterly top-notch. But we didn’t stay for dessert, and after all that meat-onna-spear, my husband persuaded me to pull into a McDonald’s for a cone. (I like a cone.)
So I pulled up to the order box, where I was greeted by a female voice, asking me if I’d be interested in the Double Quarter Pounder Extra Value meal, which, given the meal I’d had, was pretty laughable. I declined, and ordered the cones.
A male voice replied with the total due.
Suddenly, I got squirrely. “Why, MY how your voice has deepened, I must say!”
And the voice chuckled, and lowered even further, “Why yes it did.”
As we were driving around the corner, my husband informed us that those are recorded greetings (Who knew?! Not me!) so it then made sense – but I’ve always visualized someone starting the process, and then someone else jumping in to handle the rest. Tricky, tricky! All with the recordings now, this modern world continues to shock & awe! We pulled up to the window, and the guy was laughing, we were laughing, he said something about he gets that once in a while, and I said something about just learning it was a recording, and then I might have said something about how interesting it was when I thought he was having a sex change between the time I’d ordered & the time I’d paid. (I do this randomly, get utterly inappropriate & it hasn’t failed me yet. Yet.)
So by the time we get to the delivery window, apparently that guy’d been standing there waiting, cones in hand. He said something about how if we’d been any longer he was gonna eat ’em himself. I demanded to know if he’d licked them already.
It’s been a stressful week. I got drunk on meat. What can I say.
I *love* Em Chamas. There is nothing like a meat coma.
And I didn’t know that those were pre-recorded greetings, either!
If they pre-record those greetings, it seems like they could at least do so in a less accented English. Is it wrong of me to say I miss my old hometown where the drive-thru window was almost always manned by a high school kid? Or a retired lady? In this big ol’ town, it seems like 90% of fast food workers are heavily accented, and between the squawk box sound of the speakers and the accent, I can almost never understand what they’re saying to me.
Sounds like you had a good time with it. Glad the week is over for you, and hope you get to do some serious R&R’ing!
Not only are some of them prerecorded, awhile ago they were experimenting with “out sourcing.” So you would pull up to the little box, and someone in a call center two states away would take your order. Apparently it was wildly successful.
i love that the guy had such a good sense of humor and followed your lead.
I don’t think those recordings have made their way to Seattle yet — that’s the first I’ve heard of it. And I love the Mickey D’s cone, too. It’s the perfect finale to a good night out.