Lunch with Beauregarde

There is a troubling trend within the fast food industry. Last spring while bringing Ashley back from Muncie we stopped in Ft. Wayne for some lunch at an Arby’s and after ordering the order taking person asked for a name for the order. After a few seconds considering why I told her. I later decided that if that ever happened again that my response would be Beauregarde. Not expecting it to happen again that it was just an Arby’s Ft Wayne deal I forgot about it. Over the last couple months I’ve had to do a fair amount of driving and have hit some fast food places (3 Arby’s and 1 McDonalds) and to my horror they all asked for a name. Here are the results.

The first guy was the only one that had no reaction and spelled it almost right and also didn’t follow what I’m sure are corporate rules and spend the rest of our transaction calling me by name.
The next is the persons best shot at spelling after pausing to do a “oh crap what kind of name is that and how do I spell it” take.
The next one even asked me to spell it and went overboard calling me Beauregarde at every step of our transaction.
The last one I almost felt sorry for. When I gave her the name she stopped and started to wander off and then looked like she wanted her manager and then finally asked me to spell it. As you can see even the ones asking to spell must have been still in shock since neither got it right.
The thing is that none of these people would be doing this if it wasn’t for some corporate directive that makes them do it. I’m sure that some marketing person has determined that calling customers by name will cause them to order twice as much stuff the next time because it has become such a personal transaction. Probably the same guy as with the soap box.