The problem with fast feedback loops is that they filter out long term signals. The problem with data driven decision making is that data is numeric, and the act of counting is necessarily an act of approximation, by which we erase the difference between objects or events in order to bucket them into a category so that they can be counted. So the kind of dashboards that modern managers demand, offer nothing but the most obvious, short term "insights", that you might as well eliminate the man in the middle and feed the data directly into a set of simple decision rules.

> When I was young it was common for a McDonalds to have 10+ employees working the lunch rush, one for every station and a few floaters cleaning the dining room. Someone took your order right away, and you got your meal in a minute or two.

When I was young, they predicted orders and had hot food waiting, you would get your meal as you ordered. Unfortunately, after merciless teasing by other chains, they relented and only assemble to order and cook to order in some cases. Huge increase in lunch latency; ordering via the app can help a little...

Is "data" to blame for this? Or is it just the normal cycle of every fast food restaurant? There are numerous local franchises near me that were great when I moved here but complete crap now. There are outliers (like Chik-fil-a) but in general, over the decades, fast food restaurants always degenerate.

I totally agree, and I think this is why using a traditional, Deming-style Quality Assurance framework is so valuable.

Data is useful, but only to a point. A process-first approach (guided by clearly defined quality characteristics) is going to produce more meaningful and sustainable results: products and services that customers value more, lower costs and less waste for the company, and happier and more empowered employees.

The thing I most miss: Being hungry, going into McDonalds and seeing what they had on the shelf ready to eat now. Bic Mac, Quarter Pounder or maybe 2 Hamburgers.

Now? In the queue behind 23 other bespoke orders while they try and service the drive-thru as quickly as possible and nothing stopping them taking the burger that was made for me and adding it to another order.

I was so angry once, I walked out after paying and I just didn't wait for my breakfast muffin because the whole thing like the parent says is that they used to care about efficiency as well as customer experience and now that goes out the window.

My read on this, beyond data and MBA's, is that all of the slack has been pulled out of the economy.

> Now they're run based on the data, and the data says they have enough loyal-to-a-fault customers like the author that chronically understaffing is more profitable than providing a good experience.

If they are indeed saying understaffing doesn't matter because their current customers don't care, their loyalty numbers will only go up because of that sampling bias. Relatively upscale fast casual places (e.g. Chipotle) will replace McDonalds for the customers they lose. The circle of service industry life.

> When I was young it was common for a McDonalds to have 10+ employees working the lunch rush, ... > Now I go and it's 3, sometimes 2 employees.

The one I went to last week had a banner advertising a $20/hr starting wage. Clearly they'd like to hire more.

Yeah, because all those employees are now doing much better paying jobs elsewhere instead of a low paying job like cleaning a dining room. The dining room at a McDonald's functions just as well at the 80% dirtiness as it did at 10% dirtiness. It's like how you can go to India and there'll be like 400 different employees at a hotel. One will usher you into the door. The other will hold the door. The third will say "Welcome, sir!" and lead you to the front desk while a fourth tells a fifth to grab a suitcase.

That's what the end of the middle-class means: everyone is getting too wealthy to employ in near-menial jobs.

Throughout the corporation teams are optimizing for what gets them promoted and I bet they're doing very well.

Likely at a cost of other teams, who lack the political positioning, power, and prowress to successfully fight for their own KPIs and promotions.

In Australia McDonalds, Hungry Jacks (Burger King), and KFC aren’t fast. And McDonalds barely passes as food.

I can have a succulent Chinese meal at my table in less time than either of those big-three, and my local roast chicken joint about 30 seconds after I sit down.

Observing my local McDonalds, and comparing to my childhood experiences; now McDonalds is doing a lot more volume. The drive-through line goes faster and is longer, and there are pickup orders. So in total, they are making more money than ever.

My memory is that McD drive through was worse before, and less people used it. Go to a Burger King drive-through if you wanna go back in time.

Inside, similar number of customers, and inexplicably fewer employees serving them. I blame the management decisions more than the data it's based on. Probably the numbers are telling them to punish the indoors customers, and they aren't using their brains about how that's going to be a long-term problem.

Speaking of data, you can ask the app to "anonymize" you as Valued Customer. Your name doesn't really matter to McDonalds.

It's fast food. The focus is on price over all else. If they maintained the staffing levels from back then, then instead of poor service you'd be complaining that a Big Mac costs $15.

It also feels like a K shaped economy thing. Everything not premium has to be optimized/automated/enshittified to hell.

Fast food, in my lifetime, seems to have moved more to the lower end of the demographic spectrum in terms of customer base.

Some combination of wealth driven taste changes and health concerns within the top half on the customer side.

I've seen the same changes. The most noticeable is, now that they are no longer required to be visible at the front counter in case someone comes in to order, because of kiosks, the workers usually specifically hide anywhere else, to minimize the chances of being disturbed by customers with their endless requests ("I've been waiting for 15 minutes for a large fry...")

Don't underestimate the equally intense downward pressure on staffing that minimum-wage hikes have provided (for instance, in California). I won't speculate if it's been "worth it" since it'll devolve into an off-topic political debate, but basic economics does predict that since labor costs twice what it did 10 years ago, they'll do everything to minimize how much labor they buy. Couple that with what you said, basically, using "Moneyball" techniques to finesse everything with all these optimizations, we get the operations we see now in all retail establishments.

And even if there are states that haven't done the minimum wage changes, the markets that have are so big. The national businesses that have adapted to it have proven out their barebones-labor model there - why wouldn't they roll out most of the changes nationwide?

I think if someone launched a fast-food place or a drugstore in 1995 that operates with the type of skeleton crew they use today, it would fail overnight due to people having a choice. But today, since essentially 100% of retail operates this same way, they don't experience any pressure to do better.

> the data says they have enough loyal-to-a-fault customers

honestly, this is the biggest problem with american capitalism these days.

consumers that just act like zombies and never modify their behavior, no matter how much they get abused.

Same thing has happened to grocery stores. The place near me doesn't even staff a single checkout lane after 8pm-- the only option is to use self-checkout. I had a full cart at 9pm a while back and asked an employee if they could help me checkout. She literally laughed before telling me that I had to use self-checkout, or I was out of luck and would need to come back tomorrow.

Different stores in different chains have a very different attitude. There is a Taco Bell in Ithaca which has a staff that has some esprit de corps and then another where the dining room is disgusting.

I have no special insider knowledge here, but I'm reasonably sure McDonald's relative drop in the hierarchy of global made-to-order food providers is a combination of increased competition, more health conscious and eco conscious customers, and younger generations choosing to spend higher amounts on sit-down experiences when bothering to eat out. They're largely franchisees who make the staffing decisions anyway. McDonald's corporate ensures portion sizes, ingredients, and preparation are the same everywhere, but I don't think they're dictating to franchise owners how many staff members they need to keep on hand.

Again, caveating I'm not a franchise owner and don't know the details in depth, but the bulk of what McDonald's collects is the rent on the stores themselves, which is fixed, and royalties are a percentage of gross sales, not profits, so they shouldn't have much reason to care if franchises are profitable as long as they stay in business.

that doesn't sound like data, that sounds like capitalism

Yeah, that's capitalism baby. They'll lower the quality, working conditions and raise prices a much as they can get away with. Doesn't matter if it hurts the brand in the long term, only suckers reason further than next week.

hamdingers

Name checks out.

Minnesotan, perhaps?

what you are describing is basically company ownership or high level managers of the store are just keeping kicking out legs of the table and waiting to see if it will still stand up

because you and others keep going back to the store no matter how bad it gets, they keep testing what other cuts they can do

eventually it will be just one employee sitting in the corner watching several humanoid bots doing all the work and just required to press the reset button when they glitch

maybe even a single human remote employee doing that for 100+ stores

vandalism will get insane and then corporations will just get congress to pass felony laws to slow that

$20 burgers will also slow that

I miss pizza