A Visit to McDonald's Today

Today after my personal finance test, I went to Ang Mo Kio for something.
I suddently wanted to have McDonald's as my lunch so I went to the one just outside Ang Mo Kio Hub (a shopping mall).
This is of course not the first time I visit the McDonald's in Singapore, but this time was quite special..
I think this branch is quite special...
Here's something I noticed:

Straws and sauces
We are all very used to get the straws right next to the cashier but this McDonald's doesn't provide straws right there.
Plus, the staff won't give you Ketchup with your food.
Instead they will point you to a little station quite near to the cashiers where u can get the straws, napkin, tomato sauce and chili sauce at one place, but all customers have to use that single place though..
Besides, you don't get small packages of ketchup and chili sauce.
Instead, you need to pump the sauce on small little plastic saucers provided.
so the flow will be..
you get your food from counter -> take your tray to the sauce station -> put down your tray -> pump the sauce u need and get straws and napkins -> get seated and enjoy.
dunno why they wanna do that.. to stuck all people into that tiny little station
and the station is located right in the middle between the main entrance and the counters which make the places so crowded.
also.. the station is too small that only one person can use at a time, people need to queue.. (so u need to queue TWICE before u can eat)

A special auntie staff
I got scold by this very special staff..
I dunno why people always like to scold me for no reason... hahaha..
What happened was.. after I got my food, I went to the station to try to get ketchup.
There was already another lady there getting her stuff. She put her tray on the table of the station which left me with not enough space for the whole tray, but I can still put down my tray.. so I put down, with part of the tray "not on the table"
The lady left.
I was picking up the plastic saucers when this special auntie came.
She said something very fast to me in Mandarin as I was picking up the saucers..
I freezed myself because it usually takes me a second to digest Mandarin..
I looked at her, she looks very angry.. and she was holding a napkin..
so I was guessing "am I suppose to use the napkin??"
well...
of course not..
she was actually scolding me for making the station so dirty...
well...
first... the station is not SO dirty.. there was only one drop of ketchup right below the pump..
second... I didn't even start pumping..........
the thing is... there was suppose a tray to hold those drip over sauce.. but she was washing it and when she came back she saw the "drop"
so she scold me...
actually I didn't respond her.. coz I dunno how to respond.. hahaha...
but then she suddently yell at me again!
remember part of my tray was not on the table??
she angrily put it back on the table and blame me and say "what if somebody hit it by accident...."
anyway... I took my stuff and quickly ran away.. hahaha

Use of wireless technology
Since I found this sauce station quite interesting.. I took a sit that can see the flow of customer and see how things go..
and I found another special thing from this McDonald's
Whenever there are 3 people in the queue at the counter, a staff will pop out and get the order from the 3rd customer using a wireless PDA
then the customer will get a ticket/receipt, when he/she reaches the counter, he/she shows the staff there with the ticket and pay and get their food.
hmm.. first I thought they do it to increase their efficiency.. but how??
I noticed that when the staff at the counter got the ticket, they check with the system to see what the customer ordered and then get the food.
it was quite different than what I thought the technology would be used...
I thought that the person who order wirelessly would get the food as soon as they approach the counter.. and this is not the case..
so.. maybe they do it just to keep the customer there?
I mean they make u order the food first and queue.. instead of queue first and order food..
so people is less likely to leave the queue..?
I'm not quite sure about it..

Location of counter
This McDonald's is quite big with lots of seats, but during my lunch, I saw many people entered and left immediately,
some of them even turned around outside the entrance..
Because they can see the queues at the counters even outside the store..
which is.. quite a stupid thing to do..
I can see at least 4 groups of people turned around by just looking outside the store and u could tell from their faces that they were scared by the queue
and actually the queue wasn't quite long.. the thing is the queue at counters + the people at the station... make it looked very crowded!
even worst is... there were so many choices of restaurant just next to it.. so people just leave.

WIFI "necessity"
All McDonald's in Singapore provide free WIFI connections, actually many cafes do so too..
One of my projects this semester was on Starbucks (always Starbucks! ).
One interesting finding was that customer think WIFI is good, but what they also want is power ports for their laptops!!
(yeah true!!! with that, people can stay in a cafe/McDonald's for the whole day with just a few bucks!)
The girl sitting next to me this afternoon was using her laptop all the way during my lunch..
I had a few look to her laptop and she was just watching videos from youtube..
so this question quickly came to my mind "how come she doesn't need to care about the battery?" at least she didn't look like she worries..
so I looked at her laptop again....
interestingly... I found that her laptop was actually plugged into a power port on the wall..
hmm... I wonder do all McDonald's here have power ports??
If so, next time I'll have group meetings there!!
last time I had a group meeting at Burger King and we had to finish it within an hour just because of the battery problem!!

Changing definition!!
Almost forget this one!
When I purchased my value meal.. I saw the menu up there saying "all meals come with Medium fries and SMALL drink"
The word "SMALL" is manually changed.. just a piece of paper sticked onto the billboard...
and what I got was the same size as usual...
so the previous Medium size now became Small...........
is it happening in other countries as well??


By the way..
I had a McSpicy value meal and the taste was fantastic.. (maybe it's because I haven't had Mac for so long.. )
The McDonald's at Singapore is quite expensive.. a value meal is around S$5.xx - $6.xx
The Big Breakfast was $4.xx
As I remember, it is more expensive than those in HK and AU..
oh... and they have one interesting burger here called "double filet-o-fish" with TWO fish filet!!
hmm.. but I don't really want that... hahhaa
but the locals seems quite happy with the idea!