qdoba, little mexico indeed
2009-07-21, 4:29 p.m.

I have never sent a letter about bad service to a company before, but TODAY was the day. I also never treat people in sucky low paying jobs with wrath, but TODAY was the day for that as well.

For more info, please refer to my letter to Qdoba:

I got a new Qdoba card today at the West End Nashville location. The cashier handed it to me, and I told her that I was adding two more purchases to the card. She rang up mine, and swiped the card and handed it to me. Then she rang up the second one - and before I paid I handed her my new Qdoba card, so I could get the purchases both added to the card. She said she couldn’t do it on the same card because of how the system worked. I told her okay, trash that first card and give me a new one and add all my purchases to the new one. She GRIMACED at me and said she would have to ring everything back up. I threw the card on the counter and said forget it.

I spoke with a manager (Bruce) later who politely explained that the card system is indeed complicated. He also seemed surprised that I found his employee rude and indicated that it might have been unintentional. I should have stated this more strongly to him then, but I want to be very clear - she was not helpful, at all. She did not offer to call the manager. I was very clear that she was going to do nothing to make that situation work, and I was COMPLETELY clear that she did not want to. AT ALL.

The manager did speak with me for several minutes and got my input, and he handed me my card back and asked me to come back. However, I thought it was odd, when I logged it into the system, that he did not figure out how to add in some extra purchases.

Regarding the system, I mentioned to the manager, and would like to mention now to corporate headquarters, that I feel very strongly: if Qdoba employees OPENLY hate dealing with the card and if the system does not easily let them correct errors, perhaps Qdoba should discontinue use of the card and the whole points system. I know those cashiers don’t get paid the big bucks, and probably hate it when people want to fool around with those cards, but if Qdoba offers the cards, customers should be able to put their party’s purchases on the cards, even if one or more members of the party are lingering for a minute in the burrito topping line. That situation MUST happen all the time, due to the nature of the counter set-up at Qdoba, and I think it’s ridiculous that it’s so difficult to remedy that the cashier looked at me like I asked her to do something OUTLANDISH.

Regarding my situation today: I have faxed a receipt from the third burrito my party had today, but I had thrown away the receipt for the first two. I am not usually a complainer about these kinds of things, especially when there are probably overworked underpaid customer service people in the mix, but this was a really absolutely frustrating situation.