Burger King — Restaurant in Daly City

I want to tell you the story of the Burger King Hero: Back in the 80's.., I was traveling across the country with a punk rock band that liked to pick up strays and take them on tour with them. When SF came, it was their last stop in the US before Japan, so I ended up here for awhile. With no place to stay and not much money,, I did what I still enjoy doing, and that is wandering around town observing people. I met a bunch of kids that used to hang around down by the end of the cable car at Market, they called themselves the Powell St. Punks. Back in the day, you could get what was called a Hotline hotel room to stay in for emergencies, unfortunately it was over in the T-loin which was pretty rough in those days, worse than even now. The kids used to stay together on the benches by the BART, or sleep on cardboard in the doorway of the AT&T building on the corner that used to be a bank. Every time I hear the phrase "trickle down economics", I think of that picture in my head of the kids huddled in the doorway of that huge fancy bank building, like something from a Jacob Riis photo, or Dickens.

To be honest, there were plenty of places like the Olive Church to get food. (You may remember it as The Glide from that movie 'The Pursuit of Happiness', and it still exists to serve the homeless population). However, their food wasn't stuff that kids would hunger for: pizza, beer and junk food. A group of the Powell St. kids used to panhandle the tourists along Powell for spare change to get a slice or some liquor. One night we asked some well dressed guy and his wife for change. He stopped and looked at us "what do you want quarters for, the arcade?" One of the littler ones said "I'm hungry". Well this guy immediately sprung into action. He put his fancy Saturday-night-on-the-town-with-the-missus plans on hold for a bit and pulled out his wallet at Burger King and paid for some meals. As soon as the bills came out, it was like a bunch of pigeons when someone throws a crust on the sidewalk. A small crowd of homeless kids came from nowhere and descended upon this guy. And he kept paying for each kid that came in and wanted a meal..

Later that night, well after we had eaten and were chilling on the benches watching the boys skate around the BART entrance, this guy comes back. He had scrapped his own dinner plans and had been on the horn for hours, calling all over town to try to find a place for the younger kids to sleep. All the shelters were full, but he finally found somewhere out in the suburbs, and he had come to tell us that one of the social workers were coming to pickup however many kids she could fit in whatever vehicle they could commandeer. He paced on the curb nervously, like he was trying to keep some wild cubs from running back up into the mountain, and waited until he saw that the kids were safely tucked into the car. The youngest one, a skinhead that was at most 11 or 12, started crying like a baby once he realized that he wasn't going to have to sleep on the cold SF sidewalk for another night.

Burger King Hero made sure that us older teens didn't want for anything, and walked over to get his own hamburger, a much more humble dinner than the one he had originally planned I am sure..

I have always been a keen observer of the character of people, and I watched this whole thing play out. I saw how the other tourists smirked at him like he was being foolish, and how ragtag and sullen the little group of street urchins looked, and how he casually walked away thinking that he had not done a great thing. But I saw very clearly what he had done and...

We arrived to the drive thru around near 1030pm on July 14th, there was quite a few cars in line at that time. My wife and I understood the wait time due to the amount of customers in line. After 30 minutes while barely moving, we started to wondered what the wait was for. Just after the 30 minute mark we finally got to the speaker to order. We heard the cashier talking to her manager over the intercom about asking how to take out an order because the customer left without the food. After a little bit more we got to the window.

The cashier was an older lady who was very nice and very patient. She apolgized for the wait and took my card and charged us for our order, the computer did not print out a reciept, the cashier was under the impression because of no reciept it did not charge the card and ask for her manager to help. I worked at burger king years ago as both cashier and cook, the manager looked stressed out, probably due to the long line which was understandable. We waited as the manager on duty unplugged a few cords to get the computer working. We could see our food, and asked if we could at least have our food while they fix their computer and the cashier was still holding onto my debit card.

The cashier asked us to wait but she would not give me my debit card back, which we thought it be reasonable to have something to hold onto either food or my debit card. The manager on duty went back to bagging food while the cashier held onto our food and card. We checked our bank app and saw that our card was charged $29.36. We tried to tell the cashier and MOD and even showed our bank app to show the charge, they said it didnt charge and was only pending. Which my wife started to get extremely frustrated because of the wait time and we could not even get my card back. The MOD just kept yelling the computer system was down, which my wife took as her yelling at us which she then said she was yelling at her coworker. This younger filipina MOD yelling at an older filipina cashier or us was not ok at any level. It was more upsetting that there was yelling and the MOD never even said sorry for the wait even once. This was not the customer experience we would expect. We understand high stress level but yelling at and older coworker or us is unacceptable. At this point both sides seem to be really angry, where we told the staff we wanted to leave even if that meant without our food that we were chargered for.

We had to ask several times for my debit card, which I completely understandable why she would ask us to wait, but after yelling back and fourth we wanted to leave. We left without our food, and after a few days the $29.36 became a charge on our account where we paid for a product or food we never recieved. I love Burger King, i worked for them, i really like the food, but the customer experience still matters. I hope things got better or the young filipina MOD was able to have a better night, no customer should have to go through that. We accept that we had a part in it and we are sorry for the situation too, but at the end we lost money with...

Saturday night, I come to the drive thru to order food and the Indian lady in the speaker had a very very very low and quiet voice. I could not hear her at all. She might be the night shift supervisor or manager. Her name tag says "Allson" She should not work here because her voice is so low and nobody knows what she say. She also does not reply back in the speaker so I had to say "Hello?" again at least 3 times for her to respond. She is very rude and not nice to customers. She would hide to the back when I come to the window. She made the kitchen lady named Luisa give me my order. After I drove away and Luisa closed the window, Allson would come back in the window and talk to the next customer in the speaker. She is a very bad supervisor or manager. She does not want to deal with customer problems. Whenever Allson talk in the speaker, she would laugh while talking to customers. She should work in the position at the kitchen and make sandwiches because she has a quiet voice. She does not want to speak with customers in a loud or friendly voice. To work in the drive thru position, the employee should be nice to customers and speak very loud so that customers can hear the order. Other Filipino older ladies who work in the drive thru in the night at this location are nice and speak loudly. ALLSON does not qualify to be in...