Taco Bell — Restaurant in Huntington Beach

There was an employee at the drive-thru who felt comfortable to roll his eyes, close the window in my face and walk away. All I did was order 3 cheap tacos and ask for sauce. The worker heard the opposite of what I said and left out the sauce. But that wasn't a big deal, the way the worker acted towards me was. I actually walked all the way inside to talk to the manager over it. The manager went straight into autopilot saying the worker just couldn't hear through the headset to avoid the issue of the worker's unnecessarily disrespectful behavior. In fact, the entire staff in there are robots who mindlessly cater to or ignore specific customers based on which culture you're obviously a member of: because as soon as I came to the counter inside, they all suddenly pretended to be occupied and not see me, so I had to speak into the thin air for someone to call the manager. It's the fact that these workers think it's fine to not see, hear, or comprehend certain people. They had none of these cognitive barriers toward the white customers who happened to be at the counter at the time I walked inside. Things like that make the situation way more stark and obvious. The manager was decent to the bare minimum, and did calmly listen to my problem, but at the same time, he was too nonchalant/mindlessly going through the motions, as if he was looking for an escape from having to manage a situation his worker's behavior created, i.e. to do the minimum job a manager is paid for.

There is no excuse for this restaurant's behavior because granted language and cultural misunderstanding- how is it that a person can fully understand how to express aggression and disrespect? In the absence of everything else, body language is universal. I was friendly and not mean to the worker at any point, but he paid me back in the most dismissive, arrogant behavior he had. There's no excuse. Also, how the entire staff acted like it was just entertainment and an inconvenience to them for the manager to have to be called over. I can say: it's creepy, specifically to witness a mono-cultural staff who are all completely checked out, not conscious of anything, vacant of the concept of providing fair service regardless of what cultural background a customer appears to be from. These people don't have to wait for Halloween to be scary Minimum Wage Zombies. A regular paycheck of US dollars sure does short circuit too many people's moral compass way too easily and thoroughly. It's a shame. I also plan to report this business to as many other agencies as I can, because no one should be treated like that just trying to buy unhealthy snacks on a random Friday. There's no reason for their staff to think that's normal to treat...

This Visit: This location looks like it has recently been renovated and was really quite nice inside. My daughter didn't want to go eat inside at first, but once inside, it was very nice. Service was friendly.

Background: I had not had Taco Bell for many many years. And we don't really eat fast food in my house.

But daughter was asking to get Baja Blast slushie and my wife took her to get that, and gave her a crunchy taco, and now it's a weekly thing 😑

And I have to admit that I have been a part of these weeklies; it's partly some nostalgia from the teen years, surfing and eating affordable Taco Bell afterwards. But it tastes pretty good with the taco sauce.

IDK. I am against this kind of food, but it has been pretty good for a little bite occasionally, recently.

I guess this is an existential crisis I...

Normally I give chain restaurants three stars as a base because they are all the same and you know what you're going to get.

But this place earns my ignomity because they had the gall to not only mess up a delivery order but also be rude about fixing it. They didn't want to fix it at all and when I threatened to complain they would only agree to fix it if I created a brand new order so I would have to pay double for the food that wasn't right the first time. It wasn't some small mistake either. I ordered a chicken quesadilla and got no chicken at all, just cheese. I also ordered a burrito with no cheese for my lactose friend and it came with both cheese and sour cream.

I don't know what the challenges of this establishment are, but suffice to say I will not be ordering...