Krystal — Restaurant in Jacksonville

When the talking box tells you the wait is 15- 20 minutes to serve the very item that shares the name of the establishment, you should know that it's a gamble...

Credit given - They were upfront that there's a wait for Krystal burgers but, we assumed that was a "worse case scenario"... Underpromise/Overdeliver, Right?

Nope...the estimate was our last chance to quickly reconsider and abort the mission.

Instead, we decided to cross our fingers and take our chances. There were 3-4 cars ahead of us and maybe one has a large order which has them backed up.

The line slowly moved along and finally it was our turn. We gladly paid, were instructed to pull around and the food would be brought out to us.

As we proceeded to park, I noticed most (if not all) of the cars in front of us were still waiting for orders...

It was then that I realized we were not almost eating fresh fries out the bag while heading home...no. This is where you start looking back at the events that led you to this moment. The menu speaker warned us...

So now you've paid for the food and the lobby is locked so you can either: wait here, go back to the drive-thru to cancel, or maybe spend time later to refund the charge.

We decided to wait.

As it turnes out, that wasn't the most unpleasant part. There was some type of fluid that appeared to originate from inside of the building and was now seeping outside the outer wall and into the parking lot.

Now I have limited sewage expertise, but I would describe it as a fecal/vomit/egg blend with a hint of asparagus.

Now it may be the fumes talking, but as we sat there I tried to come up with plausible reasons it would take so long to make Krystal burgers:

~They ran out of propane to run the flattop/steamer and sent someone to go get one of those Blue Rhino tanks.

~They were using plastic knifes to cut the little Krystal squares from regular size frozen burger patties/buns until they could fit in the boxes.

~They were going to the extreme on fresh and getting beef straight off the cow... Maybe that's what the mystery fluid was...

Finally we spot our food making it's way to us. We had time to prepare for this next step and it's a race against the clock! If they make it back inside and the order is wrong, we will essentially have to start over.

As a team, we frantically rummaged through the entire contents and saw the only thing missing was... the...Krystal Burgers!?!? The very cause of the whole delay wasn't in the bags!?!?

While confused and somewhat defeated, we were able yell out "There's No Krystal's"!

The worker stopped, turned to our car, and with a nod of respect said "Be right back"...he had not made it inside after all and we were heard!

As a happy conclusion to this saga, I give additional credit for having the order correct and the food quality was good. We even got shakes (looking at you McD).

Note:

While there may have been some liberties taken for entertainment value on my part, the timeline is not an exaggeration.

According to Google timeline, we spent 56 minutes in total at Krystals.

The included picture shows timestamps of specific events.

Arrived at 8:06 pm

Receipt shows time paid at 8:23 pm (17 minutes after arrival)

The clock display is not when we got the food, just when I snapped out of the toxic hallucination and asked my family how long we've been here (27 minutes after...

The older black lady that works here is awesome. The younger white girl with dyed red and black hair, is a pathetic excuse of a human being let alone manager of a restaurant. She put Absurd amounts of Mayo on a crystal chick And when I asked her for a new one she told me it was my fault and that I need to ask for light mayo because that is just how they are supposed to come! Literally GLOBS!! She did this because she was mad at me because I was joking with the older black lady at the front about them shutting down the computer at 5am when I arrived. This place is disgusting. All Krystal’s. Even on their best day. That’s besides the point. The amount of Mayo she put on it was out of spite. Then she lied and said “I didn’t even make that one” - there is literally her and the black lady only working. She’s the only one in the back. She made it. But then told me I need to ask for light Mayo bc that’s how they come! Forget the fact that she didn’t even look at it, she just threw it away and said it was right and I was at fault. Promote the older black lady and fire this...

Worst experience ever, stay away from this place unless you want your money stolen and to be treated with disrespect and unprofessionalism. I went through the drive through, literally repeated my order three times, waited over ten minutes to get through the drive through, then after having repeated my order three times they got it wrong. So I called the store and asked for the manager, the person that answered merely responded "speaking", she never gave me her name. I told her what happened and there was no apology or acknowledgement of what I had said to her, all she said was "what did you order?" She had a really bad tone of voice, no enthusiasm nor empathy or concern whatsoever. I told her she didn't seem to care and I'd go to corporate, she then responded, "well what did you order?" Then I checked my checking account, they charged me twice for this order, they have literally stolen my money and in my opinion should be closed down. That's why Krystals across the country are going out of business. Again, heed my warning, stay far away from this place. You have...