Taco Bell — Restaurant in Watauga

This location has taken a complete nose dive. I put in an online order. Meal for 2. Drive up there 5 minutes later and went inside. Proceeded to stand there for 10 minutes and not a single employee acknowledged I was there despite making eye contact with all of them. There were 3 orders on the pick-up shelf getting cold. As im standing there at the counter, a Hispanic woman walks in and walks up next to me. The short Hispanic woman behind the counter stopped what she was doing to come ask if she could help her. I said, "Excuse me ma'am I've been standing here for 10 minutes, and not one of the 5 of you back there has asked me if i need anything."" She turned to me and in a very rude tone said "You're not the only one" i looked around and there was no one there waiting on anything except me and the woman who had just walked in. I said "ma'am ive been the only one at the counter since i walked in, and I'm here for a pick-up order and those 3 bags have been sitting there since i got here. One could be mine and ice cold by now." She asked for my name and told me they weren't mine. Asked the woman next to me for her name, then told her she'd make her order right then. This woman is an obvious racist. She's the one on the right with the glasses in the 2nd picture. While waiting, one of the employees dropped a bag full of someone's order on the ground. 3 different people kicked it around, and they just left it there. After giving the woman next to me her order she told me she didn't have an order for me. I showed her the order on my phone and she walked off. then she comes back 5 minutes later and tells me "oh it just popped up on my screen." I don't buy that at all. I had been standing in that building 20 minutes at this point and had ordered 5 minutes before that. It's just more blatant racism. Make the white guy wait while you take care of all the Hispanic people who walked in 10 to 20 minutes after me. Finally, after a 30-minute ticket time, i was handed my order. Was supposed to have hot and fire sauce. They gave me mild and hot. I also received the thinnest crunch wraps and soft tacos I've ever seen. I could have eaten the taco in 1 bite. All of this was absolutly on purpose stemming from this woman's blatant racism. Me and my family will go to Taco Casa from now on. Pictures provided show the order on the ground that was kicked around. All the orders sitting on the shelf while they ignore the white customers at the counter. And the disgusting state of the food line. None of the trash shown around the food prep area was from the order they kicked around the kitchen. It was there when i walked in. And in the half hour i was there, not 1 person washed...

I have purchased food from this location several times. They are usually pretty decent when it comes to the quality of their food. This morning at around 0230 hrs, I went through the drive-through, because I couldn't sleep and was craving a few specific items.

I ordered a couple "cheesy gordita crunches, Mexican pizzas and 3 hard tacos." The gorditas tasted great as always (and are my favorites). The pizzas were kind of bland (to add flavor, I put a lot of hot sauce on them), with a decent portion of the shell - at the edges - not having any toppings, and the hard taco shells were partly stale. I'm assuming they were stale because they were fixing to close... still, no reason to serve stale shells when I'm throwing down the money for it.

The customer service was very good. The older lady working the window is very nice, and will usually give your total amount due, in in pennies... as in, your total is 12,031 cents; kinda cool.

I will also say I don't like how much, many of their food items cost nowadays. Yes, I know, cost and demand, but there shouldn't be any reason to demand over 3 dollars (before tax) for a cheesy gordita crunch, and over 3 dollars for a Mexican pizza. They should both cost half that. Think about it... a foot long meatball marinara subway sandwich is just 5 bucks, that come with it just more food, but better quality food. If the quality is less, so should the cost be. I used to eat here almost religiously, till the prices kept going up, and up.

Anyways, I hope this was helpful to whomever is reading it. Dont get me wrong, it's a decent place to grab a quick bite, and nice the drive through is open into the early a.m.. But, for the customers sake, better attention to quality...

We went through the drive thru which is an AI bot. I asked it to "give me a moment please" while we decided what to order and it acknowledged me. My passenger was asking what something on the menu said since they couldn't see it and I started reading it to them. Well the bot picked up the audio and added what I said to the order. I asked it to delete the item. It just kept repeating "What would you like to order" without deleting the item. So I said "remove item from order," trying different voice commands to make it work. It wouldn't delete it so we drove up to the window to order. I told the girl at the window that something is wrong with their bot and we'd like to place the order with her.

She then told us she is unable to take the order at the window, that they can hear everything through the headset from the drive thru speaker, and that the bot will delete it, just not right away.

I asked why it just kept asking us what we wanted to order instead of deleting it or acknowledging it was going to be deleted? She didn't know.

I asked again if we could just place the order with her (we had already been waiting in the drive thru line and would have had to circle back around and wait again, it was around 11:30pm at night, so I'm not sure if the interior was open for ordering, we were just trying to order and get home after a long day).

She repeated she couldn't take our order at the window. So my passenger said "Let's just go somewhere else" and we left.

If you're going to use AI instead of an actual person to take orders, at least program it correctly or create some sort of override for employees to hop on the speaker and place the order if they can clearly hear the customer is having...