Do You Want A Bag With That?

“If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.”

– Ray Kroc, former CEO of McDonald’s

My daughter is mostly non-verbal and has a very limited vocabulary. One of the few words she says is “McDonald’s.” It is the one she greets me with every Saturday morning.

Returning from donating platelets on a Sunday morning I decided to surprise her with her favorite lunch. I pulled into the parking lot and ordered five value meals for my family from the McDonald's app.

A few minutes later two employees knocked on my window balancing trays of food and drink. Seeing the confusion in my eyes, one of them said: “You didn’t order a bag.”

You have to look to find it buried behind the “Place Order” button, but McDonald’s locations in Los Angeles are giving you the option of paying ten cents to place your items in a bag. Some are still bagging your items if you do not make the selection, but this franchise made me stack five boxes of nuggets, five fries, three chicken sandwiches, and the one burger they remembered to give me on the front seat of my car. At least they gave me a tray for the drinks.

Not only is this new policy inconvenient, it affects the quality of the food. Left in the open air without insulation, the fries were cold by the time I got the food home.

McDonald’s is saying this new fee is in response to a law that took effect in July 2023 requiring them to either provide reusable bags or charge for paper bags. Other chains must be eating the cost because only Chick-fil-A has joined them in passing the charge along to the customer. While they are using this law to nickel and dime their customers, some franchises are ignoring the requirement that customers must ask for a straw:

Plopping unbagged food in a customer’s lap is only one example of a lack of customer service in today’s marketplace. It seems that while corporations have used the post-COVID period to extract record profits from the American consumer they have also cut the value of their products and services. Between shrinkflation and reductions in quality, we are paying more but getting less.
Another example is provided by the Six Flags chain of amusement parks. Never a shining example of putting customers first, the staff at Magic Mountain hit new lows when I tried to cancel my family’s monthly memberships.

Deciding that we needed to take a break, I walked into the Season Pass processing center and was told that it was taken care of. However, I noticed a couple of months later that I was still being charged the monthly fee. When I tried to get a refund, I was told that they had no record of the cancellation. They would not give me back my money.

The company tracks visits to the park and could have easily verified that we had not visited since the date of my cancellation at the park. Instead, they were willing to bet that their money grab would not cost them future business. So far, it has as we have no plans on going back.

Royal Caribbean was also willing to sacrifice short-term gain for future profits. For my wife’s birthday, the extended family embarked on a week-long journey to Alaska. The ten of us were having a great time and my wife and I were already talking about where we would like to sail next. Then we hit Anchorage.

Before our trip, we had pre-booked an all-you-can-eat Salmon Bake described as a leisurely meal in an idyllic setting. We were told that we could look forward to enjoying time next to a creek and cooking smores over an open fire.

When we received our itinerary for the trip we noticed that the onboard time was alarmingly close to our excursion. This was made worse when the bus they had chartered was late for pick up. Then, when we reached the site of the bake, we found that we were the last to arrive and some of the lines for food had closed causing us to have to wait. We were still eating when the last call was made. We had to run or risk missing the ship’s departure.

Back on board, we complained about the lack of time, but the most they would do is offer a ten percent credit. At home, we called customer service and after finally getting through were finally offered a full refund in the form of a future cruise credit. There was one catch; even though my wife and I had paid for everyone in the group, the credits were provided to each person individually and were not transferable.

If that was not enough to dissuade us from taking another cruise with Royal Caribbean again, departure day sealed the deal. We woke up that morning to an announcement that due to unusual winds, we were stuck in the bay and unable to dock. At first, it was nice to have some more time on the ship, but then the time of our flights started to creep closer.

As a major corporation, it should be expected that a team would be ready to deal with events like this one, but no one seemed to know what was going on. Updates were few and far between. They insisted we leave our cabins forcing us to wander the ship with our carry-on luggage. The stress level of the passengers started to rise.

When we finally disembarked we had already missed our flight. Even though the airline tickets had been booked through Royal Caribbean, no one could tell us on what flight we had been rebooked. We were on the shuttle bus when we were finally able to reach someone from corporate who could tell us our new flight number. However, when we tried to check in, we found the transfer of tickets had not been done correctly and we had to wait in another long line to get that fixed.

Large corporations like McDonalds, Six Flags, and Royal Caribbean do not make a move without having the data to support their choices. They must, therefore, be very confident that the slashing of value will improve their bottom lines. This must be great for their CEOs and their inflated salaries. Will consumers eventually demand better?

Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, who serves as the Education Chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him “a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles.” For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.