New South Wales recorded over 92,000 COVID-19 cases today, with the data being mostly unreliable due to the backlog of self-reported at-home rapid antigen tests dating back to the beginning of January 2022. A total of 53 COVID deaths have been recorded Australia-wide.
“Hey! Do you want to zap daddy,” I called out to settle my crying son, upset that I had called him a naughty boy. “Let’s go get a milkshake!”
With a bouncy eagerness he ran to stand at the entrance door, saying, “Daddy. I want to see thunder!”
The time was 10:20pm when I buckled my son up in his toddler seat. I secured my phone in the phone holder on the windshield, to play an informative kids show about thunder on, as we both danced to thunder and rain songs on the short cruise to McDonald’s.
McDonald’s Staff Shortages Cripple Services
The first thing I noticed as we arrived to McDonald’s neon sign with the golden arches out the front of the restaurant was blacked out. I thought it to be odd that the lights were off inside the restaurant as well. I worried McDonald’s was closed due to the changed operating hours.
Food shortages have been a national issue in Australia due to staffing challenges due to an increase in COVID-19 cases in workplaces. So many people are coming down sick with COVID and Omicron. Businesses have to keep all the COVID positive workers home to isolate for a few days.
Due to mandatory isolation rules, all the transport and logistics chains have been disrupted. People who drive trucks come down with COVID symptoms and are forced to isolate.
When no one drives trucks, down the line, no supermarket night fill workers can stack products onto shelves.
It was reported in the news how hard it is to get food into supermarkets, into restaurants, and onto shelves. The trucks will arrive to the supermarkets or fast food restaurants, but due to staff shortages, they can’t unpack the produce into storage, or onto shelves.
Australia is seeing this systematic emptying of shelves in supermarkets, causing a new wave of panic buying. That issue has affected McDonald’s as well.
The COVID-19 Pandemic Drive Thru Service
As I drove to the McDonald’s entrance, I saw a very long line of cars waiting at the drive thru.
This issue had become more noticeable recently. It harked back to news reports about staffing disruptions and fast food restaurant closures during the peak of the Omicron surge during the coronavirus pandemic.
McDonald’s, KFC, and a few other fast food restaurants have been forced to change their opening hours because they struggle to staff enough workers to fill those 24-hour operating hours.
When one McDonald’s staff member catches COVID at work, all workers who shared the same shift have to isolate as well.
This hinted to the reasons why the McDonald’s drive thru service has slowed down to a crawl.
Slowly I moved the car to the back of the McDonald’s drive-thru queue. Normally it takes 30 seconds for each car to make an order, and to then drive through. The whole process takes two minutes most times. Tonight, it seemed to take forever.
Each car took more than two minutes, and up to five minutes sometimes to make an order, and then crawl forward. I was stuck in line for fifteen minutes.
Finally, when it came to my order, I wound my window down, only to wait for what seemed like an eternity for someone on the loudspeaker to answer.
I wondered, “Is anyone even inside McDonald’s to take an order, or have all these cars been sitting in line waiting for a McDonald’s staff member to take their order? When the customer realizes that no one will ask, do the people in front of me go through the drive thru anyway, only to find nobody is working at McDonald’s tonight?”
It entered my mind how silly we were to wait in a McDonald’s drive-thru line, especially when the lights on the McDonald’s sign were switched off.
McDonald’s Struggling To Find Efficient Workers
After a minute of waiting however, a female voice piped up to ask, “May I take your order?”
I ordered an iced long black coffee, the same order I made earlier in the day.
Certainly, it was a surprise to me to hear the girl through the loudspeaker sound confused.
“We don’t have iced long black coffees,” she remarked.
“Yes, you do,” I was puzzled with the McDonald’s service tonight.
I clarified to the girl, “Just an iced black coffee.”
She clicked, “I found it. Okay.”
I figured the girl must be new and has worked in her new position for a short time, because McDonald’s Australia is struggling to find qualified workers. The kerfuffle that was the McDonald’s drive-thru queue exemplified the mess that Australia is in. I showed patience, knowing the Omicron surge in cases during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia has decimated so many businesses.
Then I ordered a small strawberry milkshake for my son. She knew what a strawberry milkshake was.
Once the order was done, I came through to the first drive-thru window. A young brunette girl there scanned my bank card with a smile. But she did her job quite slowly.
It made me think, “Have McDonald’s not trained you to be efficient so that customers are not waiting like we are, in a long queue?”
There was even one person beeping in the line behind me. You never really get uncivilized beeping in a McDonald’s drive thru queue. That was quite a surprise to me as well.
The McDonald’s Cooking Process In Slow Motion
Finally, I came forward towards the second drive thru window. I looked inside the restaurant to see only one girl inside. She seemed like she was doing all the work. She had to make a coffee. Then she waited two minutes. Finally, she received a McDonald’s paper bag with a few food items inside. She handed the bag to the car in front of me.
I thought, “Far out. McDonald’s doesn’t have its usual thirty staff members inside running around one other, cooking food, fulfilling orders within seconds.”
It felt like the same one person in the kitchen cooked the chips, then flipped the burger, while one other person made the coffees and drinks. The staff seemed to be individually cooking pieces of food, and those individual items take much longer to prepare and hand over to customers. It felt really weird. It was not fast food, in the sense of the word. You actually could follow the McDonald’s cooking process happening in slow motion.
Finally, when it came to my turn, I drove forward to the second drive-thru window. The girl already had my two drinks ready. I said thanks as I picked them up.
I said, “Thank you.” Then I was on my way, with a visual reminder of Australia going through some tough times during this COVID 19 Omicron surge in New South Wales.
Diary Of A Mad Chaos is a daily diary written from March 1996 until today, of which individual books and book series have been created, namely “The Lost Years” an exploration of young, entwined love, the “Wubao In China (猎艳奇缘)” book series which provides an extensive comparative analysis of the cultural differences between Eastern and Western societies, and the book titled “Foreigner (华人)” an exploration of race relations in Australia.
