Mild Social Anxiety
No, technically, I’ve not been diagnosed. This is conjecture, but based on pretty solid evidence. Firstly, with one rare exception, every time I have gone to a (mental or medical) Health Professional with a confident idea of what’s wrong with me, they wind up coming to precisely the same conclusion.
The exception: the one time I went to the Dr with no clue, they put me through a whole battery of tests. Lower G.I. Liver. Kidney. We were 6 weeks into it before a Radiologist asked, “When was the last time you were examined by a Doctor?” This was the 3rd time she’d seen me, for the various tests they’d ordered, and she noticed physical changes that the Doctor could not see by looking at test results. The Radiologist insisted I wait and see a Doctor right away. Luckily, Dr. Askegaard (my usual at the time) had just returned from Maternity Leave, and she’d not seen me once since before this all began. (It turned out to be a heart problem.)
But I digress.
Secondly, ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you one of the following:
- He gets wigged out by crowds.
- He’s beyond introverted.
- Hell if I know, but the fucker’s got something wrong in the head.
McDs Mobile App is the Best for Social Anxiety
It is unpredictable, but sometimes when it comes time to order at the cashier, the din of conflicting internal dialog is so overwhelming that I can’t readily understand what the cashier is saying to me (even if they enunciate clearly, which is too rare). Also, I can be looking at an item I have regularly on my Subway sandwich, but cannot come up with the word. Or I can be looking at the menu item, and cannot pronounce the words. It’s very stressful.
The mobile app is a much slower process. It ain’t saving me any time; only sanity.
The mobile app has had some serious UX problems, but it’s gradually getting better. I still contend that “Add Bacon” should be an option for everything on the menu. Everything. Idiots won’t listen to me.
Anyway, because it allows me to make my own decisions at my own pace, avoid talking to someone who cannot understand me, and whom I cannot understand, and be 100% sure that at least they got my order correctly (so the times they give me the wrong thing, it’s absolutely their fault)… I have used the McDs Mobile App exclusively when it’s available. This also means that I have chosen McDs over other restaurants a bunch of times, because the other restaurants don’t have an app like this. (The point: the mobile app has meant a sharp rise in sales as far as I can tell.)
It Therefore Sucks When Breakfast is Broken
This morning was the 2nd consecutive visit to the Otter Lake Drive McDs in Hugo, MN, that breakfast was not available during breakfast hours.
Are they having a problem with their connection to the orders from the Mobile App, and they’ve simply opted out, temporarily?
Have they opted out due to staff problems? I suspect this is the case, given how often the backwater redneck trainees don’t seem to understand what to do when I come to the first window and inform them “I paid through the Mobile App.” It’s got to be tough to manage a McDs out here in semi-rural MN. McDs – like any other fast food place – does not get the best and brightest. And given how many MAGA-ish stickers I see on the pickup trucks around here, the bottom of the employment pool has got to be children of IQ45 supporters. I mean, how bright can they be, if their parents are that stupid?
Further evidence that the technology of your run-of-the-mill-McDs is too much for these slack-jawed yokels, is the fact that most of the time I go there, the “pick up here” display is shut off.
Then there’s this morning. I went in and used the self-ordering kiosk. This thing has its own clunky UX situation, but it’s workable, and I can get through it and get my order straight. Then I go wait for my order to come up.
This is what the “pick up here” display looked like when she had just put my bag on the counter, and told me “Your OJs are coming right up.”
Did she say my order number? No. But given that I was the only customer in the order area at the time, perhaps that’s a reasonable omission.
Aside: does the photo above remind anyone else of Beetlejuice?
