Imagine working at the drive thru window at a fast food restaurant. Time is money so it’s important to be quick and keep the cars moving.

What would you do if one car was taking a really long time due to a few errors with their order? Would you rush them through anyway, or would you try to make up the extra time by being quicker with the other cars?

In today’s story, one manager doesn’t seem to understand basic math at the drive thru. Let’s read the whole story.

I think I just had the “Pieces of Flair” conversation from Office Space with a boss.

The fast food company I work at has recently gotten a new District Manager, and you know what that means!

Obsession over metrics starts all over again.

So we’ve become really anal about drive-thru window times at our store.

Not to worry, though; I’m pretty decent at getting them. Our goal is 2:20 at the window, and I can usually manage a 1:55 or so if I’m working alone on an overnight shift.

Some cars take longer than others.

So after a long shift of getting a pretty good average time, I had the following conversation with a manager (who, I might add, hasn’t worked here for over a month yet)

Manager: I’m looking at the car times you had today and some of them were pretty bad. What is this? Why did this one car take ten minutes? Why did this other one take twelve? Cars are supposed to be under 2:20.

Me: Yeah, I had problems with a few cars. Ordering new food at the window and stuff. One car ordered the wrong thing and wanted me to replace it immediately. But look at the average time, isn’t it amazing?

Manager: Yeah, your average was pretty good. But you’ve got to work on getting some of those car times down. Ten and twelve minute cars are unacceptable. You need to get them under 2:20.

The manager didn’t care about the average time.

Me: So… the average wasn’t good enough?

Manager: The average was fine, I’m talking about these few cars. They shouldn’t have taken so long.

Me: So you wanted me to serve those cars faster, so the average would be lower.

Manager: No, this has nothing to do with the average time. Your average time was great. But there is no excuse for any twelve-minute cars. You’ve got to focus on getting every car under 2:20.

OP explained again.

Me: But I thought we measured the average window time, not the time for individual cars. I can’t help it if some customers are stubborn and don’t want to leave! But I just get better times to make up for long cars, so the average doesn’t go higher. I worked really hard to bring that time back down after the bad car.

Manager: Inceptagon, this has nothing to do with the average…

Why can’t managers ever seem to understand basic math? In fact, how do they even get promoted??

That manager is being really unreasonable. Some cars ARE going to take longer than others.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person recommends asking for additional training.

Quicker isn’t always better.

The manager was being unreasonable.

This person translates manager.

That manager has probably never worked at the drive thru window.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.