What is it with customer service reps and their rude behavior nowadays?

Once or twice a week after work, I’ll go by a fast food place and grab some lunch. It’s usually on a day that I feel like I need to decompress after work before I head home.

Now, within a mile or so of each other, there’s a McDonald’s, a Burger King, a Checkers, and a Taco Bell. My go-to favorite always used to be Taco Bell, but lately every time I go there, the person working the window is so rude I have stopped going there at all. Burger King and McDonald’s are no better. The only place where they seem to know how to train their employees to be courteous is Checkers, and I love their food, but I don’t want to eat there every time.

Today when I went through the McDonald’s drive-thru, I took a moment to decide what I wanted and this very rude person working the order counter kept rushing me and then made some comment about I should have ordered on the app before I came. Why is that? Why am I obligated to use the app when I prefer just to pull up to the window? Although I rarely do this, today I asked to speak to the manager at the pickup window because his behavior was so over the top rude! Has anybody else experienced this? The funny thing was that he told me I was holding up the line, but there were so many cars in front of me it was a joke. He probably didn’t like the fact that I pointed out to him that my taking 30 more seconds to order was not going to make a difference in how long the line was.

I know the world has gotten a lot crazier the past few years. People are stressed about the cost of things, we are all up in arms about politics, all sorts of things. But I just feel like we have forgotten how to provide basic customer service. Back when I worked at a grocery store, if I had talked to a customer like that, I would have been fired in short order.