Cruel & Unusual Punishment? I Think So.

I have noticed lately that Sonic has been heavily “encouraging” their carhops to be on skates. They’re surveys ask if your carhop was on skates. Their commercials even are starting to state that they’ll skate your order out to you. I guess they’re trying to go back to their early days. But I think this is unnecessary cruel and unusual punishment.

Case and point, I went to Sonic on Saturday to get a drink. The guy to delivered my order was on skates and it was quite obvious he was not comfortable on skates. The poor guy almost bit it twice that I saw. And this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a skating carhop struggle to stay upright. My question is if this attempt at some sort of unique branding ploy is worth injury to their employees and worth the amount of food lost because a carhop loses their balance and drops a tray of food. To me, that slows down service. And frankly, I could care less if my order is delivered by someone on skates. I can’t imagine that Sonic could FORCE their carhops to be on skates, but there has to be some sort of “incentive” to get their carhops to do something they are so obviously not comfortable with. Let’s just say I’m glad I don’t work at Sonic.