First of all I would like to express that these are, as a majority, state wide problems. I am not from Montana and have had the displeasure of not being able to leave school here due to cost of addmission. With that being said the state of Montana has surpassed any shitty service standards I thought I had. From the restaraunts to wal-mart to convience stores, the service sucks across the board. The Conoco gas station takes special consideration in the area of the ''customer comes last!'' I have, on more than one occasion, waited for clerks while they talked to friends or previous customers about social activites after work, completley ignoring the fact that customers are in line, waiting. There is literally no sense of urgency here. They are still part of the U.S., yet refuse to act as such in comparison to the their state-wide counterparts. McDonald's has you pull up to a parking spot from the drive-thru to wait for your food for about 5 minutes; compltely defeating the purpose of the drive-thru. I have never had that happen at any of the McDonald's in any other of 15 states I have visited. Wal-Mart is roughly the same as conoco, waiting in line while the clerk bull-shits. But Wal-Mart, here in MT, takes it to a new low. There are appox. 30 registers at the store and the only one's that seem to open consistently, are the self-checkout lines. Once again the MT work ethic fails.
And if you think that you can go to small businesses to find better service, you are sadly mistaken. The small businesses are much worse that their corporate counter-parts. The people in this area are largley biased and familly owned, so there is no threat of being fired if you give shitty service. Nepotism isn't the only problem. The employment here is strictly discriminational. You have a much better chance of sucess if you are from MT or fit the description of a local. This takes the chance away from people from other areas that may be very good at what they do. I have worked out here for about 5 years and have worked for the small employers and I have seen infractions ranging from being ordered to serve out-of -date food to making a customer wait so I could clean and relieve THE MANAGER of the restaraunt, so he could leave. Another issue with small business is that they are extremley understaffed. One example is a restaraunt I worked at, where the cook was also the prep cook, line cook, and diswasher. How can you expect good service when individuals are doing the work of three people. The same goes for servers they serve, bus, and host. This happens at every place I have worked.
Understaffing is probably the biggest cause of lack of service in this area. Employers undrestaff to create more overhead for themselves and do not give raises often. This cripples the incentive of an employee. $7.25/hr = $7.25/hr worth of work, which isn't alot. Also the great state of MT has a labor rule that states that you can terminate an employee for ANY reason w/in the first 6 months of employment. So if you are not part of the clique, you lose your job. It is about what the employer likes out here not about what the customer wants.
Now the funny part of this story is that one of MT's primary economical stimuli is tourism. These people DO NOT UNDERSTAND THAT WITHOUT CUSTOMERS THERE CAN BE NO BUSINESS.
In summary, if you want to visit MT come 'cause it's beautiful, but do not move here or expect good service if you visit.