Deli stall meat cutter - order-taking scripts: incomplete specs, a growing line, and a wrong cut - full sentences you can read verbatim

Write a set of order-taking scripts for a cooked-food stall's
cutting counter, covering three moments. For each: the situation
/ a line that can be read verbatim / why it works / the
never-say version. I am the cutter; customers order through the
glass while I chop and take the next order.

Moment 1 - Incomplete specs ("some roast duck," "a white-cut
chicken")

The line (chained choice questions, never open-ended):
"Roast duck - half or one portion? - chopped to take away, or
 whole for you to cut at home? - want the neck thrown in?
 Roughly 500 grams, does that work?"
Why: deli orders carry five specs - product, whole/half or
portion, chopped or not, bone (or neck) in or out, weight
budget. Customers volunteer the first and only the first; the
other four come out of choice questions: two or three options
each, one-word answers. The open "how much would you like"
stalls every person in line for five seconds of thinking.
Never say: "How much would you like?" (bundles five specs into
one open question - at peak, the whole line waits while one
person decides).

Moment 2 - The line is growing (a third head starts leaning in)

The line:
"Sir, one moment - two ahead of you. This duck is the last one
 before you; think over which one you'd like so when you're up,
 just say it."
Why: it gives position (two ahead) and an event anchor (this
duck), both impossible to argue with, plus it converts waiting
time into deciding time - the specs come out ready at the
counter, which is faster for everyone.
Never say: "Soon, soon" (nothing checkable; after the third
repetition every syllable fans the fire).

Moment 3 - Wrong or maybe-wrong cut ("I said unchopped," "why
is there neck on this")

Line A (mandatory first step - read back, don't argue):
"You asked for it whole, unchopped - I mixed that up. I'll cut
 you a fresh one; the wrong one is on me, you're not paying
 twice."
Why: reading the customer's original request back is an on-the-
spot admission that the error happened at the receiving end,
which cools the moment instantly; immediately self-answering
"what about the wrong one" removes the customer's burden of
figuring out what to do with it.
Line B (specs genuinely got lost between both parties):
"I think we crossed wires - you wanted stew-cut pieces. I'll
 cut you the stew pieces now; take this chopped one at half
 price if it's useful, or leave it, no trouble either way."
Why: it never assigns blame (assigning blame is how service
becomes an argument) and jumps straight to three exits: the
re-cut is the main road, half-price recovers part of the loss,
"leave it" is the no-pressure option. All three laid out at
once; the customer only picks.
Never say: "But you didn't say unchopped" (pushes the fault
back across the counter; whatever gets resolved after that
sentence, it gets remembered); "Well what do you want me to
do" (hands the solving to the customer).

Constraints:
- Every line must be complete and readable verbatim - "confirm
  patiently" style coaching phrases are banned
- Moment 3 may not contain "you didn't say" / "you weren't
  clear" or any cousin of them - this is the red line of the
  whole set
- Weight budgets get phrased with tolerance ("roughly 500
  grams, work for you?"), never as exact promises - only offer
  the customer choices the knife can actually deliver
- No "keep smiling" filler

Why it is written this way

The economics of this script set are blunt: a wrong cut has no return path. Retail can exchange; a chopping error is a pile of cooked food that can't re-enter the pan - so everything in the design pushes confirmation earlier: filling the five specs with choice questions at order time costs seconds; recovering after the cut costs the product. The choice-question mechanism is the core: a customer's decision capacity is at its lowest at the counter (a line behind them, steam in their eyes), so each question offers two or three one-word answers instead of one open-ended deliberation. "How much would you like" sounds polite and actually hands the hardest thinking to the person with the least bandwidth to do it.

Moment 2 follows the queue-script principle of giving sequence, never minutes: the number of cuts the current duck needs is outside the cutter's control, while position and the next event are fully inside it. "Think over which one you'd like" is the only genuinely speed-raising line in the set - it front-loads the line's decisions, so when each person reaches the glass their five specs are already formed.

Moment 3 is the fuse. Thirty seconds after a wrong cut decides whether the customer remembers it for a year, and the red line - "you didn't say" may never appear - exists because it is exactly the sentence a person reaches for when blamed: self-defense. Line A's read-back does the admitting implicitly, trading a small concession for the big one - de-escalation. Line B handles the common gray zone (nobody's fault, really) and its intelligence is skipping the verdict and laying out three exits at once - re-cut, half price, or leave it. The customer picks a door instead of fighting over whose fault the hallway was, and the half-price option quietly walks half the stall's loss back.

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