I always taste the Diet Coke to make sure it is, in fact, a Diet Coke. Sometimes, it is not.
I sometimes forgot it was supposed to be diet and gave them coke. hides in shame. (Yes, I know how dangerous that is.) One guy was diabetic, but he asked me if it was diet coke when I handed it to him so I was able to change it.
I pull through and check. Checking at the window is so inconsiderate to everyone behind you.
Why is it inconsiderate to everyone behind you if you check your order? Because it might take an extra 30 seconds? That is just silly. It is almost impossible to get an order fixed if you leave the window. Driving back to the window takes forever and the people at the counter inside have no idea what you are taking about.
If you are in such a hurry that the extra 30 seconds in the drive thru line is a huge time waster for you then how in the world do you even have time to eat lunch?
:eek: Except for the rare diet/regular pop mix-up, I think that I’ve gotten the wrong order only once or twice. And that was something you’d have to open the food wrappings to discover.
Based on my experience, I’d say that there are an average of two cars behind me (assuming only one occupant per car!!) and I get the wrong $2 sandwich once every 100 visits. If I check every visit, I’m causing one minute of inconvenience (30 seconds x two cars) for every visit which makes 100 minutes of inconvenience for every mix-up. Let’s round that down to 1.5 hours. Since empirical research has pretty consistently found that people value their free time at 1/2 their wage rate, and since the average wage rate is about $15/hour, I’m costing society $7.5 x 1.5 = $11.5 for my $2 benefit. So yes, checking one’s order is a form of pollution because one isn’t bearing the cost she imposes on other people when she checks her order.
Based on LauraLittlePony’s experience, the high frequency of mix-up would change the value of the pollution being imposed on others, but the fact remains that when one sits there to check the order, one is imposing a cost on others that is not reflected in one’s own optimizing decision.
When my behavior has a negative impact on another person, it seems only natural to reconsider my behavior rather than just brush off the other person’s welfare because it seems insignificant to me.
It’s fast food. It’s been so heavily processed that, if you removed the various artificial colors and flavors, it would all look and taste the same. I don’t check because I don’t care what it is, I don’t drive thru expecting some specific culinary delight. If I get one sandwich that tastes a margin above crap rather than some other sandwich that tastes a margin above crap, I don’t see why I should get upset or go back to exchange one piece of industrial flavored mystery meat for another piece of industrial flavored mystery meat.
The only time this might annoy me is if I’m in the middle of driving and ordered something (such as McNuggets) because they’re easier to eat.
I usually make special orders at drive thrus and about 6 times out of 10, they’re wrong. Carls Jr. and Taco Bell are the worst. I still don’t check my food at the window though, because I know how irritated I get when people in front of me do it. I’ll pull around and check. Because I make special orders, if they’re wrong, I just don’t eat, it’s not a matter of eating the wrong thing, it’s a matter of eating, vs. not eating. So I kinda have to check. The thing that REALLY irritates me though is the people that sit there and SLOWLY put their money away and get nice and settled before driving off. Come on! Did you NOT notice the 10 cars waiting in line behind you???
:mad:
js_africanus writes:
> No. 99.9% of the time your order will be correct, while the time
> you take to check it will inconvenience the people behind you
> 100% of the time.
and also writes:
> Based on my experience, I’d say that there are an average of
> two cars behind me (assuming only one occupant per car!!) and
> I get the wrong $2 sandwich once every 100 visits.
Well, which is it? Is the proportion of mix-ups once in 100 (1%), or is it once in 1000 (.1%)? I’m sorry if this comes across as nasty, but I think that you’re just guessing. I have gotten fast food from a drive-up window less than 100 times in my life, and I’ve certainly gotten mixed-up orders more than once. I think the proportion is more like 5% to 10% in my own experience, but I emphasize that’s only my experience.
I now always pull away from the drive-up window and park in the lot. I check the food carefully. If I find a mix-up, I get out of the car and walk up to the window and ask for them to fix it.
Yes, I check my food. I paid for it. I’m going to check it. I will count the number of items, sip the soda, make sure the fries are in there. If my taking thirty seconds to examine my purchase to get it right is going to scramble someone’s timetable, then plainly someone is cutting it way too fine.
I don’t want to pull off to one side. If I do that, it means that if someone else screwed up my order (through no fault of mine), I have to get out of the car and go IN to get someone to fix it, or I have to go through the drive-thru again. Forget that. Thirty seconds isn’t going to jack anyone’s world around. Deal with it.
But when I say thirty seconds, I mean thirty seconds. People who disassemble the hamburger to count the pickle slices, or who get out the spectrometer and pH testing kit to determine the amount of peanut residue in the shake… THEY can pull the hell OVER!
It’s important to me. If I order a Hamburger Happy Meal with a Sprite for my child, and I get handed a bag which contains a box of McNuggets and what’s obviously a Coke, I’m not pulling away. I’m handing it back right then so they can get me what I ordered. Why is that “being a stickler”?
As I said before, I’ll take a quick peek to see if it looks right. I don’t unwrap all the sandwiches or sip all the drinks, but if it’s obviously wrong, I’ll hand it back before I leave the window.
There’s a Pit Thread here in which a poster who works at Sonic ordered a sandwhich to go before leaving work, didn’t check it, and when she got home, found out it was completely wrong. I thought it was very funny.
Man who gives a shit? People can do what they want, it would be a boring world if everyone was the same. i hate drive-thrus anyway, why the jhyd am I evn in this thread? i dunno…
Good news, In-n-out makes Atkins-friendly burgers! You can order a burger *“protein style” and instead of a bun, they’ll wrap it in a big lettuce leaf.
Peace,
~mixie
*may not be available in all locations, your mileage may vary, etc, etc.
If it’s a small order, I count the number of items right there, which takes about five seconds. If it’s for three or more people, I pull into the parking lot to check. But I always check before I leave the lot because although rarely do I get the wrong item, I will often get an order with missing items.
As noted by several dopers in this thread, Taco Bell is the WORST about that.
Also, if someone in front of me is obviously checking their order, I imagine it’s because they’ve gotten screwed up orders in the past and try to cut them some slack. Because what it comes down to is that if you PAY for a chicken sandwich and fries, within reason, you have the right to RECEIVE a chicken sandwich and fries–pickle-counting and peanut residue freakiness excepted.
Its assholes like you that make MY job harder. And the reason I sit there until I am FULLY satisfied with my order. And you can be DAMNED sure I will remember WHO you are when I come in screamingfor your manager. And I guarantee EVERYONE in that McDonald’s will know what an asshole you are.
I’m single, and I order basic menu items, so on the rare occasions that I go for fast food, it’s 1) almost always right, and 2) only two items in a bag, so I check it with one quick glance.
I do not open wrappers or sip drinks to make sure they’re right, unless I have time to taste the drink before I’m handed my food. (I often do.)
While I think it’s just unnecessarily rude to insist on sitting there at the window just to check your order, if you can tell right away that they got something wrong (Coke instead of Sprite, strawberry instead of chocolate), I don’t think it’s wrong to hand it back ASAP. I haven’t had a wrong order in a long time, but the last time I did this, they told me to pull forward and I got my correct item in about a minute. They walked it out to me.
As for “why can’t I sit there and unwrap all my kids’s burgers and taste all the drinks and make sure they scraped all the onions off Susie’s hamburger”–instead of keeping the unpleasant drive-through experience isolated to just yourself, you’ve decided to spread the misery to others by making us all wait longer than necessary. I don’t care if it’s just 30 seconds extra–you’re being a jerk by not being more considerate. Sure, you’re going to have to either go through the line again or get out and go inside. But those of you who say “I’m not wasting that much of your time” also seem to be arguing that it would “waste too much of your time” to go in/go through the line again. That’s tantamount to saying you have a right to waste everyone else’s time on purpose, but the restaurant has no right to waste yours, even by accident.
I make a habit of doing this in the parking lot because McDonald’s has a HORRIBLE habit of never getting it right. It’s actually pretty pathetic when their record is (literally) about 4 right out of the last 10 orders.
I do a quick check to make sure they’ve put in the stuff I’ve ordered and that they’ve given me a straw.
And no, it doesn’t take 30 seconds. Would you rather I take 5-10 seconds checking my order, or go back in and tie you up for 10 minutes because you go it wrong?
In my opinion, if it’s something that can’t be verified with a quick glance, then you should pull forward. This is coming from someone who nearly always has to special order stuff (no mayo, no honey-mustard, no lettuce/tomato, no BBQ sauce, extra pickle, etc.). When I get my order, I look at it quickly to make sure there’s the correct number of sandwiches/sides and that they’re at least in the right wrappers (which takes all of three seconds), and then I pull forward a ways or into the parking lot to check the sandwiches.
If I get a sandwich that has something I don’t want on it, I won’t be able to eat the sandwich (warm mayonaise and any sort of honey mustard makes me gag), or will have to pick it off. It is an inconvenience for me. However, it’s really not worth holding everyone else up. I know I’d hate to be in that position, so I try to be considerate.
I mean, that’s what it boils down to, really; being considerate of other people. There’s no rule that says that I can’t dissemble and reassemble my sandwich at the drive thru window; to do so, however, would be exceedingly bad mannered. I don’t think it would kill anyone here to practice this common courtesy. It’d be a pain, but it’d be the nice and decent thing to do.
However, checking at the drive thru window is NOT that big of a deal. It’s annoying. It’ll set you back whether you’re a customer or an employee. But it’s not going to kill you; therefore, retaliation is seriously unwarranted. Save it for the real jerks.
Well, if I have to get in line again, I will waste everyone’s time in a much larger scale than if I check at the window.
My husband is a special order guy. I’m an “eat it if it’s edible” gal. Thankfully, it’s rarely wrong, but when it is we have to fix it. We tend to pull around and park, then go inside with problems. We’re not generally in a hurry, so it isn’t that big a deal. But if we were in a hurry, going inside to fix a drive-thru problem often takes a huge amount of time. And going through the line again would be taking my time, the time of the people in the line, and the servers’ time. Add in the confusion and frustration, and you’ve got a potentially ugly/annoying situation where you could have had something routine.
I count my money before I pull away from an ATM even though I’ve only had an ATM screw up once. Is that rude?
Julie
No, you won’t. This is a silly argument, but I guess it has to be spelled out to some people.
A lot of this has to do with expectations. Drive-through windows are expected to be fast. They are advertised as being fast. The McDonalds in my neighborhood actually has a sign that says you’ll spend no more than 90 seconds in line from ordering to finish, or some such thing.
When I go to a drive-through, I’m almost always in a hurry. If I pull up and see a line, I count the cars, estimate based on that 90 seconds (or 2 minutes, or whatever) how long it will take, and if it’s going to be too freaking long, I either try going in or I leave without wasting my time.
If some jerk choses to inspect his sack o’ burgers on each and every trip to Mickey D’s, right there at the window, unwrapping and checking for pickles or mayo or whatever, they’re holding me up appreciably. Some of us may not have time to spend for each person in line to take an extra minute to inspect their food. Some of us may just not want to wait longer than expected. The jerk has slowed up the process for everyone and, as a worker said earlier, thrown a monkey wrench into the process that goes on in the kitchen.
However, if Ms. Finicky would kindly pull into a parking spot to check the order, she can get back in line or go inside to correct the mistake. This doesn’t throw off anyone’s expectations of what the wait will be, doesn’t mess up the flow in the kitchen, and just wastes less time in general. The time spent in line or going inside is going to be a lot less than that spent by those of us who have to languish behind you while you check to make sure your burger is no onions or whatever every single stinking time you go to the burger joint.
Back when my mom was a harried stay-at-home mom with 4 kids under 6 and her kitchen demolished in a renovation, we ate McDonalds all the time. She handled screw-ups like this: we just went home without checking the bag, and if there was a screw-up, she called from home to complain to the manager. She always ended up with coupons for free food, her time wasn’t wasted, the time of others wasn’t wasted by her checking every Happy Meal. Most screw-ups can be rendered acceptable by scraping off something you don’t like or by drinking your second-favorite drink, or whatever. If you’re not super picky but you have large orders and insist on getting satisfaction, this might be the route to go.
I do this too, because I can do it in about one second flat. However, if there are people behind you at an ATM, and you spend any appreciable length of time counting your money, pull forward. There’s no possible way the ATM can fix a mistake for you anyway–you have to go talk to a live human. Spending even 30 seconds sitting there counting, holding others up, is always pointless. Pull forward or prepare to be judged a social clod.