Share your drive-thru stories please

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I started in the McKitchen when I was 14. About 6 months later, I was “promoted” to working counter/drive thru staff. Those McCashregisters are confusing. You have to know where every freaking button is for each particular menu item. My first time on the register was spent with my finger hovering impotently over it, looking for the right button. I had not memorized the entire thing by the time my shift was over.

My next shift, I was posted in the drive thru. 5:30 am, my first customer pulls up. I politely asked him for his order, whereupon he came back over the headphones: “I want 3 eggmcmuffins6hashbrowns2pancakebreakfasts2sausagemcmuffins1sausagemcmuffinwithegg4orangejuices3coffees2withcream1ofthecreamoneswith2sugarstheotherswithout.”

My response: “Okay: you wanted 3 egg mcmuffins…and what else?”

He wasn’t very happy with me.

22

Two:
I worked with a woman who was proud of the fact that she threw a coke at the person in the window, drenching her. Proud right up to the point where the woman sued her.

On a more serious note, two drivers in line at a local drive-through got in a pissing match, got out of their cars, started fighting. One pulled a knife, severed the other guy’s femoral artery and he bled out before an ambulance could get there.

23

So, is it true like they said on The Simpsons, that “it’s a felony to tease the order box”?

24

I ordered my GF a chicken sandwich at the local McDonalds with “just lettuce.” And what we got was 2 buns and lettuce, no chicken!

25

This is nowhere near as exciting as some of the other stories, but I was working McDriveThru many years ago and a couple guys pulled up in a truck, all in tuxes. They were followed by a procession of cars packed with guys in tuxes and women in gorgeous plum-colored sheath dresses. It turned out there was a large and formal wedding at a church just down the road, and during the delay between the wedding and the reception, the wedding party had grown ravenous. The Best Man (I think) snapped my picture as I handed out his car’s food order. Somewhere, my McService days are immortalized in someone’s wedding album.

Another time, my mother dropped me off at work, cutting short a heated but typical Mom/daughter argument over nothing. The manager took one look at me (this close to tears) and put me in drive through to give me a little time to shake it off. One of my favorite coworkers figured out somehow that I wasn’t feeling cheery, so he snuck out of the kitchen, arrayed himself in a fry-box skirt (Big Delivery Box, not Little Eat Out Of Box), and treated me to a hula dance. I still think of him fondly for that.

26

I worked at a McDrivethru in highschool. The only memorable thing was a girl that ordered (among other things) our super duper sized 5 gallon jug[sup]*[/sup] of diet coke - no ice. I handed her the vessel of soda. When she was pulling it in through the window of her car, the lid managed to catch the top of her window frame. This had the dual effect of removing the lid and turning the whole glass upside down - in her lap. I got her a refill and a handful of napkins. There really wasn’t much else I could do - aside from stifiling the laughter. I hope she wasn’t going anywhere important.
I was on the other end for my other story. I had a car that was in less than perfect mechanical condition. Two of the problems managed to work together to nearly diasterous consequences.
1). There was part of the linkage for the automatic gear shift that was mounted to the bottom of the transmission. Occasionally, I’d have to tighten these bolts or I couldn’t shift all the way into park.

2). my battery was getting coroded and/or my battery cables were loose. Sometimes, I’d have to twist the cables on the battery post to get the car to start.

Well, I was waiting at a particularly slow Arby’s drive thru. The line wasn’t moving, so I shut my car off. When the car in front of me finally did move, my car wouldn’t start. Shit! says I, so I put the car in park and popped the hood. I gave the battery terminal a quick wiggle and reached in the car and tried it again. It fired right up. So I walked to the front of the car and slammed the hood. This is where the story gets interesting. This car was powered by a 350CI V8 that idled a bit high. When the hood rattled the car, the linkage was just loose enough for the tranmission to pop into reverse.

And, we’re off to the races! In lane one, we have a shitty TransAm. In lane two we have a startled and confused brewha. As if that weren’t fun enough, the finish line suddenly presented itself as an equally startled and confused Arby’s drive through patron that had just rounded the corner.

The one thing I had going for me was that the car had T-Tops and no A/C. As it was a hot day, the T-Tops were not in place which allowed me to dive in over the top of the door and hit the brake pedal with my hand. There wasn’t much else I could do at that point (after putting the car in park and sitting in the driver’s seat right side up) other than getting my food and continuing on like nothing happened.

*exageration - but our biggest cup was huge!

27

I think I stopped using fast food drive-throughs after I went to McDonald’s and received a quarter pounder that already had a big bite taken out of it.

At least the manager had the good graces to look like this :eek: when I came inside to show him. Apparently someone had taken a bunch of rejected food from a previous drive-through order and put it right back on the warmers.

28

Yep, someone at Hardee’s here had an experience a little like that. They ordered a breakfast biscuit and when it was unwrapped, it had mustard on it, presumably from the previous recipient.

29

My wife eats her cheeseburgers with lettuce and onions only. We learned a long time ago that one must also specify cheese, otherwise she was getting a hamburger with lettuce and onions.

So now we say a cheeseburger with lettuce, onions and cheese. A few months back she got just that: lettuce, onions and cheese between two buns.

30

A friend of mine worked at Arby’s once. He had a cut on his finger, and had wrapped it in a Band-Aid.

Lunch rush hit. Someone called in sick. He’s frantically making orders and sandwiches and frying fries and mixing milkshakes…until the rush is over.

Then, he realizes the Band-Aid is gone. He fears he lost it somewhere in the roast beef au jus…but no one ever complained. :eek:

31

Mine has nothing to do with the restaurant employees.

I was at a Carl’s Jr. and had just pulled forward after ordering. The car behind me was occupied by an elderly woman holding a dog in her lap. And after she’d finished ordering, she moved forward. And promptly forgot the difference between the car’s brakes and the gas pedal.

Fortunately, she wasn’t far enough behind me to hit me really hard. She left the imprint of her license plate on my car’s bumper, though. No one was hurt, she was really apologetic and embarrased, and for some unknown reason, I just let it go.

It was, however, memorable.

32

There’s one guy at our local McDonald’s who really needs to lay off the chronic. Any day now, I expect him to read back the order like this:

Robin

33

We used to live near a Jack-In-the-Box that hired a lot of foreign workers. My son’s favorite sandwich was a Jumbo Jack. For about six months, there was a guy working the drive-through – who truly did an outstanding job, I hasten to say – but whose pronunciation always came out as “Yumbo Yak.” We went there far more often than we should have just because we enjoyed his pronunciation so much.

We were very sad – but happy for him – the day he got promoted and stopped working the window. He was a very industrious guy; I expect he became a district manager in record time. But I hope he’s never learned to say the letter J; it was always fun imagining just what was going into those Yumbo Yaks. :smiley:

34

Are you sure? It’s been my experiance that the good fine people of Hardee’s decided that what Americans want is mustard, and lots of it. Every one of their burgers is swimming in it. Maybe they just decided to jazz up breakfast with America’s favorite condoment.

35

Mine’s a little gross, so if you’re squeamish, skip this post.

I was in my little McCell in the McDonald’s drive-thru. (It’s a little booth that holds a single register, a chair, and condiments, and an imprisoned McWorker can take orders from there. I guess the advantage to it is that customers get to talk to a living human being.) Mine was the third busiest McD’s in the state, so, as usual, the drive-thru was full of cars. I was sitting there waiting for the cars to move when I saw a large rat emerge from the storm drain in the drive-thru lane. It slowly wandered out, sniffed the air, and went up to a car’s rear tire and sniffed at it. I’d never seen a rat before, and it was actually kind of cute.

Unfortunately, at that moment the car rolled forward slowly, and for some reason the rat didn’t scamper away. It somehow got pulled under the car and was smooshed. It was cartoonlike in how slowly the car rolled forward and how flat the rat got.

I’m not sure if the customers that followed saw it and whether it turned them off much to their McBreakfasts. The elderly Filipino janitor wandered by soon after and I waved him down. With his broom, he flipped the poor rat back down the storm drain.

36

That, my good man, is a most unfortunate typographical error (I hope). :eek:

37

My sister is a vegetarian, but she loves the Big Mac special sauce. She regularly goes to McD’s to order “two Big Macs, no meat!”

Several years ago, my husband had a pretty severe bike accident. He was biking to work, and had barely left when he noticed the light at the corner was red. He slammed on the brakes, and flipped over the handlebars. He managed to walk the bike back up to the apartment, where I was getting ready for work, and told me he needed to go to the hospital… he was pretty sure he’d sprained his elbow*, and had a large bleeding gash in his chin. (The full story is much more dramatic and funny, but I’m sure I’ve posted it elsewhere over the years, and this isn’t about that).

So we go to the hospital, and get there at about 8am. 4 hours later, we were done; he had 7 stitches in his chin, his right arm was in a removable cast, his gashed knees were both wrapped in gauze, he had a large bandage on his cheek, covering that roadburn, and since he had taken off his shirt at the hospital, he was wearing nothing but shorts and a hospital gown, open at the front as if it was a regular shirt. Basically, he looked like hell.

As it was noon, we were starving, so we decided to stop off at the Wendy’s on the way home to grab some lunch. We ordered, and drove up to the window.

The lady at the window hands the bag of food out, turns to pick up the drinks, then finally looks out the window at us… and nearly drops the drinks! I guess she doesn’t see many bleeding, nearly mummy-wrapped customers at the drive-through!

This was funnier to see than it was to write…!

(*In case anyone cares, his injuries were as follows: sprained left elbow, broken right elbow, dislocated right wrist, requiring a surgery and a year of physiotherapy, stitches in his chin and scratched up knees and face. His only scar now is the chin and the spot where they put a pin through his wrist to hold in in place in the cast!)

38

Burger King used to have a sandwich called a Yumbo, but it contained no yak – it was made with ham and cheese.

39

Just last weekend I was at Subway and the previous person had ordered mustard which came off on the knife they used to cut the sub in half. It was fairly busy and the person making my sub had already made some mistakes (giving me too few tomatoes and pickles, which I didn’t correct her on, and giving me too much lettuce when I asked specifically for very light lettuce, which I did correct her on before she piled it on, saying only put on part of what you have in your hand and distribute it around, and after that giving me the standard amount of oil and oregano rather than heavy.)

So after my sub had everything on it the worker grabbed the knife and did not immediately turn around to wipe it off, so before it could make any headway toward my mustardless sandwich, I said “could you wipe that off?” Which she did, thankfully.

40

My old man picked up his car from a body shop (sideswipe repair) and stopped at the bank on the way home. A pissed-off redneck in a pickup in front of him got tired of waiting I guess and promptly backed right over the hood of the car. Back to the body shop, never having even made it home!

I did this nasty little trick once: Pulled into a Taco Bell drive-thru in an old 69 Wagoneer. It used to overheat and had all sorts of problems, and it was HEAVY! Anyway, I waited forever for someone to come on the box to take my order. They finally did, but said “Please wait a minute!”. They left the microphone on and it was obvious they were a bunch of punk-ass kids playing grab-ass on the job. I shut the Jeep off and waited. And waited. Finally got to place my order, but I told the dude my Jeep wouldn’t start and they had to come push me out of the drive-thru. I had the whole crew of shaggy punks pushing this monster Wagoneer around the parking lot. One of them brought out the food and I fired up the beast and motored off!

I heard the kid say, “Aw, Dude! That’s messed up!” :smiley: