Yesterday while my boyfriend and I were picking up McDonalds, we noticed that there are three drive through windows… even though the first two both point to the third one to both pay and pick up our order.
Now, I’ve seen plenty of two window drive throughs that choose not to utilize the first window, but I always understood that it was originally meant to keep the money handlers away from the food people.
But why the third window? What purpose could a third window possibly have?
Is it akin to a nerple: A tragic freak of nature that, while not really an eyesore, just sits there in the open, taunting you with its uselessness?
Some McDonalds have a 3rd window so the customers order face to face. The one near me quit doing that, installed the usual speaker, and nolonger uses all 3 windows.
And a true blessing it can be. A McDonald’s in my area has exactly that setup, and it’s in full use at the lunch rush. They take your order at the first window, you pay at the second, and pick up your food at the third. Keeps things moving quickly and the order accuracy is much better than at typical drive-through restaurants.
(For local interested parties, that’s the McDonald’s in Cedar Hill, TX, at U.S. 67 and Cockrell Hill Road.)
That’s how they did it at the McDs I worked at. When they’re short on staff or it’s off-peak, they stick that headphone mike on the person at the pay window and have them do double duty as order-taker and money-taker.
Having three windows open can speed things up, but the more people that are involved, the more that can go wrong. In order for drive-thru to work as efficiently as it can, everybody in the line and in the store making the food has to be on their toes. It’s a beautifully efficient system if that’s the case, but a lot of the time, it just isn’t the case. One kink, one mistake, or one delay is all it takes to bring the system to a crashing halt.
I spent a lot of time making smalltalk with customers in their cars as we both waited for the line to move. There were lots of “fast” food jokes.
What I always found so terribly amusing, at least in my store(s), was the fact that any problms in speed of service were almost entirely related to the customers themselves. That is, it only takes one guy to hold up a whole drive-thru. Two, I suppose, if you “park 'em.”
sigh
I miss my fast food days terribly(seeriously). Nothing like getting a handfull of BBQ sauce thrown at you: “I asked for EXTRA.” (seriously as well)
Though I never had the pleasure of working in a store with three windows, it had always been my understanding that the tandem lines were used for handing out food, not picking up the cash. Huh.
We had a three window McD’s for a while. the face to face didn’t work that well, because people would stop at the menu board. and sit waiting for someone to take the order. (never mind that there were signs saying to pull to the first window to order - people can’t take changes to their routines). So now the first window is a storage area.