I guess ideally what you want is for someone to telepathically determine what you want to order, automagically suck the money out of your bank account then fire your hamburgers at your car with a cannon as you speed by.
Now THAT’S fast food.
I would SO pay for that!
Concerning the whole “please pull forward and we’ll bring your order out to you” thing…
If there are a line of cars behind me, I don’t have a problem and will pull forward. Don’t you dare tell me to pull forward and park when there is nobody behind me though. As someone else said, my job is not to make your numbers look better.
I had an assistant manager at a McDonalds actually throw my food at me one time because I refused to pull forward with nobody behind me. When I explained that I didn’t care if I was being timed, he called me a liar and said that they don’t time the people in the drive thru. I pointed to the machine and calmly asked “So what does that do?” He then said “Here is your food” and threw the bag at me.
After a nice 20 minute conversation with the owner of the establishment, he was fired and I got 3 days of free food.
Also, if you don’t want me asking how much a burger is, don’t only offer the combo on the menu with no ala carte pricing. Not my fault that you left that detail off the menu.
And don’t give me a “deer in the headlights” look just because my order came to $4.37 and I gave you $10.37. Just because you saw the $10 in my hand and punched it into the register before I gave you the money is no excuse to not be able to do 3rd grade math.
Also, if you say you close at Midnight and I get there at 11:40, don’t tell me you are closed so you can clean up and get out precisely at 12. This little gem happened to me last weekend after I had driven for 15 minutes to get to your little shithole of a restaurant.
Finally, stop getting my order wrong. You repeated it correctly and then screwed it up. It’s not rocket science. Look at the fucking screen and check that what you put in the bag is what you were supposed to put in the bag.
Try doing some of the above before dictating to me how I can make your simple job easier.
As someone who has spent the last month doing a crash course in SQL Server, this is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a very long time! Thanks, Bippy!
Max
Yep.
It’s crappy the way folks have fallen hook, line, and sinker for the “Combo Meal” gambit. Yep … adding a drink for .40 looks great -- except that the markup on that drink is *still* 800+ per cent (approximately .05 wholesale for ~12 oz.).
I rarely take meals while driving, and I’ve got drinks at home. Just the burger and fries, please.
:wally
Even funnier: give them 11.01 on a bill of 5.51. Hilarity ensues.
“Um, do you have the 50 cents?”
“No, just break that.”
“Yeah, but it’s 5.51”
“Wait, you gave me a single, it’s only 5.51, you can use the ten.”
I think in this situation, Dilbert would give them 11.26, using 2 dimes, a nickel, and a penny, and expect to get back a 5 and 3 quarters.
Perhaps others are unreasonable in the way you describe, but I just want to order, pay, get my food, and leave. I don’t eat out if I have to be somewhere at a certain time, so I’ve got no problem with fast food places that don’t get my food to me at Mach 10 (I also don’t mind waiting a bit at the speaker to order, if someone has to search the menu, or if the line is long, either).
All I ask is that you don’t take my money and pull a fake-out on me by having me pull forward. It’s not just an additional minute, I’ve waited in parking lots so long I eventually parked and went inside. That’s when, if I were the sort to complain about fairly minor crap, I would point out my food had been sitting in it’s bag for so long, waiting to be taken out to my car, that the food was not hot and fresh. If we’d all just waited our turns, and the workers weren’t pulling some fancy kung fu with the timers, my food would not have been rendered even less gourmet than usual.
Compensated for my wait? Not in my universe has that ever happened.
Order, pay, receive food, clean get-away. That’s not an unreasonable request.
Are franchises available, because I would so invest in that!
Y’know, if you’re frustrated with drive-thru hassles, you should give NinjaBurger a try!
Internet ordering, and delivery in 30 minutes or less, or they commit seppuku!
About that ‘pull ahead’ stuff – what I really wish is that they’d give you a chance to change the order.
Because I only eat fast food when thosre are really my only criteria: fast and food. You don’t have a fish burger ready? Gimme a chicken burger. Or a hamburger. What DO you have? I’ll take that. Whatever. It doesn’t matter to me all that much.
I want something hot and slightly nutritious to put in my empty belly, but most of all I want it NOW.
No kidding!
Can I have one Double McCrapBurg Meal™? No?
Then just give me two single McCrapBurg’s and a fries and a drink that I’ll throw out anyway cause it’s just fountain soda crap and ice anyway.
No?
That’s okay, I’ll just wait over here while you screw up the order further. (and screw it up you will !)
The one thing I’ve gotten from this thread is that I’m not going to wait anymore. Not for my benefit or the others behind me.
So, fast food drive thru window Jedi 's… what can we do to avoid the dreaded “park it”? Or in other words, what is the simplest way to achieve that goal? Just give me something warm between two buns that isn’t illegal and doesn’t require you to undress.
That’s it. I just wanna choke down some “food” and that’s all.
Feel free to send me some investment capital.
The main thing is to keep your order simple: no elaborate special orders (hold the mayo, extra pickles, fresh onions instead of dehydrated onions, don’t toast the bun, light on the lettuce, blah blah blah) and no ordering a metric shitload of food (say, for a van full of high school baseball players after a game). Sometimes they will tell you to park anyway for whatever fucking reason though.
- sturmhauke, former McDrone
how about
You always order the #X meal, you have ordered that fucking meal about 20 times this month alone, you know how this goes so how about you pull your head out of your ass and order your meal instead of playing 20 questions with the cashier.
DF (dumbfuck) “hi can i get a number 4”
C (cashier “sure what kind of drink with that?”
DF “oh i’ll take a blah de blah”
C and would you like that biggie/king/gigantomorph sized?"
DF “yeah”
C “anything else?”
DF “can i get some extra ketchup and no mustard on that?”
I dont even work or eat fast food and those people drive me crazy. (well I eat the stuff once in awhile but we are talking a drive through every 6 months or so)
my conversation goes like this.
Me “hi can I get X with X nothing to drink yes thats everthing”
C “your total is X at the first window”
You people and your high blood pressure! Where’s the percentage in being so easily driven crazy?
The Dumbfuck order you described is very often the most intelligent way to order: the employee may well have a specific order in which items must be punched into the keyboard, and the experience that is to you unique and exciting and full of anticipation is an experience that they’ll repeat 100 times that hour. Your food order is fuzzing into all other food orders they’ve taken during their shift: they aren’t going to remember what you said more than two seconds beyond your having said it.
So instead of giving them the entire order at once, allow them to ask the questions that will result in their entering your information correctly into the computer. This isn’t some great act of Gandhian magnanimity on your part: this is an attempt to get your request correctly filled.
At the very least, if someone else takes these precautions to make their own life easier, you may want to dial your stressometer down a notch, so that your head isn’t constantly exploding.
Daniel
A: How you doing? Me, I’m doing great. Yes, I’m ready to order. I’d like some food. Yes. Food. A burger, maybe. No, make that two. And a drink. Hmmm. Maybe a pie. Or two. And a straw. Thanks. Here ya go. You have a great day, two. Bubbye.
B: NO CONVERSATION!!! NO SOCIAL INTERACTION!!! ORDER IN ONE BREATH, PAY AND COLLECT IN ONE SWIFT MOTION THEN RUN THE FUCK AWAY!!! OR DON’T BOTHER COMING IN AT ALL!!! DICK!!! HEAD!!!
All I can say to this thread is that obviously you people don’t go to White Castle.
Because at White Castle, if you don’t have to wait 20 minutes in the drive through, it’s because the restaurant got closed for health violations.
One doesn’t go inside at a Castle. One goes through the drive through and one parks and eats in the car.
Ooooh, I HATE when they do this. They hold out the drink and straws with one hand, and then the other they hold out for the money. And I am one who gets my money and change all ready (not having a stick shift, and I figure it saves ME time as well).
The coins slide around on the top of the dollar bills, so the chances of it dropping while you’re trying to get drink and straw inside are pretty good. And that’s another thing, who the HELL came up with the coins on bills thing???
Anyway, my solution to the “two hands out, one for soda, one for money”, is to sweetly smile, say thank you, take the coke and straw, put it securely in my drink holder, and THEN hand them the money.
Otherwise, I agree with most of what the OP is saying, since a lot of the commandment breakers are more messing with our, their fellow customer’s time than they are with the fast food workers (other than the idiotic service timers).
I mean, what’s it really to the window clerk if the customer is an idiot and takes forever? Again, other than the sevice timer? That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. I feel bad for the poor fast food worker that they have to deal with it. Since, again, the hold ups are generally moron customer related and not necessarily their, the worker’s, fault.
At least whenever I go to the drive thru. I always get stuck behind some complete dolt who moves at the speed of slug and has 5 bazillion questions for the clerk and so on and so forth.
I only get 30 minutes for lunch. It takes me anywhere from 5 to 8 minutes to get to a fast food joint nearby, depending on which one I decide on. I always know what I want ahead of time and have a black belt in fast food fu. If not for other customers, I could place my order and pay before the cashier even has my drink ready.
Figuring it takes about 2-3 minutes for food preparation under normal circumstances, typically more like 5-7 during the lunch rush, it then takes me another 5-8 to get back to work, leaving me with ~10-15 minutes to actually eat.
What this means is that there is very little leeway for me to get stuck behind some yahoo who wants to do a price comparison at the order box or argue with the cashier about 32 cents at the payment window. And invariably, I do.
Sure I could bring my lunch to work and bypass the whole scenario, but the fact is, sometimes I really just want that Whopper. So why should I be forced to have to rush and swallow my food without chewing just because the schmuck in front of me doesn’t comprehend how to utilize a relatively simple tool like the drive-through?
Yeah, it may just be 30 seconds extra, but that’s you. If I’m the 4th car in line and everyone thinks that way, that’s two minutes. Two minutes of my precious lunch, and life, that I’ll never get back because you’re an idiot. And then it’s another 20 seconds in line at the grocery store, per person ahead of me. And then another 17.26 seconds at the ATM machine…
Point being, yeah it’s just 30 seconds, but that time adds up. Seconds become minutes become hours of wasted time because you were too inconsiderate to actually put the minimal amount of thought required into properly preparing for the, let’s be honest here, simple act of using a drive-through.
Henry Rollins put it best when he said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “You’re murdering me slowly.”
If they told me at the ordering menu, “It will be a five minute wait for your order,” I would change my order to something they have ready now. Instead, they wait until after I have confirmed my order and paid for it.
When asked to pull forward and park, I politely reply, “No thank you. I’ll just cancel my order.” Without fail, I have been told, “Just a second.” Suddenly my food is ready and I am on my way. I have yet to figure this one out–if my order was going to take 5 minutes, and a refund may have taken the same amount of time (more or less), how is it that my order is suddenly ready?
I pulled forward and waited once. My food never came. After 10 or 15 minutes of waiting, I went inside and asked for my food. I was told they gave it to me at the drive-thru window and I was accused of trying to get a duplicate order for free. Right then and there I decided I would never again, “pull forward and park” while I waited for someone to bring me my food.