Without that simple plastic tube, you have rendered fully half the meal useless.
No, worse than useless.
That drink is now a ticking time bomb, a depth-charge of aspartamic liability, which is bound to wind up sloshing around the floorboards of my pre-cupholder era vehicle.
Oh, the oaths and disfigurements I call down on your family, even unto the tenth generation, as I, in a sodium-induced delerium, scrabble in the bag, seeking the Straw of Destiny to release me from this thirst, stray french fries raising hope, then mocking my blind quest, as I keep my eyes on the road. Finally, it dawns on me…you handed me 22 ounces of drink…with no straw. Fiend.
And no-one short of James Bond could remove the plastic top from one of those filled-to-beyond-the-brim drinks in a moving vehicle, drink from it, replace the top, and not wind up soaked. Not driving a standard. No way, Jack.
askeptic, I’m certainly with you on civility all around, but I cannot in good conscience champion the cause of someone who tries to order Chicken McNuggets or a Big Mac out of one of these.
I’m not going to go so far as to “champion the cause”, but IMO confusing two very similar fast food joint’s food isn’t the stupidest mistake a person can make, as long as they accept correction and don’t keep insisting on getting the food they mistakenly asked for.
I am in general agreement with the commandments, with a couple of personal exemptions:
3.a. If your menu is in 8 point type, don’t expect me to be able to immediately find what I am looking for. Particularly when the order seems pretty random. Why exactly is the Gyros and the Gyros Plate two separate entries, separated by about 2 feet of other menu items? And no explanation of what the “plate” gives me, over and above the gyros itself?
8.a. Where I grew up “coke” was a generic term for soda/pop. So don’t get offended that I don’t specifically say “Pepsi.”
And to continue the list:
14.7., subchapter Culvers: When I am placing a large order which includes your frozen custard in a dish, don’t hand me the dish with a spoon in it, then several bags with my rest of my order. I am not eating this in the car. I’m taking it home with the rest of the order. Put a lid on the damn custard and put it in a bag. (Even when I specifically tell them when ordering I need a lid and it in a bag, they do it about 10% of the time.)
32.765. Don’t greet me by trying to sell me whatever you’re pushing today. Just ask for my order. I’m all ready to order, and now the first thing I hear is a commercial for some other item, plus it’s options. NOW if I stop and reconsider my entire order, it’s your fault, not mine.
Damn I was so busy trying to be conciliatory I didn’t think my answer through. I can certainly understand and forgive somebody for ordering the wrong product. Hell I don’t know most of the things most of the fast food chains sell. I have on occasion had to say “You got a regular hamburger” Only to hear “We have the triple decker super duper jack 1 1/2 pound super sandwich special meal” all I can think is WTF? "Give me a burger fries and a coke (or pepsi or sprite or 7-up or sierra mist or …)
Also: is there really an expectation among most drive-thru customers and employees that any and all will know exactly what they want as soon as they get to the main menu/speaker? I ask because my normal response to “May I take your order?” is “Just one moment, please”.
If so, that expectation is unreasonable, IMHO. 20-30 seconds to hunt for menu items and to decide on what to order is not unreasonable. Most drive-thru menus these days prominently display combo meals, and place the a la carte items in more-difficult-to-read type and locations. Those kind of menus slow things down a lot for folks like me who don’t intend to order a drink and who want to price out items individually.
They’re wins for the customers in line behind the guy who’s violating all of the commandments. At least inside the store, you can step to a different line if some idiot in front of you is arguing about how he wants a Whopper (at McD’s) and coaxing his darling children to make up their minds on their orders, all the while bitching at someone while on the cell phone. In the drive-thru line, you’re screwed.
When I worked at KFC, people would occasionally walk all the way in to our restaurant and still manage to order the wrong thing. As in, a pizza.
I was a teenager at the time, and I found such lapses and the kinds of things listed in the above Commandments simply beyond understanding. Most of our customers were really great, we were a neighborhood restaurant with a lot of regulars. But the ones who weren’t with the program drove me batshit. And we didn’t even have a drive-thru.
The thing is, at the time I didn’t have anything else on my plate. Taking care of myself and avoiding my parents - that was about it.
Recently, when my babies were really young, I went through a period of intense distraction. The best I could do for an outing (that “me time” we all need) was a trip to the drive-thru. Fifteen glorious minutes away from the screaming, crying and pooping. Vastly sleep-deprived and completely stressed out, I never knew where I was. And I was always on the phone - that was my only chance to vent about how much I was struggling.
It would be great if everyone could operate at top efficiency at all times, but we can’t. Some of the people who need a little extra time and care may have a great deal more going on in their lives than you do.
If thou art driving a long-bed truck with a four foot trailer hitched to it, thou shalt park and go inside. You’re leaving everyone behind you a half-step out of sync.
So only those who know precisely what they want before they go to the drive-thru should use the drive-thru? No menu-reading allowed? In your world, perhaps these menus are unnecessary?
Can’t disagree with you more. No one’s time is that valuable … and if it is, you probably have better places to be than a drive-thru line.
