This happened to me once at a Whataburger in Houston, I was in line at the drive through when a homeless couple explained they were not allowed inside and not allowed through the drivethrough on foot. I told them to give me the money and their order and I’d buy it.
The drive through clerk eyed me suspiciously buying 4 burgers but filled the order, then on giving it to me told me not only was the drivethrough only for cars but people outside the car were not allowed to order.:dubious: It would obvious and rather disgusting that they just didn’t want them soiling their business(they did not smell of feces or anything like that before anyone asks).
Good for you! Was that the one on 59 South near Hillcroft?
A similar frustration, but not of the drivethrough variety, the Mexican restaurant on Westheimer with the “watch them make tortillas” kitchen and self-serve policy … when I sat down with a group for drinks and food, they wouldn’t let one person make the order, they had to check the I.D.s of each adult (we were all adults) before taking a beer order. They also wanted each person to order for themselves. I get that maybe they had had some teens coming in with twenty-somethings, but we were all in our fifties.
I’ve been known on more than one occasion in that circumstance to demand my money back if they don’t have the food I just paid for, and refuse to move until I get either the money or the food.
It’s possible that the Whataburger has had problems with that particular couple in the past. I’ve had to kick a few people out of my place of employment for panhandling and sleeping. I’ve come very close to kicking someone out for stinking to high heaven.
Re: not allowing people in a car to order for people who are not in the car, I can think of two possibilities:
One, they don’t want to encourage pedestrians or homeless people to hang around the drive through line trying to get people to buy them food, either for payment or charity. Both are potentially an insurance and/or liability problem if not discouraged, and potentially bad for business if it causes people to avoid the store so they’re not harassed or panhandled while in their cars. So the policy is “no ordering for people present at the business standing around in the drive through or parking lot and not in the car,” and the cashier was sticking to policy even though in this particular situation enforcing it made no sense.
Or two, the cashier’s coworkers were having a joke at her expense, like telling her to get the brooms sharpened or sending her on an errand for a bag of steam.
Okay, maybe my mind spends too much time in the gutter, but on first glance I thought the horse in front had (ahem) five legs, until I realized that one of them was the foot of the kid on the horse in the back.
I worked at a hamburger stand in Denver, and this actually occurred. A couple of people rode up to the drive-thru on horses. We served them. We were in the suburbs, not in the city, business was slow and there were no cars in line. We said, “Why the hell not?” We needed the business. Anyway, where were they going to tie their horses if they came inside?