I do not like to go into fast food restaurants to get my order, I prefer the drive-thru.  Well the old addage from the movie Lethal Weapon 2 you get (bleep bleep) at the drive thru.  It almost never fails.  If you can actually understand the voice from the little box you have to talk into it will most likely be a miracle if they can hear you.

The people that work drive thrus are usually teenage kids and in some occasions there are some adults that never quite made their life dreams come true and instead found themselves taking orders from a headset in a drive thru. 

One thing is for sure, no matter where in the country you go, drive thrus are all the same.  Poor service, crappy food and high prices.  Once you finally get everyone in the car to agree on what drive thru to go to you will run into the same problems when you finally get there.

First there is the pre-menu, this is the menu before you get to the little black ordering box.  It’s usually very similar to the main menu but it will be missing items.  This is done to confuse you and make the drive thru worker seem more compentant than you are, thus giving them instant control.

Next, is the speaker, usually positioned next to a busy street (in the case of Jack In The Box in U.P.  You will scream into the box using niceties as if you were speaking to another human being such as “please” and “thank you.”  Unfortunatley, the drive thru attendant will not use these same respects in most cases.  They continually will make you repeat parts of your order which is another tricky tactic of theirs.  They will try to confuse you with many passes through your order.

Generally, something you want will be sold out.  In the case of JITB (Jack In The Box) in University Place it’s usually the milkshakes after 9pm.  If you want something special like extra pickles, forget it cause they will.  I hope you don’t need any sauce or napkins cause you ain’t gettin’ any.  You’ll be lucky if you get a straw, don’t even think about a fork for your salad.

The workers are trained how to cook the food the same each time, how to ask for the order the same each time, how to upsell on occasion.  You know what I mean if you’ve ever gone to the JITB in University Place.  You no sooner say, I’ll take a number 5..” when you are rudely and very abruptly cut off by the order taker saying, “WHAT SIZE”? When you respond with “medium’ you will then be cut off by them asking, “CURLY FRY OR REGULA FRY”? It’s like they can only see the pictures on the computer in front of them in a certain order.  Do they really have such short term memory that they can not remember a fast food order?  I can rattle off a family of four’s requests with no problem.  Yet they can’t even remember a number 5, with regular fries and a coke, in that order?

The order takers need to receive the information in a slow drawn out manner but then they will read it back to you at lightening speed, backwards and ask you if it’s right, again another sneaky tactic to confuse you.   Once you’ve been through this a couple of times you get “trained” into giving your order in the right order.  Of course then you’re saying it too slow for the super fast, really smart order taker.  You’ll know if you are going to slow because right after you get to the black box with your soccer team in the back seat of your hummer and you say I’ll have a #5 medium, regular fries with a coke, the order taker will slam back at you…”IS THAT ALL”?  Uh, yeah me and these 10 screaming girls in the back of this suv are all going to split the meal.  Geez!  Is working at a drive thru really all that stressful?  You can’t take the order in any order and then you can’t get the order fast enough.  Ugh!

When you get to the window to pay they take your card, swipe it then toss it out to you as they slam the window on you while they stand there waiting for the line cooks to pick your burger up off the floor and put it in a bag.  They busy themselves by making all the drinks for you and the cars behind you.  If you are the last car in line you can bet you’re getting 1/4 cup of soda with your 1/2 gallon of melted ice.  Then they open the window, toss out the bags and then before you can even ask for anything else they slam the window shut again.  God forbid you make them open the window again so you can as for some ketchup to go with your 10 orders of fries. If you do make such a request you are sure to get about 3 packets that the whole car can have fun sharing as you drive down the road.

They’ll hand you drinks with soda dripping down the side and then roll their eyes if you ask for a napkin.  “Oh don’t put yourself out, getting me a napkin so I can clean up your sloppiness.”  They love to hand the food out to you in multiple bags (confusing tactic #3) really fast and then mutter, “have a nice day….” “SLAM!!” The window will shut again, this way you have to “inconvenience” them and all the other cars behind you by waving your hand to get their attention so you can ask for the rest of your order that they failed to put in the bag.  As punishment to you for wanting all that you paid for they will ask you to pull around to the front of the store.  There you will wait 10 minutes while the rest of your food gets cold.  They will come out and give you the rest of your order then run away quickly, they hate when you catch them trying to short ya!

They like to be wise guys too, if you ask for extra anything you won’t get it.  But guarantee this, if you say “no tomatoes” you’ll get plenty of tomatoes on everything. 

That’s just fast food.  How about Starbucks?  That’s a fun drive thru isn’t it?  You can’t pronounce half of their foo foo drinks and if you just order your regular, they will undoubtedly correct you on the order.  I was always annoyed by this.  I would drive up and say ”grande white mocha with an extra shot.”  After being corrected several times by the barista reading the drink back to me as a ‘triple grande white mocha” I finally was “trained” by Starbucks.  I now always order my drink the right way.  One time I asked why they always change the order of the drink on me, the barista told me the Starbuck’s secret.  Apparently, at Starbuck’s you have to say the amount of shots first, then the size of the drink then the name of the drink itself.  I don’t know why there is a special way but there is. 

I always laugh when Starbucks tries to upsell me on some 5 pound bag of ground coffee, I mean seriously, I come here everyday and get a coffee, what makes you think I suddenly want to go home and brew my own?  i also thinks it’s hilarious when they offer me some sandwhich or muffin in such a fast paced voice i can’t even make out what they are saying, I always just say, “No thanks”.

Speaking of not understanding what service people are saying I was at the burger King in University Place two weeks ago and I swear to God I thought the girl asked me if I was on a race horse but I guess what she really meant was did I want some onion ring sauce.  Which brings me to another funny point, we went to Anthony’s down by Point Defiance about a week ago and when the hostess greeted us instead of saying party of 3?  She said “Poptarty?  Whatever that means.

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