Would You Like Fries With That?

I shocked my daughter on Tuesday by doing something I never do.  We were headed home from Wal-Mart and Kirsten decided she wanted a sweet tea from McDonald’s.  She had a dollar and did not want the tea I had brewed at home.  I pulled into the parking lot so she could run inside and she asked if we could go through the drive thru.  It was about 95 degrees and she didn't want to get out of the car.

I still don't know why, but I agreed.  This was the shocking part.  I don't do drive thrus.  I hate going through the drive thru.  Joe Pesci summed it up best in the movie ’Lethal Weapon 2’ as the character Leo Getz.  He had some very strong feelings about drive thrus that I'm not going to repeat here.  He uses rather colorful language, but captures the essence of how I feel about them.  If you've seen the movie, you know what I am talking about.  If you haven't, I recommend it.  It stars Danny Glover and Mel Gibson before his drunk-driving, Jew-bashing days.

I have worked in fast food and know from first-hand experience that the drive thru is different even from the other side of the window.  There is an extreme pressure to get those orders out within a certain amount of time.  At our local McDonald’s, you can see the timer that is over the drive thru window from the counter.  One website I checked stated that their McDonald’s has 2 minutes and 30 seconds to get a customer their order.  This timer starts the moment they pull up to the menu.

The worker is not allowed any leniency for the amount of time it took the person to order, the parent who is still trying to find out from their kids what they want, or the customer that is digging around in his car for loose change after he pulls up to the window.  They have two and a half minutes starting from the time they first pull up to the menu and ending when they pull away from the window with a full order.  If they don't clear the window fast enough, the stats for the shift are unacceptable and the employees get into trouble.  I've heard of many ways to cheat this timer.  Having a person pull forward has several advantages.  It allows the customer behind you to be served while waiting for your order, but also stops the timer for your order.  A Burger King in New York asks its customers to pull forward about ten feet after approaching the window and then back up again.  This stops the timer and gives them better times.

It gets a little ridiculous at times for these employees who are trying so hard to meet their times that the satisfaction of the customer is often overlooked.  I'm not blaming the employees.  If you happen to work in a fast-food restaurant, please don't send me angry emails, I recognize that this is not your fault.  I blame the corporate system that instituted these practices.  On numerous occasions, I've stood in line at Taco Bell, waiting for my nacho cheese chalupa, and watched eight cars get their orders before me.  I have no idea why the drive thru is given such a priority, but they must have their reasons.  However, ninety percent of the time, if my order is wrong, it has been when I've gone through the drive thru.

I often get stuck behind these people.

I understand that people are human and mistakes will happen, but I am convinced that there is some mandate of the universe that states when Brett Minor is in a drive thru, Murphy’s Law must be observed.

Some errors can be explained with simple logic.  While waiting inside the restaurant, if you order 4 sandwiches with fries and drinks and one of the fries is missing when they slide you the tray, it can be seen immediately.  Before walking away, simply state that you are missing a fry.  They quickly apologize and throw the extra fry on the tray.  Problem solved and forgotten about before you make it to the table.  At the drive thru, however, the food is given to you in a bag.  You won't notice unless you purposefully check, and even then it's not always that easy to dig around in there for accuracy.  However, this must be done BEFORE pulling away from the window.  Even if you pull away but catch it before exiting the parking lot, you must now go inside to have it corrected, which defeats the entire purpose of using the drive thru to begin with.  On the other hand, not checking leads to not knowing about it until you are at least a few blocks away or even already at home.  What are the chances that you are going back for that missing cheeseburger? 

It's even more difficult to check for accuracy on special orders.  When I worked drive thru at Hardee’s, it was not uncommon to get orders for unsalted fries, a plain cheeseburger, raw cookies, extra or no ice, or mayo instead of mustard.  Checking the bag for accuracy on these types of orders while sitting in the drive thru is nearly impossible.  If there are eight burgers, but one is supposed to have extra pickles, you have to unwrap each one to find it.  It's not worth the hassle, just go inside.

Throw on top of these issues the fact that the employees are very pressed for time and the accuracy rates are naturally going to fall.  It can't be helped.  I once received a snack wrap and salad when I had ordered a Quarter Pounder and fries.  I'd been given someone else’s order.  Since I was in a hurry, I did not get into the bag until I reached my destination.  This is why you must check your order before leaving.

Despite all the procedures in place to assure a fast drive thru experience, it never seems to work that way for me.  One of the advantages to going inside is when a particular order is finished they can hand it to whatever customer ordered it.  However, the cars in the drive thru are approaching the window in order.  The occasional person is pulled forward to serve the one behind them, but in general you are the mercy of the orders that were placed before yours.  This was the situation I found myself in on Tuesday.

All we had ordered was a sweet tea, but there were five cars ahead of us, including the one who went screeching across the parking lot and whipped in front of our vehicle.  I ordered her tea and then continued to sit in front of the menu without moving for another two minutes.  Knowing that it only takes about thirty seconds to pour the tea and put a lid on it, the window appeared to be a mile away.  We soon began to have an additional problem.  My van doesn't have air conditioning, which is not normally a problem when we are moving, but sitting in a drive thru on a 95 degree day without a/c is not my idea of fun.  Add to that the fact that my van begins to overheat when it idles and my patience was wearing thin very quickly.

The menu to window time was not going to be anywhere near two and a half minutes, plus it took over five minutes to even get to the menu.  I reminded Kirsten that the reason we were in this predicament was because she thought it was too hot to get out of the van.  After several more minutes, we made it to the first window.  Our local McDonald’s has two windows.  The first window is to pay and the second is to receive your food.  I gave the girl in the window her dollar and continued to sit there for another 3 minutes, not moving from the window.  I was tempted to walk inside and just ask for my tea since it had probably already been poured and was sitting on a counter.  Unfortunately, I was wedged between two cars and was too close to the building to open my door.  The exhaust from the other vehicles was making me light headed and I was not sure if I could hold myself upright if I did get out.

I laid my head back on the seat rest and tried to concentrate my thoughts away from the sweat dripping into my eyes.  I drifted off for a moment and was startled awake by a honking horn.  I was excited to see that the car in front of us had moved up another car length, but after wiping my forehead on my quickly dampening shirt, I realized it was only a mirage.  Kirsten had grown eerily quiet and I tried to reassure her that we were not going to die here, but my tongue had begun to swell and the lack of moisture in my mouth made it impossible to speak.  Certain I was entering the early stages of heat stroke, I collapsed forward onto my steering wheel.  The surface temperature quickly causing second degree burns jolted me back to reality.

I heard a slight tapping to my left and turned to see the most beautiful sight.  An angel was looking out the drive thru window with a sweet tea in her hand.  She said, “I figured I could just grab this for you so you wouldn’t have to wait for the next window.”  I began to cry and I kissed her.  She had saved us.  I thanked her again and we drove off singing praises to this merciful woman.  It warmed my heart to know that there are still decent people in the world, but my loathing for drive thru lanes is stronger than ever.