2004-07-28 - 11:17 a.m.

Drive Thrus

Drive Thru's. You gotta love them. Well most of the time you do but there are times when you have to hate them. Last night was definitely one of those nights.

I've always believed that the drive thru "experience" shouldn't take any longer than 10 minutes. Especially when you start factoring in the price of gas these days to the price of a fast food meal, if you have to sit in the line longer than 10 minutes you've now spent more on GAS than you will on the meal. Futhermore, when you combine the two totals together it becomes even more ridiculous.

Anyway, Last night I got off work at my usual middle of the night time and decide I am way too lazy to go home and make anything to eat so I'll just WHIP through the Drive Thru and get something quick because after all it is called "FAST" food.

I think they need to change the reference to these types of restaurants from "FAST" food to something more appropriate like "You're not cooking it, making it, or putting it in the bag speed food, so shut up and wait in line, dumb ass." but perhaps that's too long. I guess my point is "FAST" food isn't that fast at the best of times. I've very rarely driven up to the drive thru and gotten in and out in less than 5 minutes. I think my fasted time would have been about 3 minutes. I conisder that an out and out fluke.

Living in a smaller town your choice of venue for fast food is really limited in the later hours of the night. There's actually only one place open now at night after midnight and it shows. You'd think these guys would get a clue by now that they get hammered nightly at about the same time yet, they never seem prepared for it. They almost act like they've NEVER seen a rush like these.

I drive up to the drive thru and the lineup is already backed up past the drive thru line up start. It was actually so bad last night that cars were lining up in two lineups coming from completely different directions. (Thankfully, everyone was polite and no one budged in front of anyone else. I was shocked and amazed.)

Now this particular restaurant has lots and lots of windows. You'd think that they'd use those funny see through things to realize they have cars now snaking around their entire building. Thus the alarm might go off "Whoa, Bud, Drop some patties and fries." and speed up the whole process. But I swear they were cooking order by order. Just to make sure they had enough. Now I appreciate hot food but when I can listen to 1/4 of a very long CD waiting in line for someone to just take your order, that's taking making it fresh to way too far extreme.

I guess the blame really falls in my court, I'm so lazy and determined to give these corporate feckers my loot that I'm willing to sit in these lines. But in my defense you have that decision you have to make between your brain and your stomach when you drive up to the drive thru line up from hell. As the Clash so eloquently put it "Should I stay or Should I go now?". Your Brain says "Geezus, This could take forever." and your stomach says "Feed me you bastard!" so if you make the initial decision of "Hey it won't be so bad, so I'll wait it out" and then it takes forever but you've moved up and now you're caught in their little one way, one lane drive thru.

Isn't THAT a little marketing genius that probably wasn't thought of but fell in the laps of most restaurants with drive thrus. Because of the limited amount of space most of these places have due to their location the drive thru line becomes a trap. If you get in it. You can't get out. You're stuck. So if they decide that they're going to take until the second coming of christ to get you that Whopper with Cheese, Onion Rings, and a Diet Coke, you'll damn well wait because you HAVE to and no longer because you desire the greasy goodness that is going straight to your ass that is fast food.

So I finally make it up to the window and order my food, I had to refrain myself from ordering two meals because I had withered away to a skeleton (which isn't very difficult in my case) while waiting in the line. But on the upside my Fries were steaming hot and the burger was, well, a fast food burger. I didn't even get a "sorry for the wait" tonight I got "have a nice night", I think I go there too much.

I found some rules on Drive Thru Ettiquette from someone that works in the fast food industry. Enjoy.

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Free Bingo Dabbers to ScubaFreak who added me as a favourite.

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Someone Found Me By Searching For Diarreah Stories. I know I've got a couple "BLASTS" from the past in my archives somewhere so I hope they enjoyed my stories of poop. But don't you think you're just a LITTLE bit twisted SEARCHING for that on the net.

Oh well, Takes all kinds.

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