matthearn.com

We have a significant problem in this country, people. SIGNIFICANT. And no, it’s not my usual beefs with people riding in the left-hand lane without passing, or people that are convinced that marijuana use leads to bus-station-bathroom-fellatio for cash. My concern today is very simple:

There are people in America today that don’t understand how fast food restaurants work.

And they aren’t just, say, the Amish, or people coming out of comas after 75 years. They are everyday, car-driving, cellphone-using, computer-owning people, who inexplicably get in front of me in the drive-thru at McDonald’s, get up to the menu, and only at that time do they consider what they might be in the mood for.

Yesterday, for example, I was behind a woman in a MASSIVE burgundy SUV, who pulled slowly into the Newark Main Street McDonald’s, which can, admittedly, be a challenge to enter. Because of the one-way situation on Main Street, there are two main entrances, each of which has its own drive-thru entrance, which then merge into one just before the menu and ordering point. This poor woman was slightly thrown by this and seemed to be about ready to park to collect her thoughts and figure out what to do next when she instead swerved back in front of me and drove over a curb to get back into the drive-thru lane.

Shen then crept forward until she finally was behind the car currently at the electronic ordering communication box. When they finished their order, she sat there for at least 30 seconds while she yelled at her children in the back seat. She pulled forward slowly to the box and began querying the poor employee about something, probably to ask if the Turbot was fresh or something.

4 minutes later, she had figured out what it was she wanted, ordered, and pulled forward. I, per my usual custom, had figured out what I planned to order before I left my house for work that morning, so I pulled up to the box, yelled “6 double cheeseburgers Diet Coke Thanks” and drove on. (I’m back on my Low-Carb jaun because it’s the only thing that’s ever caused me to lose significant weight and I’m pushing three bills again, so I order roughly 12 patties worth of meat and cheese and then throw the buns away. Wasteful? Hell yes it’s wasteful. But if God didn’t want us to waste food, She wouldn’t have given us hungry Ethiopian children to feel guilty about.)

Our hapless SUV-driving broad somehow was able to grasp the intracacies of the American monetary system, so she paid quickly and pulled up to the second window. I paid, and attempted to squeeze up close to her car so that the guy behind me might be able to reach the payment window, but the sheer size of her vehicle made it impossible. And so we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And then I realized that I was caught behind one of Them. You know Them: they may be wonderful, charitable people, but they unfortunately suffer from the debilitating flaw of having to special order fast food items. Being a good, kind, Christian person, I am able to forgive these people. Not least because my wife is one of them. She doesn’t like chives on her Taco Bell nachos, which is a fairly minimal request, particularly at Taco Bell which handmakes your order on the spot anyway, so a special request doesn’t really set things back too much, although it’s slighly annoying because if I’m out picking up some grub and she’s not there, it’s an extra thing I have to write down or remember. I’m not a very good rememberer.

At McDonald’s, however, many sandwiches are premade and sitting in a warming device for a few minutes waiting for customers to order them. All of the basic sandwiches are done this way. You might be thinking, “Ew, that’s gross, I want my food to be freshly made!” Idiot. You’re at McDonald’s, about to pay $1 for a double cheeseburger that is made mostly of grade Q beef and oily cheese. If you want quality and freshness of ingredients, you need to go to Jake’s or someplace that doesn’t reuse floor sweepings as Special Sauce.

Finally, the woman managed to get her two Happy Meals and Big Mac with no lettuce but extra sauce and no middle bun and if you could brush the sesame seeds off the top and toast them a little bit and reattach them with an egg wash, make that just an egg-white wash, I don’t need the yolk fat, and actually I kind of would like the lettuce but maybe in a separate container with a few packets of salt oh and definitely no salt on the fries as that tends to dry my kidneys and I’m going to Hot Yoga this afternoon and can’t afford to be dehydrated, absolutely not, oh and I’ll take probably a bottle of water, oh that’s not included in the meal, well go ahead and give me a small diet soda, to take advantage of the meal deal and all, but if you could also give me a small bottle of water because the soda will undoubtedly be full of sodium unless you have some Pepsi Zero or something, oh you don’t, yeah that’s what I figured and oh back to that Big Mac if there’s any way you can put some extra cheese on it, yes, I’ll pay the 30 cents, of course, that’s no problem, oh and are the Happy Meals kosher at all, but if not that’s okay because we aren’t really observant. Then she checked the bags thoroughly twice. Then she slowly drove away.

I got my food and was out of the place in the wink of a lamb’s butt.

I guess what I’m saying is: the drive-thru is a place where speed counts. If you are slightly stupid, don’t really know what you want to eat (or have finicky children in the car, which amounts to the same thing), or have special requests, go inside to the walk-up counter, which can handle a lot of parallel processing and therefore can make you a vegan sproutwich Big Mac, or whatever, while I snag my #1 meal with diet coke and roll out.

Here are some basic rules to follow for Drive-Thru usage:

1. You need to know what you want before you get to the ordering box. Ideally, you’ll know what you want before you pull into the parking lot. If you’re like me, you’ll know what you want before you go to bed the previous night. Fast food menus don’t change very much; if you were there a month ago, you already know what they have. They don’t have a daily filet mignon special once a month for which you need to keep an eye open. I’m considering stopping at Wendy’s on the way home, and I already know that if I do, I’m going to order 5 junior bacon cheeseburgers and a Diet Coke. Just think ahead, damn it. Every minute you sit there staring at the menu is a minute that I’m sitting behind you wondering how hard it would be to convince a jury that delaying my french-fry-related gratification was severe emotional distress and resulted in me blacking out and strangling you with your own seatbelt.
2. Keep it simple. If you don’t like a certain sandwich topping, you can probably pick it off. Also, every special request you make basically doubles the chances that the employees will screw it up and you’ll have to go inside anyway and make them fix it. They don’t need any more opportunities for mistakes; I love them dearly, but one does not decide on a career in the fast food industry because being, say, a Forensic Pathologist was unfulfilling. I have witnessed two instances of McDonald’s orders having been supplied WITHOUT MEAT ON THE BUN.

   Even more important, while you’re sitting up at the window waiting for them to make a fresh batch of fries without salt on them, I’m sitting in the car behind you knowing that my order, which came straight from the warmer and is in plain sight sitting on the counter not 4 feet from you, is getting colder by the minute.

3. Have your money ready. Many fast food empires now offer the ability to pay by credit or debit card; I’ve read that some McDonald’ses on Long Island now have the ability to accept payment via EZ-Pass, which may be the greatest fast-food-related development since some bright-eyed intern at Wendy’s said, “Hey, is there any technical reason why we couldn’t make a sandwich with four 1/4 pound patties on it?”

   If you get up to the window and only then begin to get out your wallet, and then spend an eternity rooting through your ashtray for exact change, I might well get out and piss through your open window. It’s just a matter of time before I snap.

I just think it’s common decency to not make me have to spray asparagus pee all over your lap and expensive leather interior, you know?