Nextel Here

Here's something I came up with a long time ago. It's ten rules every potential Drive-Thru customer should be aware of to avoid pissing off: A) The customers behind you; and B) The people who will be making the food that you will be ingesting:

  1. If you do not know what you want, do not use the Drive-Thru.
  2. If you do not know how to order what you want, do not use the Drive-Thru.
  3. If you are incapable of having your money ready to hand to the cashier when you arrive at the payment window, do not use the Drive-Thru.
  4. If you did not bring any valid form of payment with you, do not use the Drive-Thru.
  5. If you plan on ordering more than three simple meals, do not use the Drive-Thru.
  6. If your order total will exceed $15.00 (excepting the previous rule), do not use the Drive-Thru.
  7. If your order is so complicated that it takes more than one minute to place (one minute of just you describing your order), do not use the Drive-Thru.
  8. If you must leave your windshield wipers on while at a Drive-Thru window, flinging water onto your Drive-Thru worker with each wipe, do not use the Drive-Thru.
  9. If your vehicle smokes or produces noxious fumes, do not use the Drive-Thru.
  10. If you are drunk, high, or ready to fall asleep at the wheel, do not use the Drive-Thru (you shouldn’t be operating a motor vehicle anyway).
 
Nice rules JJR, I agree with them all except the one about requiring 3 simple meals.

When I go i'm usually with a lot of friends or my family (I have 5 siblings). We usually write everything down and can just read them off pretty fast though. I make sure to make it simple with none of the "burger with cheese, no pickles, extra ketchup, etc". I just order the default meals and don't bother with the picky eaters, you live in a big family, tough luck for you.
 
Raf said:
Nice rules JJR, I agree with them all except the one about requiring 3 simple meals.

When I go i'm usually with a lot of friends or my family (I have 5 siblings). We usually write everything down and can just read them off pretty fast though. I make sure to make it simple with none of the "burger with cheese, no pickles, extra ketchup, etc". I just order the default meals and don't bother with the picky eaters, you live in a big family, tough luck for you.
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Just out of curiosity, when you have a larger order like that, how long does it take you at each window (if there's more than one)?

I ask because fast-food restaurants are graded/measured internally on many performance aspects, one of the chief ones being drive-thru speed of service. It's a very important measurement because quick service is what the customer expects, first of all (the speed expectation is higher for a customer in drive-thru than inside), and secondly, over half the business of a drive-thru-equipped fast-food restaurant is done through the drive-thru, so they want it fast fast fast, because the faster each car is in and out, the more cars they can theoretically serve.

So speed of service is another reason behind a lot of those "rules", and of course they may vary from brand to brand and within individual restaurants within a particular brand. One restaurant may be able to serve five meals to a drive-thru customer and stay within their speed of service goals, while another may not. But that's not the customer's fault.

There are many factors that affect drive-thru speed, some of which aren't so obvious, like how long the line of cars is. At the Taco Bell where I work now, the line from the window to the speaker where you place your order is only four cars long, including the car at the window and the car at the speaker (two cars between those two). This gives the people who are making food less time to make it after the order is placed before the car gets to the window, so the time spent by the customer at the window is longer. At another Taco Bell where I used to work, the line was seven cars long (five between the one at the window and the one at the speaker). Time at the window was less; during the busy lunch rush, my current Taco Bell averages a window time about 15 seconds longer than the other one. On the other hand, total time spent in line is longer at the one with the longer line, but it doesn't seem that bad to the customer because they have to keep moving their car forward.
 
If you want exactly what you ordered, don't use the drive thru...


SOB's at McDonalds never give me what I want..
 
TTLWHKR said:
If you want exactly what you ordered, don't use the drive thru...


SOB's at McDonalds never give me what I want..
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This is exactly the kind of thing I was ranting about earlier.

A friend of mine had a Honda that stalled on him once, I guess nobody should ever buy another Honda ever. I had a Corona Extra once that tasted a little off, I guess nobody should ever drink Corona ever again. My computer crashed once, I guess people shouldn't ever use computers.

I mean really...

If the people at McDonald's never get your order correct, why do you keep going there?

I serve hundreds of customers a day, only a handful or less of which have a problem with their order.

I am a fast-food customer several times per week, at McDonald's, Burger King, or some other places, and rarely have a problem with my order not being exactly correct. And when I'm with my family, that includes some special-made orders, too). Sure, it does happen, but not often.

Just out of curiosity...When there is a problem with your order, do you take it back? When you take it back, what happens? At Taco Bell, we are trained to sincerely apologize for the mistake and cheerfully correct the problem and include something extra to help make up for the customer's inconvenience (throw in an order of Cinnamon Twists, for example). I know many other fast-food brands aren't trained like this and even at Taco Bell it doesn't happen as much as it should. I wouldn't be surprised if it rarely or never actually happens like that in many Taco Bells, honestly, but it happens most of the time wherever I'm working. I'm just curious to hear how it goes for other people at any fast-food restaurant, when you have to take your order back for some reason.
 
TTLWHKR said:
If you want exactly what you ordered, don't use the drive thru...


SOB's at McDonalds never give me what I want..
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I LOVE to double-check my "special" order at the window... I take about 10-20 seconds, and BOY do they get ticked off ;)
 
JJR512 said:
I am a fast-food customer several times per week, at McDonald's, Burger King, or some other places, and rarely have a problem with my order not being exactly correct. And when I'm with my family, that includes some special-made orders, too). Sure, it does happen, but not often.
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It's showing. Your sodium levels are sky high. Relax a bit, we were only kidding! :-P

Out here, it's sometimes difficult because we have fast food places that hire people who really do not speak English *at all* and trying to explain things is often near impossible. My Spanish isn't that great, but I do try.
I never go through drive thrus unless I absolutely have to.

For the record, I have had many positive experiences at Taco Bell, and they rarely screw up my orders. :-)
 
I wonder if it's true that in California there are more Taco Bells than there are McDonald's. I've heard this somewhere.

This Hispanic population in Maryland is actually pretty big, too. Obviously not what it's going to be in CA, but the most of the fast-food restaurants I've worked have had at least some Hispanic employees, sometimes as much as half the staff. But we never put someone in a customer contact position who didn't understand English well enough to serve the customer.

The only reason I could think of for doing that would be if the Spanish-speaking customers outnumbered the English-speaking customers. If that's not the case, then those restaurants aren't being run by the brightest people.

Where is Mountain View? The company that I work for also owns some Taco Bells in CA. Actually the company is based in Auburn, if I'm not mistaken. I think they own about 10 Taco Bells in and around Auburn.
 
JJR512 said:
I wonder if it's true that in California there are more Taco Bells than there are McDonald's. I've heard this somewhere.

This Hispanic population in Maryland is actually pretty big, too. Obviously not what it's going to be in CA, but the most of the fast-food restaurants I've worked have had at least some Hispanic employees, sometimes as much as half the staff. But we never put someone in a customer contact position who didn't understand English well enough to serve the customer.

The only reason I could think of for doing that would be if the Spanish-speaking customers outnumbered the English-speaking customers. If that's not the case, then those restaurants aren't being run by the brightest people.

Where is Mountain View? The company that I work for also owns some Taco Bells in CA. Actually the company is based in Auburn, if I'm not mistaken. I think they own about 10 Taco Bells in and around Auburn.
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We have a huuuuuuge Hispanic population here. In some ways, it's a good thing because lemme tell ya.. we get the best carnitas on the planet around here. ;-)
Auburn, CA is up Hwy 80, between Sacramento and Reno. Mountain View is about 45 miles South of San Francisco, right at the south end of the bay. The biggest landmark here is Moffett Field, home of the last US Navy airships. (long since retired)

If there are more Taco Bells, it's probably down south. There are a *LOT* of McDonalds locations here. San Francisco is littered with them. 14 square miles, and there are like 30 McD's, 80 Starbucks, a couple In & Outs, etc. It's insane. Nowhere near as many Taco Bells. ;-)

Holy crap did we get off topic. heh.

Maryland is a cool place. Been there several times - my g/f is from MD originally. ;-)
 
I always order three plain hamburgers with only ketchup, but I want it on the top and bottom. I never get it. I either get three cheese burgers or three hamburgers with everything. If I do get three plain burgers, it's missing the ketchup, so I end up getting a dozen packets tossed in the window.

In response, I hit the electric air horn for several seconds... That really pisses them off. But, with a dozen other McDonalds in the coverage, I have my choice.
 
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