#DriveThruDilemma #FastFoodFrustration #OrderingStruggles
Do you find yourself sitting in line at the drive-thru, patiently waiting to place your order, only to be held up by the person in front of you who seems to be taking forever? We’ve all been there, wondering what could possibly be causing such a delay. In this article, we’ll explore some of the common reasons why people spend 10 minutes or more at the drive-thru, and what you can do to speed up your own ordering process.
So, what’s taking so long?
1. Indecision 🤔
One of the biggest reasons why people take a long time to order at the drive-thru is indecision. With so many delicious options on the menu, it can be tough to make a quick decision. Some people may also be trying to accommodate multiple orders for a group of people, which can further slow down the process.
2. Special Requests ✋
Another common reason for delays at the drive-thru is special requests. Whether it’s asking for no pickles, extra sauce, or a substitution for a different item, these requests can add extra time to the ordering process. While it’s important to get your order just right, excessive special requests can cause delays for everyone else in line.
3. Communication Difficulties 🗣️
Sometimes, the delay at the drive-thru is simply due to communication difficulties. This could be a result of a language barrier, a faulty speaker system, or just plain old miscommunication. When the person taking your order can’t hear you or understand what you’re saying, it can lead to a longer wait time.
4. Payment Problems 💳
Once the order has been placed, payment can also be a sticking point. Whether it’s a problem with the credit card machine, difficulty finding exact change, or simply fumbling around for a wallet, payment delays can add precious minutes to your drive-thru experience.
5. Kitchen Delays 🍔
Finally, once the order has been placed and paid for, there’s still the issue of actually preparing the food. If the restaurant is experiencing a rush or is short-staffed, this can lead to delays in getting your order ready. This can be frustrating for both customers and employees alike.
How can you speed up your drive-thru experience?
1. Plan Ahead 📋
Before you even pull up to the drive-thru, take a minute to review the menu and decide what you want to order. This will help you make a quick decision when it’s your turn to order.
2. Keep it Simple 🍟
Try to keep your order as simple as possible. Limit special requests and substitutions to speed up the process for both you and the employees working the drive-thru.
3. Be Prepared 💸
Have your payment ready before you pull up to the window. This will help expedite the payment process and get you on your way faster.
4. Practice Good Communication 🗣️
Speak clearly and loudly when giving your order, and be sure to listen carefully to any questions or clarifications from the drive-thru attendant.
5. Be Patient 🕒
While it’s frustrating to wait in line at the drive-thru, try to be patient and understanding. Remember that the employees are doing their best to serve you quickly and efficiently.
In conclusion, there are a number of reasons why people may spend 10 minutes or more ordering at the drive-thru. By being mindful of your ordering process and taking steps to speed things up, you can help make the drive-thru experience smoother and more efficient for everyone involved. Next time you find yourself in line at the drive-thru, remember these tips to help make the process faster and more enjoyable for everyone.
The menu should be further back idk what I want.
😂 this is so real
The employee answering me…
Same people staring at the bread in the store.
They’re probably just debating between nuggets or a burger. It’s a tough decision, man.
They have a herd to order for.
The employee told me to give them one second and now I’m panicking thinking about how the people behind me might start honking and they’re gonna think I’m an idiot
I swear I always get stuck behind someone ordering for their family of 30
This had the potential to take a long time but I lost my temper. I was 4th in line(indoors) at Rubios where the line doesn’t move quickly anyway. When the dude in front of me gets up to the counter and they ask his order he lifts up his finger and gets on his phone.
I’m already like wtf but still stay quiet. Then I hear “yo babe I’m here what Choo wants” I noped and kinda checked him out of the way and gave my order while the cashier just looked at me for being rude and the other guy went off on his racist triad over what I did.
Was I rude and wrong? Absolutely. Would I do it again. You bet.
Can I get uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Indecision.
Waiting for my kids to decide they want the same things they always ask for, but they have to ‘decide’ or it’s an emotional event.
55 burgers, 55 fries…
The person taking my order is also taking someone else’s money and my toddler won’t shit up long enough for me to place an order…
and then……?
NO AND THEN!
Repeating after me with each item ordered and then repeats the order at the end to only get it all wrong.
I once worked at a hospital where people called dietary to order food. They called ME, with the menu in their hands and still sat there for ten minutes trying to decide. Like why not wait till you know what you want? Why tie up the phone line and other people’s time?
I always end up behind someone who is visiting McDonalds for the first time and isn’t sure what kinds of food they sell.
A couple years ago I was in the drive thru at Starbucks and the line was taking forever, way longer than usual. When it was my turn to order the employee told me in a dead sounding voice “I’m sorry, somebody ordered 30 drinks.”
If you’re an asshole who orders 30 drinks in the drive thru during the height of the morning rush instead of a mobile order, a pox on your house and your yuppie children.
They’re the dumbass that doesn’t think about thinking about their order until they get up to the voice box. “Ummmm do y’all have____” “ummmmmmmmm how much is how much is _____”
At Starbucks. What the fuck y’all doing. Ordering for your entire warehouse some shit you should’ve totted in on the app?
Pull up to the speaker: “please wait, be back in a minute” and 8 minutes later they come back.
Gotta order for 15 people.
But seriously I HATE people who do that. Willing to fuck over everyone behind them instead of going inside. Selfish pricks
For the love of god y’all, use the app! You can look at the whole menu, take your time and place your order ahead of time. They won’t start making it until you get to the speaker and tell them you have a mobile order so it’ll still be fresh. You don’t have to worry about a confused employee or questions or anything either just give them your name/code and pull forward.
Uhhhhh….
Lemme get uuuuhhhhhhhhhhh…
I’ve worked at a restaurant with a drive through before.
The biggest thing is people who are waiting, but don’t know what they want. There’s no reason you couldn’t have looked at the menu while you were waiting. It happens with people in line inside, and in drive through at fast food place. And even at a restaurants with table service.
And if they do know what they want, the passengers aren’t ready either. So we’ve already waited for the driver to decide, now we have to wait for the passengers. And of course all these people are thrown off guard because for some reason they didn’t expect to be asked what they want.
To compound this, you have customers who know nothing about the restaurant. You’re not expected to know the full menu, but you should know that McDonald’s doesn’t serve pizza, and Five Guys doesn’t serve chicken. So that 3 minutes you spent deciding on chicken at Five Guys was a waste of time.
Related to that, you have people asking “Do you have this? Do you have that?” As if there isn’t a giant menu that lists everything the restaurant sells.
Then there’s all the extras. People will order their chicken nuggets. Then after they order, they’ll want a drink. Then they’ll decide they need more dipping sauce. So the person working has to go back and forth 5 times for what could have been one trip.
And unfortunately these people are just in the way, they can’t move out of the drive through to make room for those that know what they want. But then again, they don’t do that in line inside McDonalds or Wendy’s.
The other 4 people in the car vacillating about what they want.
I’ll have 2 number nines, a number nine large. A number six with extra dip. A number seven. Two number forty-fives, one with cheese, and a large soda.
And we sit here waiting and waiting and waiting until the fucking stars burn out and all they hand out the window is a fucking drink.
They don’t know what they want before they arrive.
the customers break apart the streamlined ‘combo’ packages/meals by wanting substitutions and then try to haggle over the prices.
instead of saying ‘ill have a medium #1, and a medium 3’, they’ll be like, ‘ I’ll have a medium #1.. can i get extra fries with that and 16 nuggets instead of 7? well how much is that. nevermind can you give me a chicken breast with the 1 instead of the salad? … but you said the salad came with dressing. oh it doesnt? oh, thats EXTRA???well why didnt you tell me that?’
but how much more is the shake instead of a coke. i mean if the combo is a medium coke cant i just get a small shake ? it shouldnt cost extra because the shake is small…
etc etc…
also another favorite is asking for fries with no salt to force the restaurant to make fresh fries… more wasted time.
good luck! and always be kind to employees. they gotta put up with this crap aaalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll day
What gets me is when a group of ppl in an suv pull up mid day when they could walk inside and each order separately. Pay separately and take for ever. I always get stuck behind these people. Day or night.
I’m high as fuck
I remember once it was because the people at Jack in the Box decided they were on break and there was this guy in front of me fruitlessly asking hello? Hello? for minutes. Other times though I have seen someone order 60 dollars from a Wendy’s which has got to be like….3 burgers and a fry or something. At Taco Bell though, and yes it hit the cliche, it was someone stoned off their friggin gourd. I could hear them slowly ordering, the person taking the order asked them something that really confused them and they took a solid 20 seconds to process it, give up, and continue ordering.
So its a whole number of reasons. Me personally? I use the app because it saves me money and if I was specifics it doesn’t confuse the person taking the order who will likely decide too much effort and not bother making those changes.
Trying to get the app to work so I don’t have to pay $27 for two burgers
Some places could mess up like taco bell for example.
They could be high and forget to drop the beef in the water to warm it up so now you’re stuck waiting for da beef
My GF probably… It’s not like we don’t have a 45 min fight about what she wants from there, then when time comes to order she’s like: “hold on, I can’t see the menu…”. It’s F*KING MC DONALD’S! MENU DIDN’T CHANGE SINCE WE WERE KIDS…
So ya, sorry everyone, it’s probably someone’s GF that probably don’t want no fries…
Most people have an appalling lack of self-awareness. They take their sweet-ass time and can’t comprehend the possibility that they are holding other people up. They are the center of their universe.
[The Dairy Queen Incident (NSFW)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WngpAHJNDhQ&pp=ygUYamltIGNvcm5ldHRlIGRhaXJ5IHF1ZWVu)
It’s usually because the guy in front of me won’t pull up far enough for me to reach the microphone box.
I don’t understand why people leave like an entire car-length between themselves and car in front of them at drive-thrus.
Indecisiveness 😅😬
Not sure, but it is the same people who spend 10 minutes talking to their kids in the car when they drop them off at school.
To quote John Pinette “get out of the line”
ADHD friend being hyper specific about their order and on top of that trying to order things the place doesn’t have while asking the server what they like to order.
Meanwhile I just say a large number 3 with a sprite and I’m done.
I’ll have two number 9s, a number 9 large, a number 6 with extra dip, a number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese, and a large soda.
I actually think it’s pretty rude to be menu surfing and bothering the drive through worker with a million basic questions at fast food places.
I like to say, “Can I get a uhhhhh…….” and see how long I can hold the “uhhhhhh……”
The guy ahead of me took 10 minutes, and I’m paying it backwards.
“I’ll take a Double Triple Bossy Deluxe, on a raft, four-by-four animal-style, extra shingles with a shimmy and a squeeze, light axle grease, make it cry, burn it, and let it swim.”
“We serve food here, sir.”
uuuuuuuuh i havent decided bruh
also im kinda poor im making calculator math man
As a drive thru employee myself I can give some insight!
So one scenario is that people order huge amounts of food that all need to be prepared using different stations (like deep fryers for fries then grill for burger then the stove press thingy for quesadillas then the taco bar for their tacos etc) so it ends up taking many times longer for the kitchen to get each of those items done
Another reason is sometimes we tell the person at the speaker to give us a moment because we’re super busy inside to take their order. (At our location we only staff a small handful of people at a time for whatever reason so there’s instances where you’ll be working the entire front, drive thru and dining room, by yourself) so when you have DoorDash people waving their phones in your face and inpatient people asking for water cups and 3 handfuls of sauce, a line of customers who all decided to show up at the same time coincidentally, and a bunch of food to bag and put napkins/sauces into by yourself we’ll end up just picking and choosing our battles and telling the person at the speaker to wait a few minutes while we do everything else.
After typing this out I realize how much my job sucks but 🤷♂️
Reason 3 is the people who pull up, can’t decide what to get, have to make a phone call to ask someone what they want, then ask for more food at the window.
Reason 4 is incompetent people who need to ask a hundred questions about every item on the menu and argue about the $30 price after they ordered 12 items.
Hope this helps 🙂