Drive-Thru Windows

Convenience can sometimes be really inconvenient.

Having a dry cleaners right by your house that starches everything regardless of your vocalized preference: conveniently located, inconveniently inattentive. Having a tee time that meets the schedule of everyone in your foursome but is directly behind a group of very amateur old women: conveniently available, inconveniently slow. Having a drive-thru window at your eatery of choice, but hating yourself for a plethora of reasons once in it: conveniently accessible, inconveniently... well, inconvenient.

And, boy, can that plethora of reasons run far and deep.

Yes, the drive-thru window: America's fat, lazy answer to fat, lazy people who want fat, lazy food without having to stop being fat and lazy. I include myself in that less-than-elite source of demand. And why not? The drive-thru window is actually a really good idea. Sometimes the weather isn't cooperative, making the dash inside overwhelmingly undesirable. Or you have kids in the car, and getting them out of the car and into the store and back into the car is hair-pullingly frustrating. Or, again, you're just fat and/or lazy. I have no problem with any of those.

What I do have a problem with are people who act like complete, selfish d-bags in the drive-thru. It takes one drive-thru order to see how people really are -- when friends, coworkers, and fellow church members aren't around -- when it's just them and Ralph with the drive-thru headset and crooked nametag.

What several drive-thru customers fail to realize is that not knowing Ralph or the other folks in line behind you by no means permits you to act like a turd. Whether it's placing four separate orders, or ordering the entire left side of the menu, or rifling off your barely discernible order in a fashion that's somewhere between a militaristic command and an auctioneer's blabbering, consider the employees and the other customers who are trying to use the drive-thru service for what it was intended: a service by which you drive "thru" -- not park and place a complicated order and park again and inch up and park some more and get your food and go and park to check the bag and... Just go inside and let me get my Value Menu sandwich already.