From Taco Slave, July, 2010:

I've been pretty much a Drive Thru Slave for about 13 years now.

Right now I'm the night manager at Taco Bell/Long John Silver's. Situated in the nook of a rather ridiculous 3-way intersection, I am blessed with pretty low volume work.

I spent most of Black Friday night thanking the retail/customer service gods for making drive thru completely utterly dead. There's a Walmart less than quarter mile away and the streets are packed... And I have one customer. My heart goes out to all the retail slaves getting spat on for their ten dollar tv coupons! The worst I had (before the paragraph to follow) was an entitled woman who thought she would like to prepay her tacos, shop, then come eat them. I told her she better hope I remember her......

Sooooo its 20 minutes to closing time, I've had maybe 5 orders in the last hour.... and I knew I wouldn't get away with no problems today... 10 mins to close this guy wants 50 of EACH hot sauce with his 2 bean burritos.

I said "No our policy is one per two items ordered but I'll give you this (giant handful of packets, prolly 20)".

He goes "C'mon baby you can do better than that."

I just growl and walk away to get his burritos.

I ask one of my two crew members to hand them to him because I'm going to yell at him when he asks for even more sauce.

She returns a moment later saying '"You gotta come talk to these guys..."

So as I return I'm psyching myself up for an argument. Just as I reach for the window latch, the guy gets out of his truck and punches the window, twice, hard!

I recoil and suddenly realize no way am I opening the window now!

I scream, "Did you just punch my window?! I'm calling the police!"

He levels a finger at me with a death stare.

I grin and stick my finger on the window like I'm E.T. and start giggling.

His face squeezes up with rage and he takes off....

I think I freaked my crew out... One girl was all "I never seen you get mad like that..."

And I thought about it and regained my composure and said to her, "If that's the worst thing that happened to us on Black Friday I'm pretty damn good with that."

She agreed.

--Taco Slave

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From Screaming Off Key, January 2013

Today I worked a short shift at my own slice of McHell. I'm one of the very few people who speak English as a first language and without an accent (I sound very flat with and I don't use slang, it's irrelevant but just telling you) so I get put in back cash for drive thru a lot. My restaurant has a rule that you can only have one order per vehicle in the drive thru, if we do otherwise we could be potentially written up.

Incoming Miss Bitch. It had been about an hour since I got there, no one has really annoyed me yet which is a good thing because I get annoyed easily in drive thru. I live up in the more northern part of Canada, I am full blood native/first nation/indian whatever you want to call it. My "people" still annoy the SHIT out of me because they're stupid and expect everyone to kiss their asses.

Suddenly there's a beep in my ear, que "Hi! Welcome to McHells can I take your order?"

I don't get a response, just some muffled talking into a cell phone for a good minute and a half. I don't know if there's a line and I can't tell if she's ever going to order.

Finally I hear "Hold on I'm getting food," and she places an order. And then she says "That's one order and now I'm going to place another one." I turn off the mic for a breath and say, "I'm sorry for the inconvenience but I can only take one order per vehicle in the drive thru."

And the screeching. Miss Bitch takes it upon herself to tell me how ridiculous that notion is, that she NEEDED to place two orders and how I was inconveniencing her and eating up her precious time.

At this point, my manager who is on the other end tells her, "The crew members do not make the rules we just have to follow them and if you need to make multiple orders come inside or go around again because there is nothing we can do." She decides to just make one order, after racking up our drive thru time to seven minutes and leaves.

I sighed and got ready to put on my fake smile for the next person to come thru, I hate working drive thru. May all your custies be intelligent.

--Screaming Off Key

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This story was originally posted on May 30, 2010

Hello all,

Laughing Barista back with another story from the drive-thru of a coffee chain.

I am fortunate enough to work with one of my best friends. This makes work fun and tolerable (even though I have a cool boss and good hours, etc etc). However, Saturday mornings ALWAYS suck because they're so damn busy.

Now, one of our biggest issues is the fact that people purchase WAY too much stuff in drive-thru. If you're getting more than five items (and by this I don't mean five donuts or five bagels but rather, five separate units), go inside.

So it's around 11AM on Saturday morning and my best friend and I are working sandwiches. We're incredibly busy and can't believe how hungry people are that morning. We have huge orders from the front as well as drive-thru orders that need to be made quickly.

A lady comes to the drive-thru and orders a plethora of drinks and 13, count them, 13 sandwiches. This is ridiculous. Even if it came from the front I'd be pissed but drive-thru? You're holding up the fucking line, asshole. My co-worker kindly informs her to wait inside while we make the sandwiches as to not hold up the line. She complains for about a minute or two until she concedes. 

She comes inside and stands right where we're making sandwiches and starts complaining about how she has to wait inside. I don't want to hear her. My best friend is annoyed, too.

I tell her that it's not fair to the other customers that she take up their time because they can't order if her car is in the way.

She said that my co-worker told her to wait on line again.

I told her that he didn't because a) I heard him and b) that would be stupid and pointless.

(Let me just point out that waiting on line or standing right near us is not going to decrease the amount of time it takes for us to make her order.)

She calms down for a bit and then starts saying, "I'm a good person! I'm a good person! I don't deserve this treatment!"

I tell her that I'm sure she's a good person and that we're treating her fine. It's not our fault that she ordered 13 sandwiches on a Saturday morning at 11AM.

She keeps repeating that she's a good person. My best friend got testy and told her to knock it off. She didn't. She kept going on and on and on.

Finally, I lost my patience, put her bagel down and said, "Ma'am, you could be Hitler reincarnated and I wouldn't care. You're a paying customer and you'll get your food as soon as you be quiet and let us do our job."

She shut up after that.

--Laughing Barista

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From Q, January 2010:

I work for a fast food restaurant and after reading your site for ages, I finally had to submit. 

I deal with all sorts of people, some of them ruder than others, but this woman topped the cake enough for me to want to submit.

At our restaurant, due to how it's positioned, we have two drive thru lanes, and thus two speakers to take orders from. 

A lot of times, when you're on the 2nd shift, we don't have enough people to have one ordertaker per speaker, so we oftentimes end up having one person taking orders on two speakers and taking money. 

So last night, I'm doing just that, which I don't mind doing, except that it was raining hard.  Now, due to how the speakers are positioned that water bounces off of them and can get someone wet, but I consider that the price that someone has to pay for thinking they're going to get their food faster by going through drive thru instead of coming into the store (It's actually not faster).

People who come through the drive thru line are typically regulars and they understand and get over it. 

Not this woman. 

So I'm attempting to take her order, but I get interrupted by a person at my window. 

Stupid idiot who thinks that a female fast food worker isn't worth listening to and who just read the pre tax total of their order and wanted to complain about it. 

Yah, well, next time actually listen to your freaking drive thru attendant.. no, I'm not important, I only have to make sure that your food is even rung up right to begin with, lest you annoy me and I ring it up wrong out of spite. 

Anyway, I get interrupted and lost track of this woman's order, so I apologize and ask her to try to repeat it. 

She gets increasingly agitated and pissy over the speaker, and whines about how she's getting all wet. 

Finally, she has enough and asks, "Do you want me to go to another (restaurant name)?" 

My response? 

"Ma'am, that's your choice, I get paid all the same."

So she drives off, but not before driving around to my window and bitching me out there. 

She made herself out to look like an ass, because I had the next 3 customers ask me what the hell was wrong with this woman. 

I almost would have had sympathy for this woman too, because I know what it's like to have to sit there and get wet (thanks to people not turning off their windshield wipers when they get to a drive thru window-- thanks everyone!) but she had to go and act like an ass and then try to get the final word just to make herself feel superior. 

I swear I hate drive thru customers.

--Q

read more Fast Food Hell Stories here

From CaliCat000 Tales From Retail:

Not my story, this happened to my coworker while we were on shift.

Anyways, this lady pulls up to the drive through and orders a little under $20 worth of food. She pays with a gift card. My coworker swipes the gift card and informs her, “your balance is now at $0, you still have 40 cents left on your bill. How would you like to pay?”

The lady (apparently) looks taken aback. Like my coworker had just slapped her or spit on her shoe or something.

“You seriously expect me to pay that?”

My coworker is like... “uh.. yes?”

I don’t recall exactly what the woman said in response to this, but it was something to the tune of, “I can’t believe I just spent x dollars here and you’re going try to squeeze more money out of me. NEVER in my LIFE ...” etc. etc.

Anyway, she ended up driving away. At our store, we don’t give customers their stuff until they’ve paid.

So basically, she paid almost $20, got mad about 40 cents, and then drove away without her food, after she had already paid.

We got to eat the food.

--CaliCat000