Three short stories, all from my first job working fast food (like many). For background, not terribly long after starting, I worked my way to register and my manager realized I had a very clear speaking voice (thank you high school theater class!) and put me on drive through. I guess her thinking was folks could understand me better on the tinny speaker in the back than most. Also for reference, this was early-to-mid 1990s.
1) It's a pleasant early evening in the desert. I hear the chime for a car over the headset and take a pretty routine order. The cook in the back is busy making the food and I fill the drink. As the car pulls up to the window, I see the driver isn't wearing a shirt, but that's not out of the ordinary. I go to collect the money and see the driver is not only parked a ways from the window, but is also not being terribly helpful reaching with his money where I can get to it. I lean as far out the window as possible to see the driver isn't just shirtless but is full
au naturale without a stitch of anything on.
I collect his money, give him change and hand off his drink. I close the window as the food isn't quite done and look over to the young girl at the till at the front counter and say "see the guy in the car behind me (my back was to the window)? He's naked." She makes a move to try to take a look and I tell her "
you give him his order" as I put the last item in the bag. She takes it from me and when she's done handing the food over she closes the window, looks back at me with saucer wide eyes and says "he
is naked!". Not traumatic by any means, but clearly not expected and his behavior was such that he
wanted be noticed.
2) It's later in the evening, properly dinner time but well past dinner rush. I hear the chime and the order "could I get two plain baked potatoes" come across the line. We had potatoes with a few different fillings (sour cream and butter, chili and something else I don't remember) but we always topped these to order and had a holding oven with the plain potatoes. There was a button on the POS terminal for plain, but I had never taken an order for them. I asked, as usual, "would like anything else with that?", received a negative response and gave the total before the drove up to the window ($2.07... why I remember
that I do not know).
I bag up the potatoes, utensils and napkins as well as a handful of butter pats and go to the window. Outside waiting for me to finish is a brand new, probably $50,000 red SUV with Jim Click (a locally well known car dealer) behind the wheel with his (presumable) wife in the passenger seat. He paid and drive away as if this was perfectly normal.
Only thing I can think is they had steaks waiting at home and realized they didn't have potatoes, but why did they
both come and bring the gigantic truck as well.
3) I get asked by my manager if I could work a Sunday breakfast shift. I usually worked evenings as they meshed better with my school schedule, but breakfast on a weekend would be no problem. Things we going well on a cool and quiet morning. I had just finished with a car and was tidying up my drawer as usual after a sale. I hear a tapping on the window and expect the folks I had just finished with needed something else. I open the window and as I look out I see the side of a horse.
A horse!!
A horse in my drive through.
I poke my head out the window and look up at a gentleman astride said horse and ask, as if this were completely normal "may I help you?" He asks for a cup of black coffee. I punch the buttons on the register and give him the total to find he already had the exact change in hand. Clearly, this wasn't his first time doing this. I pour his coffee, hand it over and watch him trot off.
I mention this to the person operating the register to my left and she says "oh, yeah. He's here every Sunday." The store I worked at was a quarter mile from a dry wash and it turns out this gentleman would take his horse out for a ride every Sunday and part of his routine was to stop in and get a cup of coffee partway through his ride.
Turns out, the sensor loop in the back was magnetic and not a pressure sensor. The horse didn't have enough metal onboard to set the sensor off, requiring the tap on the window to place an order.
So, three of my most memorable fast food drive through stories. The terrible thing is all three stories have convolved into one featuring Jim Click, naked on horseback coming through the drive through.
