My adventures in the land of fast-food drive-thru windows - Toronto Star

I am usually very confident when I drive my car. In my neighbourhood, on the highway — doesn’t matter. When I’m behind the wheel, I know what I’m doing. Except when I’m going through a drive-thru. Then I have problems.

When I go through the Tim Hortons that’s around the corner from my house, I’m spoiled. There’s a woman there named Sue and she is the best order-taker in the history of order-takers. If I was Tims, I would have her working at the head office to train everybody else on how to do the job properly.

But there are two other fast-food restaurants in my neighbourhood that I am going to tell you about today. Actually, every fast-food joint in the history of the world has an address around where I live but I particularly liked the two that have my name. I don’t go to one of them anymore, for reasons I will relate later. But the other is also far from perfect.

For instance, when I pull up to a screen at a drive-thru, I expect a little respect. After all, I’m going to spend money there and I think the voice I’m talking to should be polite. One of these places named after me is usually pretty good, “Hello, welcome to (my namesake). What can I get you?” On the other hand, about the best I can expect from the other one, the one I don’t go to anymore, is, “Yeah?”

Then it gets to be fun. And this is universal.

“Can I have a fruit-and-fibre muffin,” I said, “and a large coffee with half-milk, half-sugar, a sausage breakfast sandwich combo and a large strawberry-banana smoothie.”

“OK,” the voice said. “Youwantafruitfibremuffinlargecoffeehalfmilkhalfsugarsausagebreakfastsandwichcomboandalargeblueberrysmoothie.”

“No,” I said, “that should be a large strawberry-banana smoothie.”

“A strawberry-blueberry. We don’t have one of those.”

I lean out the window. “I KNOW YOU DON’T. I WANT A STRAWBERRY-BANANA SMOOTHIE. A LARGE ONE.”

At which point my wife will reach across and punch me in the shoulder and warn, “Shhh, people will hear you.”

“That’s what I want,” I said. “For people to listen.”

So, driving through these drive-thrus, except for that one at Tims, gives me an inferiority complex. As comedian Rodney Dangerfield used to say, “I get no respect.”

The one time I complained — yes, I’m complaining here, but I mean the only time I actually phoned my namesake’s head office and lodged a complaint — came at the end of a very sad weekend at our house. It was summer, and our dog, who was 17, suffered a stroke and died on the Saturday. The cat, almost as old and an animal we thought was the dog’s sworn enemy, then started to hyperventilate and died the very next day. The vet said the cat died of a broken heart.

We didn’t feel like cooking Sunday dinner, so I was dispatched to my name’s restaurant, the one where “Yeah,” seems to be the acceptable greeting (it’s closer). The order was large, so I was asked to pull out of the drive-thru line, park and someone would bring our order out to me. This had happened before, so no problem.

Five minutes, or so, later, an employee came out of the restaurant with two trays, one full of drinks and one filled with ice cream desserts. She handed them to me through my open window. I asked how long it would be before the rest of my order would be ready and she said it could be as long as 10 minutes.

Now, perhaps I could have been more tactful. But I said: “So you’re making me sit here with ice cream that is melting while you get the rest of my food ready? Why not wait till the food is ready and then bring me the ice cream?” Whereupon, she said, “I’m busy and I don’t need this. In fact, I don’t like your attitude.” Whereupon, I said: “I don’t like yours.” And then she said: “You want your food, you come in and get it. I’m not bringing it out.”

(My wife has worked in customer service for years and gasped when I told her this later.)

I waited the 10 minutes and went in and got the rest of my order, which I then took home with the drinks and the ice cream soup. I figured it was better to back off than to start World War III inside that restaurant. But it bothered me all that night. And the next day, on the Monday, I complained to the head office. I got a call back two weeks later (which says, to me, the guy who called me doesn’t have enough to do or else they get a lot of complaints).

“Thank you for this,” he said. “This is a real teachable moment.”

“Teachable moment?” I asked. “For what? Teaching your staff to be polite to the customers? To maybe instruct them, particularly in the heat of the summer, to serve the hot food before you serve the cold? Teachable what?”

I never did find that out. I got a lot more bafflegab, but I never got what I was looking for: an apology. Something like, “We’re sorry, Mr. McDonald. We’ll try to do better.” But no. Just more “teachable moment” nonsense.

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That’s why I don’t go to that particular restaurant anymore.

Now, I’m lucky; I have this column and I can use it to complain about the customer service, or lack thereof, we all receive these days. One thing’s a dead certainty, though: everybody who’s reading these words, who owns a vehicle and has taken it through a fast-food drive-thru to place an order, has had to put up with everything I have at one time or another.

Which is really a shame, isn’t it?

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My adventures in the land of fast-food drive-thru windows - Toronto Star
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