Our drive-thru is one of those face-to-face dealies where you don’t order at the menu board but actually talk to a human being while ordering. This can be really fun as people hold cell phone conversations and flat-out sit there deciding, and the whole while, you’re standing there holding the window open and it’s raining or snowing sideways. Fun times to be had by all, I tell you what.

As our location is right across the street from the middle school in town (as well as the hospital), we’re particularly busy between the hours of 2:30 and 4:00 pm. A truck pulls into the drive-thru with a woman driving and a man (I’m assuming her husband, whom I shall call Stoned Dude for obvious reasons) in the passenger’s seat.

Right away, I can tell Stoned Dude is blitzed out of his mind as he orders, his eyes half-lidded and his voice barely above a murmur.

Stoned Dude: “A fish sandwich, add cheese.”

Our fish sandwiches already come with a half-piece of cheese, but then he elaborates:

Stoned Dude: “I want a whole piece of cheese on it, not the half-piece.”

I have to charge him the extra forty cents for extra cheese. The woman then continues the order — or she tries to, anyway, as she herself is so stoned she can barely get out what she wants.

To make matters worse, the stoned-off-his-a** husband is bothering her the ENTIRE TIME she’s trying to order. He’s poking her, pinching her, trying to grab her hand and take a ring off her finger, and all-out being an annoying jerk. She can’t concentrate and is constantly mixing herself up, and she asks me to repeat back what she’s ordered about six times. Stoned Dude is ALSO periodically addressing me, telling me stuff he already told me thirty seconds before.

Me: “I’ve got a double cheeseburger, a ten-piece nugget, a small shake, three medium fries, and two small fries.”

Woman: “Okay, so two medium fries…” *To her husband* “Knock it off!”

Me: “No, ma’am, I’ve got three medium fries and two small fries.”

Woman: “Okay, I need five small fries, so add three more onto there.” *To her husband* “GEEZ! I’mma SMACK you! …and just leave the two medium fries on there.”

Stoned Dude: “I didn’t want the meal with that fish sandwich. I just wanted the sandwich with a full piece of cheese.”

Me: “Okay, so you don’t need three medium fries, and I should take one off to make it two?”

Woman: “No, leave the two medium fries on there.” *To her husband* “QUIT IT!” *Smacks him*

I internally facepalm and take one of the medium fries off since she now only wants two.

Me: “Now, what sauce would you like for your nuggets?”

Woman: *To her husband* “I’mma smack you SO HARD! Quit!” *To me* “What’d you say, honey?”

Stoned Dude: “Did you get the full piece of cheese on that fish sandwich?”

Me: “Yes, sir. What kind of sauce do you want with your nuggets?”

Stoned Dude: “Hot mustard.”

Woman: “Hot mustard, I guess. You know what, add a six-piece nugget on there, too.”

Me: “Okay, what sauce would you like with the six-piece?”

Stoned Dude: “I want HOT MUSTARD with the ten-piece…”

Woman: “Yeah, hot mustard, and… you know what, could you repeat all that back to me?”

By the time I finally get all their order rung up — I did manage to wrangle what kind of sauce they wanted out of her — their total has come to $26 and the little timer on my computer said that they’d been at my window, ordering, for FOUR MINUTES.

To make matters worse, a coworker of mine comes back and practically presses herself up against my back to stick her head out the window and talk to these people, because she apparently knows them. So, the woman is not only distracted trying to shoo Stoned Dude away every two seconds, but she now has small talk to make with my otherwise wonderful coworker.

I FINALLY tell the woman her total — which I have to do three times thanks to my coworker distracting her — and she gets out a debit card. She sits there a good ten seconds, just holding her card in her hand, slapping Stoned Dude, and chatting it up with my coworker.

Meanwhile, my timer has hit and passed the four-minute mark. I’m getting antsy and so is my manager, who only sees her drive-thru time going up and nothing else whatsoever, causing her to yell back at me and ask:

Manager: “You need help?! We’re out to the road!”

Thankfully, this makes my coworker shut up for two seconds, and the woman hands me her card. On an order $25 or higher, two receipts print: one a copy for the customer’s records, and one they have to sign for our records, adding another fifteen seconds to our drive-thru time, just sitting there. By the time they get out of the line, the timer says 4:37.

I have NEVER, in over four years in fast food, had a nearly five-minute order. I have never seen a five-minute order. NOT. ONCE. EVER.

When it is finally all done, the truck drives off to pick up their food, which will probably be cold by the time they get up there. My coworker turns to me and says, without a hint of irony:

Coworker: “They were stoned out of their minds, weren’t they?”

Then, she continues:

Coworker: “And with their kid in the backseat, too.” *Tsk, tsk*

I really have no faith in humanity anymore.

I am a night manager at a popular fast food restaurant. Our drive-thru cashier is fifteen and an amazing worker.

One night, I am counting the safe and she gives the “creeper code,” which is something we late-nighters came up with to alert to a problem. She gives the code to our cook (her boyfriend) who rushes the headset to me. I stomp up to the front and tell my cashier I’ve got it from here and to take a break.

This greasy slimeball who has never heard of a comb starts asking where the “hot babe” was. I would love to ban him, but my superiors are spineless, so I take his money and give him his food.

Creeper: “It ain’t no thang, darlin’! I was just complimentin’ that fine little piece of a**.”

Me: “No, you were propositioning my underaged cashier.”

The idiot took a while to process this, but his buddy muttered, “Oh, s***!” He whispered something to the creeper, and they peeled out.

I’m going back to college and, as such, the store needs to replace me on weekday opening shifts — 6:00 am to 2:00 pm. I let them know that I can open on Fridays as long as I’m out by noon to get to my single class from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. I’m able to give a solid month of notice.

My replacement is a new hire, and he starts off well. He’s a nice guy, he picks up on stuff at a reasonable pace, and all that. About a week into his training, some quirks start to appear. He talks to himself in a creepy way, and he gets oddly defensive over every single question he’s asked.

It’s about 10:00 am on a Friday and I get a frantic call from the opening manager.

Manager: “Can you come in for just a couple of hours? I know you have class today but [Replacement] vanished. We don’t know where he went.”

I say no problem and rush down. The new opener has indeed disappeared. Thankfully, he was competent enough at the job that I’m not far behind on anything.

I get through the rest of the prep and get ready to clock out. Then, I learn a bit more about what happened.

Turns out, the mid-shift manager came in at 9:00, saw a smaller amount of a product prepped than expected, and merely asked about why there was less. [Replacement] flew off the handle and said things like:

Replacement: “I just did what [Opening Manager] told me! It’s not my fault!”

He kept carrying on and swearing.

The mid-shift manager sent him on break since it was about time anyway and he needed to cool off. Turns out, he got on his bicycle and just rode off.

The manager, just wanting an explanation more than anything, sent him a text asking if he was okay and if he would be coming back. After hours with no response, she sent another message basically saying, “I’m taking this as your resignation.”

We have a transfer from another store working for us. She’s put herself down for all shift availability, essentially any hours from 6:00 am start to 4:00 am finish. Since we’re in need of more opening staff, she’s soon put on 6:00 am to 2:00 pm shifts.

[Transfer] quickly begins complaining that she can’t make it at 6:00 am because the buses don’t run that early and using every excuse as to why she can’t make it in at 6:00 am. Notable at this point is that we have a woman in her sixties who doesn’t drive and lives on the other side of town, and she makes it to the store at 5:30 am every weekday, so it is entirely possible to get there that early.

[Transfer] is taken off of mornings and moved to evenings. Now she complains that she can’t work that late and she only wants to be scheduled when the buses run.

That is not unreasonable, but her attitude about it is miles off and it’s spilling into every aspect of her work. This request would limit her to around 8:00 am to 9:00 pm, which are shifts we really don’t need more staff for. Because of this, her hours are reduced. She probably could get more if she wasn’t so miserable.

We also have an informal system where if you are interested in picking up a shift on any days off, you can write your name on that page of the schedule as “on-call,” and if you are needed, you’ll be contacted. [Transfer] puts herself down for every one of her days off, and then she refuses any shift offered to her with a disgusted tone.

She feels her hours were unfair, so out of protest, she stops showing up for her shifts entirely. She refuses to talk to the general managers and says she’ll come back when she gets the hours she wants.

She is eventually just taken off the schedule. I don’t know at what point she’s officially let go, but she does come in after a couple of weeks to see if she has hours again.

Good riddance.

I work in a fast food chain that makes sandwiches. We are located near a university that has a football game this Saturday. Earlier this week, we received an order of 113 sandwiches for the opposing team, who is driving up. The order must arrive no later than 7:30, and the coach says he will provide us a parking pass for us to park on campus and deliver the food. This never occurs.

To help with the order, our location closed early, and we started making the sandwiches at four.

We have almost finished the remaining seven or so sandwiches. The time is 6:55. The phone rings.

Me: “[Sandwich Chain], how may I help you?”

Caller: “Is this the chain we bought sandwiches for the catering order from?”

Me: “Yes, sir.”

Caller: “Is someone on the way?”

Me: “No, sir, we’re wrapping the last few sandwiches now.”

Caller: “Okay, well, the game’s over already. And we expected the sandwiches here at 7:00. We’ve actually got to pull out of here soon.”

Me: *Slightly panicked* “We’re finishing the order now, sir. We’ll get it out to y’all as soon as possible. I apologize; we thought the original time of completion was 7:30.”

Caller: “It’s all right, just get them out to us.” *Click*

I relay this information and we scramble to finish. As I am placing the last few sandwiches together, the phone rings again.

Manager: “[Sandwich Chain], how may I help you?” *Pauses* “Okay. Yes, sir, I understand the situation, but the agreement was to have the sandwiches delivered by 7:30.” *Pauses* “Yes, sir. Yes, we’ve got them on the road now. Okay. Thank you.” *Hangs up the phone* “Geez.”

The manager and I started hauling the bags to her car so she could deliver them. As we were packing the five sandwich bags and 133 cookies into the car, the phone rang again. The other employee got it. As I ran in to get the napkins and receipt for the sign-off, she called to us that it was the team again. Now, the guy wanted to meet at a new drop-off point, about ten more minutes from where the stadium was located. I relayed this to my manager, and she sighed and drove off.

About thirty minutes later, she returned. Apparently, the guy had called earlier that day to double-check the order and said something about delivering the sandwiches “anytime between 6:30 and 7:30,” which was his way of telling us to bring the sandwiches at 6:30. He also called my manager on her way over to scream at her. He promised never to order catering from us again. It also turned out that our university’s team had won the game, smoking this coach and his players forty-four to ten.