Drive-Thru Samaritan

I work at a well-known restaurant famous for its fried chicken sandwiches. For some reason my coworkers and I have yet to discern, our drive-thru is always slammed, from early morning until late at night. Doesn’t matter what time of day it is; if you choose to go through drive-thru, you will probably have a dozen or so cars in front of you, though your wait should never be longer than about five minutes. Evidently that’s just too long for some “special” people, though.

“Guys… did someone just go in the wrong end of drive-thru?”

Upon hearing this, I can feel a few of my brain cells commit suicide. The exit to our drive-thru is clearly marked with a massive STOP sign, and opens right onto the top of a small hill. Getting out is easy, but to somehow enter from this direction unscathed takes no small amount of luck and stubborn determination.

The car passes by the window. It’s a brand new white Chrysler, and looks quite expensive. It’s also moving oh-so-very-quickly in the obviously wrong direction.

The entrance to the drive-thru starts as a bottleneck, but then opens up to allow cars to drive off if they so choose. It is not designed for people to get out of. Until now, we always thought it was physically impossible for a car to squeeze past the curb on one side and the car on the other.

Unnecessary foreshadowing. Forget I said anything.

The car approaches the bottleneck. It can now go no further without getting very physically intimate with a long line of other vehicles. Realizing he’s stuck, the driver begins gunning his engine aggressively, perhaps assuming the cars in front of him will sprout wings? Trying her best to be a good Samaritan, the customer closest to him gets out of her car and tells him he can’t go any farther, and that he’ll just have to go back out in reverse. The man’s response is quoted verbatim, and should be read in monotone:

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am…”

And then he floors it. Somehow he misses the good Samaritan, but her car is not so lucky. The entire right side of her car is scraped and ripped asunder by the left side of his car, but our special friend isn’t stopping just yet. Somehow, and we’re still not exactly certain how, he manages to get his two left wheels up on the curb of the drive-thru, and wall-rides past the other cars! Not before smashing into the sides of two more vehicles, though, one of them being driven by a beautiful young woman, eight months pregnant, with two kids and her elderly mother in the car.

As this scene from heck plays out, I can feel additional brain cells abandoning the ship. I take an hour or so to get eyewitness statements, talk to the victims, and bemoan the stupidity of mankind.

There was much bemoaning.

Some weeks later, we’re happy to learn that the police caught our special friend. He, of course, denied any of it ever happening, but it’s difficult to argue when we have pictures of the damage caused, eyewitness testimonies, and footage of your car causing the accident.

Oh, yes, and your license plate number. Taken by the good Samaritan who tried to help you.