A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Drive through times are often prioritized
So many places do order ahead now, though. I don't go to starbucks often, but when I do, I order ahead from my house, ride over on my electric board, walk in, grab my already made drink, and leave. In and out of the building in 15 seconds. Meanwhile, the drive-through extends through the entire parking lot barely moving. Absolute chumps.
They just need to add one more lane, bro.
Fast food has destaffed their registers so even with this line it is probably faster to drive through than to wait to order before you wait for your deprioritized food
I love me a drive thru when I'm so exhausted I don't want to get out of the car. Car has comfy seats and HVAC. Normally I do prefer going in to get the order faster though.
I was ready to go in here and say I won't get out of my car until I see the others in my group show up to whatever place we're eating. I've got some social anxiety issues though.
This though...this is fucking stupid. I see this shit at coffee stands like Dutch Bros all the time. They have a walk up window. It's like 5x faster to get the fuck out of your car, order at the window, and walk away with your sugar bomb.
The same with fast food. My wife worked at BK on an AFB for a long time. Airmen would line up in the drive through. Inside was near empty. Same deal. It'd be much faster to get out of my truck, go in, order my shit, and leave. Then they'd have the audacity to complain that the place was "wasting their lunch break." Bitch, there's a commissary with fresh sushi in it, always stocked, a made to order deli sub place in the back, and lots of other healthy things. You could also bring your own food from home. You could also get out of the fucking car and get it.
I'm not fully anti car as everyone on here, though I do get it and wish there was better mass transit and walkable areas. I do think vehicles have their uses, and that MT isn't an option for everyone. That said, this type of shit is stupid af. Stop clogging up the roads. Stop wasting gas. Stop polluting with your idling bullshit (I'm seeing at least 3 gas guzzlers in the pic in the comments.)
This is also incredibly dangerous. Blocking a lane causes backups further down. It causes people to have to merge into other lanes. Often times people don't pay attention and dodge at the last minute, or they get frustrated/angry and make stupid decisions.
They call it the Chair Force for a reason. Getting up and walking would go against their ethos.
Was chair force, I can confirm. There were a lot of lazy ass people.
Dutch bros isn't coffee lol it's sugar water with flavoring
Most people here are not totally against cars. We're mainly against car-centric design. Of course cars have uses, specially for the disabled.
Just yesterday I wanted to go out to see my "local" town. I ended up going out for about 3 hours, 2 or which were "sitting" in the car commuting from a "livley" area to another "lively" area.
Business like the one shown in this photo posted by OP have become to far apart from one another, separate by seas of parking and 8 lanes of pavement.
Its astonishing that this is considered "normal" in North America. Just going to the local Walmart to get some milk can take about a hour or two of your day.
Walking is almost out of the question, just imaging leaving the Walmart that is probably located on the other side to arrive at the front door of this coffee chain.
I remember this picture. It was from the opening of some mediocre but popular burger chain. They had the doors closed and it was drive through only that day if I'm recalling it correctly.
As others have pointed out, this is a Starbucks, but take a look at this photo I took a couple months ago. It was a line for an In-N-Out burger that was not even new, but it was the longest drive-through line I've ever seen. It was like ~500 feet long and split off into four separate lanes that all filtered into two main lanes that they actually took your order at. I was across the street getting Chipotle and I spent about 15 minutes inside watching this line and all of these cars only move forward by about one car length. I guesstimate that these people are gonna be waiting in line for two plus hours and that fucking blows my mind.
And the fuckers were spilling into the main road blocking traffic.
No that isn't the picture I'm talking about. What I really love about this is I don't care enough to go find the drone shot I was talking about and the rage I'm seeing about this is childish.
"America is worth fighting for!"
America:
Um...you can literally see the Starbucks logo on the side of the building.
There is a very similar picture to this of some burger joint opening up but fine now that I wasted my time looking its a starbucks.
Sometimes the drive through is just as fast as going inside. I’ve been at a mcD’s where I went in cause the line looked like this but I ended up waiting 20 mins for my order inside cause they were just slammed at that moment
On top of that, they prioritize the drive-through in a lot of these places.
What tunnel vision does to a mf
Is this Starbucks in the middle of 4 road intersection
They really will put them anywhere and everywhere lol.
Yeah how else are you gonna get there /s
Everyone behind the silver car at the parking lot entrance is illegally blocking the road. Regardless of the car culture problem or OP's disingenuous use of a CoViD era image out of context, those people needed to go away. If you can't get your coffee without parking in the street, you don't get coffee at that location at that time. Safety is more important than someone getting their sugar/caffeine fix.
The legality really depends on the jurisdiction. Where I live, it is 100% the business responsibility to ensure this doesn't happen, and if it does, there are big fines for the business, the customer is not at fault.
Plenty of things the business could do to reduce this, such as making people park up after ordering (a very popular option where I live), increasing prices to reduce their demand, having a digital queue system, removing the drive-through altogether, etc.
Business passes small bribe to local politician
"No longer our problem"
Wishful thinking, but the fines are far greater than any business would be willing to pay as a bribe
If there's a line like this in the drive through I just move on. The inside is gonna be even slower than just waiting for drive through.
I commonly see these drive thru lines and walk inside. No line.
Idk every time I've gone inside when a line is like this there won't be many people inside but the order will still take forever for some reason.
That's because there are 3 or 4 cars in the line between the order kiosk and the window who have already ordered before you walked in the door. When you walk in, you jump the line of cars before the order kiosk. But there aren't separate queues for counter and drive thru in the kitchen. They just see a list of orders in the order in which they were received, and process orders more or less FIFO.
If there are cars behind the order kiosk, you are almost certainly getting your order faster than if you had joined at the end of the line.
And their order priority:
I can almost guarantee that they make orders in the order they are received, more or less. So door dash gets their orders first, because they ordered online before they showed up. Then the drive thru orders get made before yours because there are 4 cars in line between the order kiosk and the window - they already ordered, and are waiting for their order to be filled before you walked in the door. For some reason, there is always someone in the drive thru line who is ordering for their whole office or a Mormon family or something.
The drive thru has 2 bottlenecks. Ordering and payment/delivery. Thus, the drive thru will have a much more consistent pace - there is always someone waiting to order, and always someone waiting to have their food handed to them. Since this is the case, there is always someone assigned specifically to this task, sitting in the drive thru window with a mic on. The cash registers, on the other hand, are far more efficient. Ordering and payment happen in the same step, and food is delivered simply by putting it on the counter. Multiple registers mean multiple orders can be taken at once. This means the line inside can be cleared quickly, which means it is less consistent, which means the staff often forgets to check it - especially since staff taking orders will quickly reallocate to making orders once the line is cleared. Add to this, taking orders inside is when a staff member must interact face-to-face with a customer - well known as the least enticing part of any customer service job. So it is easy for a staff member to see customers at the till and procrastinate on taking their orders, since there is more enjoyable work to be done.
There isn't some kind of conspiracy to make walk-in customers' experience as bad as possible. Fast food restaurants are evil capitalist money making machines, and their incentive is to make you as happy as possible per net dollar earned. If you really want to get your order fast, just order online before you show up. Then walk in the door and grab your order off the counter like a door dasher. If you insist on getting your order from the counter, realize that you are still getting your order faster than you would in the drive thru - you are just suffering from the illusion that they are prioritizing the drive thru since you aren't counting the cars in line that ordered before you.
I know there's a simple explanation for it. But there's another simple solution: if you are in person, you get service first. You took the time to enter the restaurant and can see the service being performed - so you should get priority.
if you are in person, you get service first. You took the time to enter the restaurant and can see the service being performed - so you should get priority.
Again, fast food restaurants are the physical manifestation of platonic capitalist greed. Please explain your theory on how this change would improve profitability, and why such a change would be worth the risk it imposses when the existing system has been working for decades.
Thanks, MBA textbook answer. The reality is people dont like being treated badly. If you treat them badly, especially in person, they tend to avoid your service. It's hard to quantify so bad MBAs don't bother to think about that when they get in charge of big businesses and then they proceed to shit all over everyone.