7. The Beginning of the Line, But the End of an Era
In about 2004, UK McDonalds stopped selling supersize meals. We had one family mum dad and two kids under 10 who had one every day. When I told them there was no more supersize, all four of them burst into tears. It was one of the most pathetic sights I have ever seen.
8. The Strong, Silent Type
Blow up doll, fully strapped into the passenger seat. Stoic, normal looking guy, José I think his name was. The driver, not the doll.
9. The Monster Mobile
I work at McDonald’s. One day, a woman came through with her family in the car and ordered one of the hamburgers with extra onion. She got up to my window—I was the server—and asked whether we'd put extra onion on it. I told her we had—which was correct—but she proceeded to check the burger and decide there wasn't enough onion.
We asked her to park up and we'd run her out a fresh burger with extra onion. I took the burger out myself. Still not enough onion, how much onion does this woman want?! I take it back inside and watch the guy in the kitchen PILE onion onto this burger. She accepts it this time. It's fine, there's enough onion. She hands the burger to her young kid in the back of the car.
A few minutes later, she runs up to my drive thru window begging for some plastic bags—we don't have any—because her son's thrown up in her car. It took all my willpower not to ask if it was the bloody onions!
10. It Takes More Than Skin to Phase Me
Chick Fil A. A butt naked—except a hat and sandals—middle-aged long-haired guy pulls through in a jeep with all the doors and top taken off. We still served him. No one was comfortable looking at him except for me. I was the window person. I didn't make an expression and acted like it was nothing to me and his goofy smile faded pretty quick after the less than enthusiastic "my pleasure.”
Everyone thought I was God. I guess I failed to mention this happened in the middle of the lunch rush... and that made it even funnier. So yes, this was in the MIDDLE OF LUNCH RUSH. We would often do well over 100 cars and sometimes could hit 200 in the window of 11 am to 1 pm.
11. Someone is Getting a Happy Meal
Finally, a chance to tell this story! When I was 16, I worked midnights at McDonald’s in the summer, and since it was the summer, a great many drunks came through my drive-thru. Once, at about 2 am, which we called the bar rush because all the bars would let out and an unbelievable amount of people would stop by on their way home, a car full of drunk 20-somethings pulls up.
The guy I'm interacting with, the driver, has a jacket on his lap... and underneath that is a girl who I can safely assume was making him quite happy. I stared open-mouthed for a few seconds before taking his money and giving him his food. McDonald’s drive-thru after dark is a strange and terrifying place, my friends...
12. Funhouse on Wheels
A few years ago, I was out with a friend and we had picked up 30 goldfish, 500 play pit balls, and 50 pounds of colored sand for a prank to a friend's room. We had the balls and sand filling up the back seat, and I was carrying the fish on my lap. We went through the drive-thru and immediately went back through it again to pick up some extra food for our roommate.
The look we got from the worker was incredible. He then told us, "Wherever you're about to go, I wish I could come with you." The reason we had all that stuff is that there was a tradition at our school. When the seniors have 100 days left, they leave for the weekend and the freshman decorate/prank the rooms while they are gone.
So we rigged the balls into the ceiling so that when the door was opened they would spill everywhere, put about five pounds of glitter into balloons and gave them studded gloves to pop them with, and ended up with 500 pounds of sand to use as a base for the colored sand to write out a message. We ended up just putting the fish all in a bowl rather than make one of the bed drawers a mini aquarium like our original plans.
In the end, they loved it, and it turned out pretty well I thought.
13. Not That’s What I Call Fast Food
I worked at Burger King in high school. One time I had a couple come through who ordered some food, as well as two of the largest size drinks you can get: one milkshake and one soda. They roll up to the window and we take care of the monetary transaction. I always passed drinks out first because they were always ready first.
So, I put both of these gargantuan beverages in one of those flimsy cardboard-ish drink carriers (in opposite corners, diagonally from one another to maximize stability), and start to pass it slowly to the driver. I get it out my window and partially into his where he receives the hand-off and I let go of it entirely.
I withdrew my arm into the window, and just as the driver gets the drinks all the way into his vehicle, he slams the accelerator and then immediately slams the brakes. The drinks took flight and went straight into the upper corner of the windshield on the passenger side where they exploded all over everything in the front of the car. I mean EVERYTHING. The car remained stopped for about five seconds, then rolled sheepishly out of the drive-thru lane without the food that was ordered.
14. A Man With a Meat Mission
I need to tell this story. A dude pretended to be a car and bought all the chicken KFC had left. It’s late, it’s been a day, everyone else is finally passed out. The choices are alcohol or fast food. I opted for KFC, cause if you’re gonna go unhealthy you ought to really go unhealthy. Plus, the Colonel puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly.
So, as I drive up to the drive-thru, I see an SUV at the window, and a super large dude standing leaning against the wall just behind it. Thing is it was raining hard, and the dude was wearing a neon green shirt, and my eyes suck when I’m at my best, and I ain’t even near that right now. So, I actually thought he was a motorcycle, or dude on a motorcycle, or a human-motorcycle-hybrid.
I place my order and drive up and realize, yep, it’s just a dude, standing right by the sign that actually says something about only cars being able to use the drive-thru. Guy in the SUV grabs his bag and drives away. Big dude steps slowly from the wall, feet make crazy splashes in the puddles and I’m reminded of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.
And then I immediately felt terrible for thinking like that. Here is this poor hungry jerk who needed what he needed bad enough that he chose to walk in the pouring rain while lightning rang out around him and thunder lit up the sky, only to arrive and find that counter service inside was already closed for the night.
So dude is talking using his hands like an Italian on-speed with the girl working the window, and I’m sure she is referring to the sign or their policy of why it’s not called a walk through or how it’s legal liability if they serve people and they get hurt or whatever other stiff they told me when I was a stupid teenager and my friends and I tried to pull the on-foot trick ourselves.
Except, suddenly dude pulls a double thumbs up and is smiles ear to ear. Then he turns back and thumbs-ups me too! I just smile, I don’t know what he was looking for exactly. I guessed he was just happy. Then, a few minutes later they hand him over three large buckets of chicken. He cradles his arm across his belly, then stacks each bucket side-by-side supported by his gut.
Then dude waddles off toward the fence behind the back of the place and disappears in the wooded area. I pull up and the girl tells me, “Sorry sir, that guys just ordered all the chicken we had left...I gave it to him ‘cause it looked like he needed it... what something else?” I was tempted to ask her to give me all the fries they had left in a garbage bag.
Instead, I just took an apple pie.
15. Goodbye from the Other Side
I've been dying to tell this story. There was a couple that ordered one order of zucchini. Their car was old, and a bit run down. They had a bunch of stuff in the back seat. It was obvious that they lived in the car. When they pulled up to the window the guy looked straight forward when he talks and handed me the money.
He looked very shaggy and his face was dirty, as was hers. From his profile, I could still see that he had scabbing along the length of his nose and his right eyebrow—the side away from me. We were chit-chatting, and I can’t remember the conversation, but I made them laugh and I guess that made him comfortable and he relaxes.
He stops being so rigid and he turns his face...his right eye is completely frosted over and diseased. It was purple and white. He had no eyelid and no skin on a large area around his eye. It's obvious that some infection or disease ate it away. It was raw flesh, all red and white with pus. The area was surrounded by severe scabbing.
I just stayed calm because I didn't want to make him feel bad and acted as if I didn’t see it. I felt so bad for them. I figured that it started off small and probably due to lack of money medical care was impossible and now it had spread.
16. Not the Hero We Need, But the One We Deserve
Worked the drive-thru at McDonald's and when the line was a bit backed up, I would try to make small talk with people who were stuck at my window. One guy, I looked in his backseat and saw a bat symbol pillow, so I jokingly asked, "Are you secretly Batman?" Without a word, he flipped down his visor, grab a piece of paper, scribbled on it, handed it to me and drove forward.
It was a wallet-sized photo of the 60s live-action Batman onto which he had written "BATMAN." Never saw him again.
17. Something Smells Fishy
Don't know if it counts, but while I was working at Wendy's a long time ago, a friend was working the drive-thru. Some stoned out teenagers asked if we had fish sandwiches which, at the time, they had been taken off the menu, so we told them no and they ordered something else. When they got up to the window, the guy says to my friend, "Hey, could you do me a favor? Could you make me a fish sandwich with this?"
Then he proceeded to throw a whole salmon through the window and speed off. My friend was notably mad. He jumped out the window and ran off after them anyways. But he couldn't catch them, so he came back. Amidst some laughs, the manager gave my friend the meals that the kids ordered and paid for before they sped off and even let him keep the fish—which was good, aside from being on the floor.
Now, we just laugh and try to guess how much these teens paid for such a stupid prank.
18. It’s That Lickin’ Good
Not so much an object, but what I’d see her do in her car. Starbucks drive-thru around 2010. Lady would regularly come through with her dog in the car, order two venti frappucinos with whip cream, one with a flat lid on the side instead of the normal dome lid. She’d then let her dog lick the whipped cream off of one.
A couple of months later, she comes through with no dog in the car, but instead a husband in the passenger seat. Orders the same exact frappuccinos she normally does, did only this time only one had whip. Yup, she was letting her dog lick her husbands Frappuccino before bringing it home to him and pretending it never happened.
My jaw dropped.
19. Let’s Put a Smile Off That Face, Please
Once when I was in high school, running the drive-thru for our Taco Bell, a guy pulls up to the window. He was leaning his seat back and making the craziest facial expression. It was that psychotic grin from American Psycho. As I'm taking his money and talking to him, he says nothing. Maintains this expression, eye contact, and position in his car.
I hand him his change, quarters and some small bills. He, without breaking this character, took the change and hurled it into his backseat. I then tentatively hand him his bag of chalupas. He maintains eye contact and grins and hurls the food into the backseat. I'm very weirded out and he just stares at me grinning. I hand him his drink. Into the backseat it goes.
I ask if he wanted sauce, and he speeds away. Working late night at Taco Bell yields some bizarre stories.
20. Money Doesn’t Grow On Those Kinds of Trees
Back when I worked in the drive-thru at the local Chic-fil-A, a guy orders and pulls around to the window. When he goes to pay for his meal, he hands me a crisp $50 bill. Maybe a little too crisp... I look at it closely and sure enough, the number of fibers embedded in the paper were too sparse and the paper was too course. I take a test marker too it, and sure enough, it's a fake.
I look over at the guy and tell him, "You do realize you could go to jail for handing me this fake bill, right?" He replied with genuine shock stating that he had, "traded them with a pal. I got 50 $20 bills for 20 $50 bills." He then shows me his little stash on the seat next to him. After a few more minutes trying to convince him it was fake, I told him to buzz off and handed the fake to my manager.
In a rage, he said he was going to go across the street to the credit union/bank and prove they were real. I thought it was a bad attempt and trying to play coy. To my surprise, I look up several minutes later to see the guy being dragged out of the bank in cuffs. This guy must have been all sorts of stupid.
21. Baby on Board, I Hope
A man pulls up with I assume his college-aged daughter in the front seat, and I assume his wife in the back seat, with a pacifier, bib, and pajamas, crying her eyes out. I was so freaking confused. He asked for extra napkins for the "baby in the back." I had no idea what was happening, but I just went along with it. Handed the guy the napkins, he says thanks because she makes a big mess when she eats and drives off.
Still super confused, I just continued on with my day. Six months later, I'm at a family reunion and my cousins are talking about some huge international scavenger hunt they participated in and show me the list of items and "Go through a drive-thru with an adult dressed as a baby in the back" is one of the items to complete.
It all came together but man I was confused when it was happening because I genuinely didn't see the daughter filming which I assume she was because it said you need video proof. I've looked for the video with me in it but can't seem to find it.
22. I’m Here to Pass Food, Not Judgement
There was this one couple. They ordered $80 worth of food (cheeseburgers, wings, fries and etc.) at 11:45 PM; and of course, we close at midnight. So, everyone in the kitchen was extremely angry. Then he asks me to throw something away. It was a KFC cup—I never I really thought anything about it until he came back for the cup.
I was like "What? You want the KFC cup back?" So, I gave it to him, but I was now curious why he wanted the cup back, so I took a peek then I saw there was quite a bit of weed in it. Then everything else in the car made sense. A PS4, a furry costume, and some other things, but I can't make out what they are. It was the weekend so I'm guessing they wanted to get high and mess around.
Nevertheless, I kinda understood why they ordered that much food and the entire restaurant thought it was pretty funny.
23. Don’t Get Too Wrapped Up
This happened when I was manning the drive-thru at a Starbucks in a small Texas town. The guy sounded normal when he placed the order, and I was pretty zoned out and just running on autopilot. When he pulls up to the window, my back is turned while I prepare his stuff. I turn around, open the window, and see this big 50-year-old dude halfway over his console into the passenger seat, screaming, "GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!"
There is a 3 1/2-foot snake halfway through his window and draped over the steering wheel. Later the guy would tell me he'd been visiting his parents in the country and it must have been hanging out in his wheel well; when he opened his window, it took the chance to get somewhere calmer. I grew up in the country, so if there is one thing that I am good at, it's telling a poisonous snake from a non-poisonous one.
This one is just a bull snake. I pull it off and it falls beneath his tire. "Don't move your truck," I say "Or you'll run the snake over. I don't want roadkill in my drive-thru." I actually just don't want the snake hurt, but I don't think this guy is likely to sympathize with that. So, I run around, pick up the snake, carry it past the line of cars at the drive-thru, and deposit it in the empty lot. Have some cred with my co-workers for the day before the whole thing is forgotten.
24. I Don’t Like This Star Wars Prequel…
I worked nights at Taco Bell in the drive-thru on the weekends in college. I have many, many stories. One of the best was opening my drive-thru window to a huge cloud of weed and a 50-something woman, who can only be described as a blonde
. Her hair was mangy and all over the place. Her make-up was sliding off her face.
She was obviously using some sort of substance because she had trouble forming sentences. The woman had seen some things. It got weirder though. She was driving a big creeper van. In the back were about six or seven men who all looked to be in their twenties. There were no seats in the back; they were all just sitting on the floor smoking.
I still wonder to this day what the heck this woman was doing that night.
25. World’s Worst Pit Stop
When I worked at Whataburger, I had a dude pass out in the drive-thru with his foot on the brake. He was driving an Audi R8. There were about 10 cars behind him. Went out there to see what was going on. I convinced him that he should let me park his car and let him chill there. I then drove his car to the closest parking space.
The guy came into the store three hours later. I had a coffee and a taquito ready for him. He ended up giving me the $200 that he said he was going to use for pills. After I left Whataburger, I worked for an apartment complex and found that he lives there, and his life is back on track.
26. We Don’t Serve That Kind of Candy
Back when I worked drive-thru at a McDonald’s, I had this guy ordering who, number one, took like five minutes to order a breakfast burrito and a drink, so I was pretty fed up already when he got to the window. When this car pulled up, I was really not expecting to see a chick wearing nothing but a bra and panties in the backseat snorting white powder off of an iPhone.
I was staring at her while I took the guy’s cash, and she glanced up and noticed me and ducked down a little bit. Like, babe, you’re in a pretty short car; if I can see the floor from here, I can definitely see you. Guy just drove off to the next window like nothing happened. I also served a lady on a horse one time and was subsequently told they had to be in a motor vehicle to come through the drive-thru, but that wasn’t as strange since there are horses in our area.
27. Who Let the Dogs Out?
Not a drive-thru worker, but I was in the passenger seat at a drive-thru bank and had a funny experience. Friend was depositing money. The teller sends back a receipt and a dog treat. Confused, my friend asks what the dog treat is for. The teller points and says, Your dog in the back seat." At that point, my friend’s younger sister, who had been leaning forward brushing her own hair, looked up at the teller.
The teller was very apologetic for her confusion, and we all had a good laugh. Well, except for the sister, she wasn't too thrilled about being confused for a dog.
28. Alternative Menus. Alternative Customers
Took her order over the drive-thru. I could hear a child from the back yelling at her that she wanted fries. The mom kept saying “No! Fries aren’t good for you.” Anyways this went back and forth probably four times while we took her order. No biggie. Kids can be annoying. She proceeds to the window. As I’m taking her change, she looks straight ahead and pounds on the dash screaming, “Mom, I told you I wanted fries!!!!” in a completely different voice.
She then proceeds to turn around and scream, “I BLOODY SAID NO!” I looked in the back seat and no one was there. No kid. Because we didn’t have her food at the window, we asked her to park. She didn’t talk much to us the entire time. The kid who ran out her order said she was arguing with herself and slamming on the horn when he ran her food. Single most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.
29. Vitamin C Can’t Fix Everything
I worked at McDonald's when I was 15-16, and a guy came through and ordered just an orange juice. The guy in the seat next to him had a nail from a nail gun through his hand and was shaking. The guy said the orange juice was to stop the guy from going into shock.
30. It’s a Bit of a Fixer Upper
I worked the drive-thru at McDonald's when I was 16 and 17. One time. this beater of a sedan pulled up with a middle-aged woman and a couple of kids inside. The kids were jumping all over the place unbuckled and freaking out, and instead of a key, she had a screwdriver jammed in the ignition. I suppose she could have just owned a bad car and had rowdy kids, but at the time I really thought she had kidnapped the kids and stolen the car.
31. Someone is McLovin’ It
Guy who ordered a single meal was driving while a couple in the back seat were obviously having sex under a blanket. We figured it might have been some sort of dare.
32. A Dinner Date is a Dinner Date
I used to work at a Burger King in a sort of poor part of town. About twice a week, a man (probably in his mid-30s) with crooked teeth, a lazy eye, and a hillbilly accent would pull up in a really old beater and get three orders of value chicken nuggets (12 nuggets) with BBQ sauce, a large fry, and two large Sprites. This wouldn't seem very odd except for the fact that, in the passenger seat, was a blow-up doll.
Whom he talked to, and frequently asked, "Ya wan anythin elz?" It was incredibly weird, like a real-life version of Lars and the Real Girl: Hillbilly Edition.
33. Hold Your “Horses,” I Beg You
We used to have a guy who would order every so often. When he drove up, he wasn't even wearing pants or underwear just had a tiny washcloth over his junk. We also had people ride through on horses.
34. Got Your Goat
I guess this kind of counts. When I worked at a small-town McDonalds, one morning our first customer through the drive thru reported to us that there was a goat’s head on top of our drive through speaker out back. When the store manager went and checked, sure enough, there was a severed goats head on top of the drive-thru speaker.
Him and the maintenance guy cleaned it up. Still have no idea who did it or why, the manager didn't call the cops because he didn't want to give the culprits the publicity.
35. Alternative Definitions to “Horny”
Not a drive-through worker, but I have a story. One time I pulled up behind a large SUV at a drive-through. The SUV was rocking back and forth and there were these weird moaning sounds coming from the back. My friend and I just glanced at each other but didn't say anything. Then this grotesque, horned face appears in the back window, looks at us coldly, and says "Baaaaaahh!" The SUV was full of goats.
36. Picky Eaters Shouldn’t Park
The people are weirder than any object in a vehicle. Arguing with me whether or not eggs are in our milkshakes because "I'm a vegetarian for two days, but I guess I don't want to eat something healthy like salad, and I can't have eggs." No, our shakes don't have eggs. "Really?" Yes, really. "Why is that information not on your menu?"
Okay, do you want to speak to the manager? Rambles to my manager about our ingredients and that nutrition brochure she was handed can't be trusted because the FDA is corrupt. Another time she came through and asked us if we would bake her fries (with her Big Mac meal!) in the oven because fried food is unhealthy.
I don't care if people have messy cars as long as they aren't really weird themselves.
37. A Killer Customer
I worked in a drive-thru coffee house all through college. Tons of weird stuff happened; we were on the outskirts of town. But the all-time creepies: a guy came through in a clearly stolen car. He was absolutely filthy and started yelling about Columbine; he wouldn't leave for the longest time. Was an all-around weird customer.
A few days later, I'm bringing in the newspapers, and this guy's face is splashed across the front. Turns out he went on a killing spree, killing someone in Arizona and a few people in Idaho. He came through just 15 or so minutes before the last murder. A crazy murderer came through my drive-thru minutes before he committed his last murder.
A few people have asked for the guy's name, it's John Delling. I'm on my phone and having trouble linking to the article, but he's super easy to find on Google.
38. Now That’s What I Call a Doggy Bag
A bunch of nuns getting ice cream. It was cute. Worst was probably a drunk lady talking to her dog and to herself, like screaming at her dog. Went around the building a few times until the cops came. Not a cop, but at my last job where I was a manager, I did get a drunk lady arrested when she came through my drive through twice.
We used to have a second drive-thru lane until a drunk driver smashed it, and one of my crew noticed a car was just chilling there. A few minutes later one of my crew grabs me and says this lady is at the window and not talking to them. Headed to the drive-thru window to see this lady yelling at someone and I try to get her attention—she just mumbles and grabs a bottle out of one of those liquor store bags and puts it on her seat.
Then she drives away before I can get her plate number. Two hours later, I’m on the phone with another manager and my crew grabs me saying the lady is back—this time she’s actually talking, mumbling about an order that didn’t match anything on the screen. So, I told her to park where we have people wait if they have a large order, and she just nods and heads there without paying.
Until then, I wasn’t entirely sure if she was drunk or mentally ill, so I called the cops. Just as a cruiser pulled in, she drove out of the spot and around to the drive-thru again, so I point her car out to him, and he pulls her over at the drive-thru window and she stumbles out. Turns out the person I thought she was yelling at earlier was her little dog—this cute little pug.
Wound up having two cop cars, a tow truck, and animal control to take care of this lady. I felt so bad for the poor little dog! One of the cops asked if we had anything for the dog and she wound up feeding him French fries! Not really healthy for the dog—the animal control guy wasn’t too happy apparently—but it was super cute.
39. Every Meal Comes to an End, After All
Thankfully, I did not have to truly see this extra passenger. We had a funeral home close to our store, and their less sociable “prep people” would come through our drive-thru regularly in the large van we ALL knew transported the bodies. A handful of times, she brought the actual freaking hearse through but swore the casket in the back was empty.
You could see she adored the attention and questions and it was genuinely uncomfortable to talk with her. Only thing I can say I'm grateful for is that she didn't park in one of the carhop stalls—just a general vibe of "Nah, I don't need a reminder of where this patty melt is going to land me."
40. Eating for Two
A lady in labor, in the driver's seat, by herself, ordering food. She was literally having contractions and doing the weird breathing thing that women are supposed to do to help with the pain. She said she was on the way to the hospital, but she wanted to get a burger, fries, and a soda before she went. There wasn't even anyone with her, that lady drove herself to the hospital while having contractions and chowing down on a dang burger.
41. Revenge is a Dish Best Served Hot
A relative of mine was working the drive-thru at a certain McRestaurant in the early 80s, it was the morning shift, and there had been a few sightings over the summer of "the flasher,” a man who would expose himself from his convertible in the drive-thru. The girl at the first window all but ran to the bin behind the counter and told the girls working that the flasher was in the drive-thru.
She said that he had handed her a bunch of change and that she had to count it, and could see it the entire time. His pants were around his ankles and he just stared at her. So, said relative on the second window handed the bags out the window to the flasher, who told her she forgot the coffee. So she went and grabbed the pot that was still brewing and poured a cup of the hottest, opting for no mercy.
She pretended to trip as she leaned out, saying "Here... whoops!" The scalding black coffee landed directly on the exposed groin, the flasher screamed and floored the gas, almost taking out the exit-sign by the driveway and ran a red light through an empty intersection…off into the sunrise, never to be seen again.
Sources: Reddit, ,
