Fast food ordering lingo

[susnfx]

The other day I heard an exchange between the employee at McDonald's and the drive-thru customer:

Customer: "Could I get a cheeseburger and a Sprite?"

Employee: "Did you say fries?"

Customer: "No. A Sprite."

Employee: "French fries or a Sprite?"

Customer: "A SPRITE!"

Usually when I have this problem I say "a Sprite DRINK."

Susan

[Lambchop]

I always begin with "Could I have . . . " and, if it's an ice-cream cone, they occasionally tell me "No."

I'd rather begin with "Might I have . . . " but they never understand what I'm saying.

[Flyingcursor]

My wife was a manager at McDonalds for six years. She used to always bitch about how people couldn't talk properly at the drive through then get mad. I told her they ought to fix the damn speakers.

Working at McDonalds is a real pain in the butt. Especially if your a manager. First you always have to work when little Jimmy can't come in because he's too hungover from his prom night. The days when you need the most help nobody wants to work. You have to hire and fire on a daily basis. Then you have to deal with idiots who never actually worked for a living and treat you like untermenchen. There are four school buses that stop buy with 60 kids each and no notice and the guardians get pissed because all their special orders aren't done in 20 seconds.
The kid who takes a dump all over the playland and his mom is pissed because her fries got cold while waiting for you to clean up after her misbehaved crotch spawn.

My wife had headaches, backaches, earaches and fingernail aches. She was pissy and moody and bitchy and a pain in the butt. She reached the last straw when her brother died and her manager said she couldn't take time off for the funeral. I said, "Quit. Quit now. No notice, no two weeks. Screw those *(&(*(&" She did. It's amazing how happy she suddenly became.

[mutepointe]

i am a northerner who is transplanted to the south. the manners down here never cease to amaze me. i took a young boy that i know through the taco bell drive through. when the intercom said, "how are you today?" he naturally responded, "fine, and how are you?" i guess the intercom person was a northerner too because it really threw him off.

[WyoBadger]

Another fine answer to "Is that everything?" is "Well, yes, not counting all the things I stuffed in my pockets."

I always try to be nice to employees, having spent a very long summer several years ago working at Arbys, and several more enjoyable summers cooking at real restaurants. I don't have a lot of patience for outright rude people, but having been there does make one a bit more understanding. Jobs like that sort of suck the life out of your brain cells.

By the way, I feel sad for those of you who are going to McD's to satisfy a hamburger craving. My poor, misguided friends, life is too short to eat mass-produced, rubber-stamped, factory-farmed mystery meat. Even as I type, I am waiting for the charcoal to heat up, having today thawed out a package of extra lean, locally raised, grass-fed burger. The griddle is warming up to toast an onion bun from the local bakery. Onions and tomatoes from our garden will be involved. You shall be in my thoughts and prayers.

Tom

[susnfx]

By the way, I feel sad for those of you who are going to McD's to satisfy a hamburger craving. My poor, misguided friends, life is too short to eat mass-produced, rubber-stamped, factory-farmed mystery meat. Even as I type, I am waiting for the charcoal to heat up, having today thawed out a package of extra lean, locally raised, grass-fed burger. The griddle is warming up to toast an onion bun from the local bakery. Onions and tomatoes from our garden will be involved. You shall be in my thoughts and prayers.

I don't have a grill, my tomato plants gave up the ghost last week, and I don't want an entire pound of hamburger (the way it's packaged at the stores now). I just want a bit of burger NOW.

That said, however, your post took me back fondly to my childhood when we barbecued hamburgers with our neighbors. Kids running around in the summer twilight, parents sitting on the patio sipping Wilford's homemade wine, burgers and buns on the grill, huge purple onions sitting on the table waiting to be slapped on the buns. And always as a side: sliced cucumbers soaking in vinegar. Yum! Ah, the olden days...

Susan

[rebl_rn]

Hmmm. I've never really thought too much about what I say, but I think I just say, "I'll have......". Sometimes I say Hi first. Sometimes the worker starts out with a variation of "Hi, how are you today?" and I just say "fine" or "ok" and then proceed with my order.

[T-Reds]

I always use please and thank you, and even smile and occasionally wave good by the people at drive throughs. They deal with a lot of people who treat them like an ATM machine and I hope it makes them feel good know someone is recognizing them as being a real person.

That is until I'm a mile down the road and I realize the little pimply faced $%^*^% has found a way to mess up a #4 with Coke and I know he understood me because I saw the correct order on the monitor.

I extend the same courtesy to check out people in the grocery store, as said before they work a lot harder for less money than I do. Worked in a convenience store to put myself through University and I hated it when people treated me like a dispenser. However it made my whole day when more than one person came in and actually took the small amount of time to make me feel like real person.

Again as in everything there are exceptions, like the person behind the counter who looks at you like you are intruding on something important because they were talking to their coworker, chewing gum, not ever even looking at you until everything is rung in. Then they ask me if I found everything I was looking for ......I sometimes tell them no.......I missed the courtesy, and don't need the items you just rang in, and walk out.

Treat others the way you would like to be treated it makes the world a much nicer place.

[Tony]

At drive-thrus, if I say, "...and a milk," the order-taker invariably replies, "Did you say a Coke?". For some reason there's no confusion if I say, "...and a milk, please." I have no idea.

I worked with a South African guy who had a really wierd way to pronounce "Coke"
No one could understand him (I suppose unless they were from South Africa) He caught-on pretty quick after a few attempts and asked for "Pepsi"
The person taking the order said: We only have Coke here
He replied: OK, I'll take it!

[FJohnSharp]

It would be good for all of us to simply remember always to be kinder to the people who work cash registers, fast food microphones, and similar jobs. They work harder than most of us have to, and I daresay they make much less money. To be ridiculed for asking the questions they're taught to ask accomplishes absolutely nothing. Kindness is the word of the day and it travels much farther (in both directions) than condescension.

If someone is making an earnest effort to do his job--he gets all my respect. Once he shows me he doesn't care about me or his job, he's given me permission to give whatever hard time comes to mind.

[TheSpoonMan]

I asnwered the first, but usually it's soemthing more colloquial such as "Yeah, I'd like", "Hey, I'd like". I use "could I get" about as much tho.

[gonzo914]

You folks all realize, don't you, that you are not all that far away from having your Big Mac order taken by someone in Bangalore? The technology is close, if not there. McDonald's already outsouces drive-through order taking to North Dakota for some units in Washington and Oregon. They say it's to improve service, but the real reason is that wages in North Dakota are lower.

Yes, even our crappy minimum wage jobs will be going overseas. If you liked it with your computer, you'll love it with your Big Mac.

[fearfaoin]

My wife was a manager at McDonalds for six years. She used to always bitch about how people couldn't talk properly at the drive through then get mad. I told her they ought to fix the damn speakers.

This brings up a pet peave of mine. When someone is using a
cell phone, or ordering at a drive through, and is misunderstood,
that person seems to want to talk louder and louder. This actually
makes the situation much worse, technologically. It is a simple fact
of the physical world that microphones have a volume limit above
which they loose much of their frequency response. We call that
"clipping", and it causes a lot more distortion to be heaped upon
the poor listener at the other end, which makes the words even
harder to understand. So, the trick is to NOT raise your voice.

Instead, if you find you are not being understood, you should
speak slowly and enunciate well, and here's the most important
part: separate your words. If your words do not have enough separ-
ation when they leave your mouth, then they're going to run together
even worse when they emit from a loudspeaker. This goes double
for cell phones, which digitally encode your voice before sending it
hurtling through the air, and therefore lose some of the information.
Please teach your children, folks. I think this should be mandatory
training at all restaurants with a drive through. There should be
public service announcements. I want to strangle people who yell
into cell phones, while yelling, "You're just making it worse, idiot!"

[Cynth]

Well, yeah, if you actually need to speak more softly so someone can hear you I think putting up a sign would be a good idea. This idea wouldn't really have occurred to me. "Please speak softly and distinctly when ordering!" See, I wouldn't really be able to deal with that. That's why I just go inside and order. How softly would too softly be? How separated should each word be? Like a robot would talk? I would just be a wreck .

[fearfaoin]

Well, yeah, if you actually need to speak more softly so someone can hear you I think putting up a sign would be a good idea. This idea wouldn't really have occurred to me. "Please speak softly and distinctly when ordering!" See, I wouldn't really be able to deal with that. That's why I just go inside and order. How softly would too softly be?

You don't need to speak softly, you just have to use a normal speaking
voice. You can even raise your voice a little, but if you're yelling, that's
just counterproductive.

How separated should each word be? Like a robot would talk?

Just enough so that the words are clearly delineated. You don't
have to sound like a robot, but if you say "IWOULDLIKEABIGMAC,
PLEASE" it's not going to go well. The trick is to try speaking like
you normally do, then if the person doesn't understand you, try
separating and enunciating until you are understood (instead of
yelling until you are blue in the face). Relax, Cynth there's not that
much pressure. It's just a burger.