Things Nice People Already Know: Drive-Through Etiquette
Mamacita says: Oh, I know. I’ve ranted about this before. But after waiting behind some old man in the pharmacy drive-through for maybe six days? until I gave up, parked, and went inside, I decided to rant about it again. Or maybe it’s because I wasn’t able to get lunch all last week and this because the drive-through lines were so long and mainly full of families with all the time in the world who decided they were hungry right at prime-time working-people lunch times.
Yes, I should have packed a sandwich to eat on my 90 minute one-way commute, but I was counting on the milk of human kindness and common sense, neither of which was in evidence at the drive-throughs I had to pass by.
Drive-throughs are for convenience and SPEED, preferably both at once. If you are using it only for your personal convenience, I might be writing about you tonight.
Honest to boo, why is the concept of the drive-through so difficult for some people to comprehend? I don’t care if it’s a fast-food drive-through, the bank’s drive-through, the library drive-through, the pharmacy drive-through, or a bill-paying drive-through. Even those little islands at the post office where you drive up and drop your mail through the slot counts as a drive-through. And, every one of those drive-throughs has the same problem: some people don’t know how to use a drive-through.
Rule #1 – You are supposed to be ready before you pull up to the speaker. Sorry, kids, no changing-the-mind once the driver’s window is facing the speaker. Carved in stone. None of this pulling up to the speaker and THEN turning around to see what everybody wants. No, no, no, no, no. Period. Of course, if you’re the only car there, that’s different. It’s still rude, but at least you’re not trampling on anyone else’s time and patience. If you’re pulling up to the Post Office slot, don’t set the brake and commence writing checks and putting stamps on envelopes. Do that at home before you leave and have the whole pile ready to drop into the slot. Done right, you won’t even have to come to a full stop. The busy people behind you will love you. This holds true for the drive-in bank, too. Don’t pull up to the window and THEN start filling out deposit slips and signing checks. Do that before you leave the house, match everything together, and when you pull up to the window, smile at the harried teller who’s had to put up with all kinds of rude procrastinating customers today and hand her your completed bankwork. You’ll zip in and out in no time, and, again, the busy people behind you will try to describe you and your car to God when they’re at prayer that night, for extra blessings.
Rule #2 – No special orders at the drive-through window. They take longer and they hold up the line and that’s singularly unfair to the people behind you. If someone in your car must have mayonnaise and lettuce, hold the ketchup, you need to go inside. And if it’s rush hour, ie prime mealtime, you should just go home. A McDonald’s hamburger comes with certain things on it. If you don’t like McDonald’s hamburgers, go somewhere else. Or come back when there’s nobody in line.
Rule #3 – If it’s a work day for most people, and you’re off for whatever reason, don’t pile the kids in the van and go eat in a busy restaurant during prime lunch time. You’ve got all day, but the people behind you, frantically checking their watches, only have about twenty minutes. Step aside. If you’re not working that day, take the kids to lunch after prime lunch time is over. Working people with short lunch times will thank you, and what difference does it make if your kids’ nap and lunch time are a little weird a time or two a week? When I was home with my kids, I would NEVER have taken them to eat right when all the busy working people needed that time. I waited until after their rush was over. Inside or drive-through: let the people who have the least time go first.
Rule #4 – Don’t abuse the drive-through window. If you’re picking up prescription medicine at the pharmacy window, don’t ask the pharmacist to please run clear to the other side of the store and grab a gallon of 2% milk for you. Go inside.
Rule #5 – Most of these rules apply only to those busiest times of the day. If you’re pulling up to the drive-through at 2:30, a.m. or p.m., chances are there’s nobody waiting behind you. Do whatever you want.
Rule #6 – Because I said so. And, because it’s just basic human decency. Good manners. Etiquette. That’s why.
Rule #7 – If I’m in a drive-through line at 12:30 p.m., and that’s you in front of me with the four special burger orders, the Happy Meal Toy special requests, the french fries with no salt, and the chocolate shake split into five small cups, I probably loathe you. And rightfully so.
And now I’m hungry. It’s ten thirty p.m. so there probably won’t be a line. Not that it matters, because I NEVER go through the drive-through with a special order, even at ten thirty. The person behind me might really need to get somewhere.
As for the special orders, I do have one when we go to Burger King, but if it’s prime time I just suck it up. Because I have manners, and consideration for busy working people with short lunch times, and did I mention basic good MANNERS?
These are such small things to make so many people happy. And if you’re sitting there reading this all in a huff and thinking, “WELL. I’ll have her know that a drive-through is there for MY convenience!” then you’re probably a person in need of some drive-through etiquette.
P.S. If you’re in Indiana, where people are still allowed to stink up the whole place and give innocent people lung cancer smoke in restaurants, have the decency to NOT plop your fine self down beside or near children and present yourself as a bad example of humanity where they have to breathe in your stench.
P.P.S. The old guy who had decided to pitch a tent and live at the drive-through window was STILL THERE when I was leaving the parking lot. He had waited until it was his turn and everybody was waiting for him, to hunt through his wallet and his pockets for all of his insurance cards, checkbook, discount tag, coupon, etc. And yes, it took him that long to locate everything. Was he a sweet old man who was just confused? No. He was a rude beast. He should have been ready before he pulled up to the window, and when he realized he was going to be a while, he should have gone inside.
As nice, polite people do.
Reality TV vs. Education. And Testicles.
Mamacita says: With a universe full of wonders out there, at our fingertips and just a little bit beyond, how can so many people be content sitting around watching fake people’s lives on TV instead of getting up, walking out the door, and adding a few wonders to that universe, themselves?
I don’t get it.
Sure, there’s some great TV out there, but an awful lot of people spend an awful lot of time staring at crazy people: hoarders, teen whores, neighborhood slut conventions, adulterers, moochers, drunks, druggies, criminals, hillapes. . . . not but what the occasional peek through the insane asylum window isn’t a hoot sometimes, but regularly? Really?
Turn off the TV and go outside. Seriously. The kidnappers and murderers aren’t waiting out there to getcha, but the stars and planets are, and so is the moon. And on the nights when the moon can’t be there, the stars shine all that much brighter to make up for it.
Every star cluster – constellation – has a story for you. It’s not possible to talk about the night sky without talking about the ancient myths, and the people who believed in them. No TV show, however slutty and insane it might be, can begin to compare with the stories the night sky can tell you. Mythology is the best soap opera you could ever imagine.
Wake your kids in the middle of the night and take them outside. Encourage them to look up. Point out the difference between the stars and the planets. Talk to them about the moon and its phases, and how the word “moon” and the word “month” share the same root. Talk to them about the tides, because you can’t talk about the sea without talking about the moon.
Learning is about making connections. The more you know, the more you will be able to learn. Try to learn at least one new, cool word every day. Learn it thoroughly. Learn its history; many words, like many people, have fascinating histories.
Peninsula. Testimony. Um, you might want to wait until your kids are a little older before you encourage them to make THOSE connections. Then again, why not give ’em a giggle?
Admit it. You’re picturing a map of the United States right now, in your head, and you’re looking at Florida in a whole new way. And you will, for the rest of your life, associate it with the root (heh) word of peninsula. And also, you now know what that root word means. Got a pen in your hand? Pencil? Again, heh.
I’m not going to tell you anything about testimony. Look it up for yourself. It’ll be worth your time and trouble. Also? If you’re ever in court, you’ll probably be fined for contempt because you won’t be able to stop giggling.
Snookie is just slutty and stupid. The teen moms are quite possibly the worst role models EVER, and aimed at an audience that is, at least most of them, not yet able to distinguish pathetic losers from cool kids their age getting their 15 minutes in. As for shows featuring hoarders, swamp people, and bridezillas, well, I suppose it’s the modern equivalent of a circus freak show.
You know. Like a train wreck, which we’d give anything NOT to happen, but since it did, we can’t take our eyes off it.
Sad. But I wonder how many of these people would shape up a little if they weren’t experiencing their truckload of freebies and their 15 minutes. . . . .
Lights. Camera. Action. ATTENTION. MONEY. Not to mention sick, sad, horrible grammar.
I suppose reality TV is a kind of education. For some, it’s inspiration to get their own sick lives on camera, and for others, it’s proof that they really do need to stay in school lest they end up another bad example for the universe. Laughing stock doesn’t make nourishing soup.
Quotation Saturday: The Snarky Arts
Mamacita says: Ah, the Arts. Without them, we’d all spend our money on Flintstones mudflaps, gas station black velvet Elvises, Billy Ray Cyrus, ceramic geese (seasonal clothing extra) and anything with Lindsey Lohan, and think THAT was art. Sadly, some people think so now. (Be still, my achy breaky heart. . . .)
Hopefully (that’s for you, Erik Deckers!) you all have also noticed that artists are 
quite possibly the snarkiest of them all. Magic mirrors across the nation agree. OF THEM ALL!
What could be better than snarky art? Let me know if you think of anything. (Food doesn’t count.) (Unless it’s deep-dish Sicilian pizza from Grecco’s.) (Which trumps everything else.)
1. Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands – and all you have to do is scratch it. –Thomas Beecham (to a cellist)
2. Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique. –Peter Ustinov
3. Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour. –Gioacchino Rossini
4. Parsifal is the kind of opera that starts at six o’clock. After it has been going three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20. –David Randolph
5. All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song. –Louis Armstrong
6. Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian. –H.L. Mencken
7. It is a pity that the composer did not leave directions as to how flat he really did want it sung. –Anon.
8. Mine was the kind of piece in which nobody knew what was going on, including the composer, the conductor and the critics. Consequently I got pretty good notices. -Oscar Levant
9. Most rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read. –Frank Zappa
10. “Classic.” A book which people praise and don’t read. –Mark Twain
11. There is a great deal of difference between the eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read. –G.K. Chesterton
12. He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it. –Joseph Heller
13. I don’t care what is written about me as long as it isn’t true. –Dorothy Parker
14. Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round. –David Lodge
15. I’ve read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free. –John Barrymore
16. When I want to read a novel, I write one. –Benjamin Disraeli
17. Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split. –Raymond Chandler
18. Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts. –Jeffrey Robinson
19. Yeats is becoming so aristocratic, he’s evicting imaginary tenants. –Oliver St. John Gogarty
20. What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke? –Gore Vidal
21 An incinerator is a writer’s best friend. –Thornton Wilder
22. I’ve just read that I am dead. Don’t forget to delete me from your list of subscribers. –Rudyard Kipling (writing to a magazine that had published his obituary a little too soon)
23. Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. –Stephen Hawking
24. I am the most spontaneous speaker in the world because every word, every gesture, and every retort has been carefully rehearsed. –George Bernard Shaw
25. It is all very well to be able to write books, but can you waggle your ears? –J.M. Barrie (to H.G. Wells)
26. The covers of this book are too far apart. –Ambrose Bierce
27. The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid stable business. –John Steinbeck
28. He directed rehearsals with all the airy deftness of a rheumatic deacon producing Macbeth for a church social. –Noel Coward
29. From the moment I picked your book up until the moment I put it down I could not stop laughing. Someday I hope to read it. –Groucho Marx
30. An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children. -Benjamin Disraeli
31. I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tel me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974. –Jeffrey Bernard
32. I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or to do in half a dozen lifetimes. –J.B. Priestley
33. They told me how Mr. Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right. –Winston Churchill
34. The humour of Dostoevsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog’s tail. –W. Somerset Maugham
35. The Compleat Angler is acknowledged to be one of the world’s books. Only the trouble is that the world doesn’t read its books; it borrows a detective story instead. –Stephen Leacock
36. If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism. If you steal form many, it’s research. –Wilson Mizner
37. Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction. –Adlai Stevenson
38. My favorite poem is the one that starts “thirty days hath September” because it actually tells you something. –Groucho Marx
39. There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk. –Charles Dickens
40. Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing. –Ralph Richardson
41. The play was a great success, but the audience was a total failure. –Oscar Wilde
42. She took her curtain calls as though she had just been un-nailed from the cross. –Noel Coward (of Edith Evans)
43. We are paid to have dirty minds. –John Trevelyan (film censor)
44. Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award. –Billy Wilder
45. There was laughter in the back of the theatre, leading to the belief that someone was telling jokes back there. –George S. Kaufman
46. Try the cock, Albert. It’s a delicacy, and you know where it’s been. –Helen Mirren, at dinner in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
47. I grew up with six brothers. That’s how I learned to dance – waiting for the bathroom. –Bob Hope
48. I didn’t like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions – the curtain was up. –Groucho Marx
49. A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad. –Sam Goldwyn
50. Days off. –Spencer Tracy, when asked what he looked for in a film script.
