Slow Food

Something you already knew: fast food is getting slower.

As if the fast-food industry doesn't have enough headaches, now it's got a new one: It's getting too slow.

Never mind that its first name is "fast." The amount of time that consumers are spending waiting in lines at fast-food drive-thru windows is getting longer, not shorter, mostly due to the growing complexity of new products that the major fast-food chains are selling.

Don't you just love it when you pull up to the billboard-sized menu and 1.5 seconds later the impatient button pusher is squawking at you to order? Gimme a second, cupcake; I just got here. I can't digest War and Peace in one-and-a-half seconds.

I commonly see two problems that slow down drive-thru times, both of them related to the entitlement mentality: picky eaters and swarm feeders.

I suppose I'm as far from a picky eater as you can get, so perhaps my perspective is a bit harsh, but it drives me nuts when I get behind somebody who wants to step through a yes/no list of fifteen different condiments and toppings. It's a bottom-end hamburger, sweet cheeks; pick a number and go. If you absolutely must get your Big Mac with seedless buns, one pickle, no special sauce, romaine lettuce, and half a slice of skim cheese... GO HOME AND MAKE IT YOURSELF. It's McDonald's for fucks sake, not the bloody Waldorf.

Swarm feeders: these are the people who have eight orders to place, all to be paid separately, but they're too fucking lazy to get out of their car. They're the same people who roll a basket full of groceries up to the 12 Items or Less express lane at the supermarket. And they need to be beaten. Hard and repeatedly.