hey guys!!!! so....everything is going great with me! Leo and I are doing absolutely amazing, and if its possible to love him even more than before...then i do! I'd like to direct my rambling rant today to something we are all familiar with. Being Americans, we are very familiar with fast food, and therefore, the drive-thru. Now we have all been through the drive-thru at many fast food joints before, but have you ever been the one taking the order, the one who has to put up with some of the most annoying human behavior renewed by a separate customer every 30 seconds? Let me help you guys learn the best way to handle being in a drive-thru so you can understand what annoys you about drive-thru order takers, and you can find out just how annoying you really are :) To make this easy let me list some things that annoy us (the order taker) and then some things that annoy you about us and why that happens.
Things that annoy us:
1. You pull up to the drive thru and we say "hi! how ya doin today?" and then........nothing. we say "hello?" about 5 times in the next minute and no one answers. Then all the sudden we hear, "i want 5 crunchy tacos..." like you just pulled up and you didnt leave us waiting for a few minutes when we could have been doing something our manager asked but we had to hang on to your every word (or lack thereof). And we know you're there, we have cameras pointing right at the drive-thru, and we can hear your engine running. All we ask is you say "yea just give me a minute" or "just a sec" or something.
2. You pull up and you're 10 feet away from the screen. I know you think we've got some magic technology that allows us to hear you ordering like a timid squeaking mouse, but let me assure you, we don't.
3. We understand you've got annoying people or kids in your car that change their minds 5 times before they know what they want, but try not to tell us until you're as sure as you can be, we're very flexible, and we try to be as understanding as possible.
4. You get to the window and decide you want to give us the 4.97 cents in exact change when we're in the middle of the lunch or dinner rush and there are 5 angry people in cars behind you. its fine if you've got the change ready, but not if you pull up to the window, look for your wallet, and then proceed to count out 97 cents in 6 dimes, 2 nickels, and 17 pennies.
5. Finally along those lines, we hand you your food and your change and then you sit there and look through the bag to make sure we didn't screw up or to spend 2 minutes to put your wallet in the exact spot you want it. Thats fine, we screw up quite frequently, but what you don't know is, we have a timer to time how long you are at the window, if it goes over 1 minute consistently, which it does often because you waste alot of our time, (don't worry I know you don't do it on purpose but this should help correct that) then we get yelled at by our manager, we don't get raises at the end of the year, and our boss doesn't get their bonus, meaning we have to put up with their unhappiness when its not our fault. When you pull up to the window, your car is over this little box that marks where the censor for the timer is. Just pull up about 10 extra feet, and if we mess up your order, either go through the drive-thru again and tell us, or run in real quick (you don't even have to wait in line inside, just walk straight up to the cashier) and we will give you your fixed food and if its at taco bell (where i work) we'll give you free cinnamon twists!! really, we always do that.

Things that annoy you about us and why they happen
1. you pull up to the drive thru and we don't answer for 10 seconds. wow! we're jerks! or our service just plain sucks (thats what you think) but heres what actually happened. we're on drive-thru alone, taking one persons order and running between two cash registers while we get your order and hand someone else their change, their food, and their drink. sometimes we have to manage three orders at once! or the pepsi ran out of syrup and everyone is running around too busy so we have to go change it. Heres what you can do: just say "hello?" and we'll probably say " im so sorry i'll be with you in just a moment" and there you go, problem solved
2. We ask you to repeat your order or we ask you to say that you wanted 2 tacos 5 times before we can understand you. Here's why: our headsets pick up every amount of outside noise and magnify it even more than your voice, so we hear, the wind, your engine, the sirens of the cops driving down the street, and your garbled voice. Its not that we don't want to hear you or that we're lazy, we just can't understand what your saying with all that backround noise, and its not our fault! so please please please try to be understanding. Don't get mad and curse at us and call us stupid f***ing idiots like that guy did to me yesterday
4. we are rude and act like we don't care about you or what you want. If you think so, COMPLAIN to the manager. Don't curse us out, cause if you do, it'll get you in trouble not us. If we were rude, tell the manager, and we'll get chewed out. Believe me its easier for you than if the manager has to tell you to leave without giving you your money back or has to call the cops because you threatened to hit us and then refused to leave the restaurant (that happened to me two weeks ago)
3. Any other reason we drive you crazy that i didn't think to mention? I guarantee the reason for that is what I explained at the end of number 1.

Thanks for listening! I did this for your benefit too, and hopefully you'll remember this in the future