Drive Thru Mania

Anyone who has worked in a retail store with a drive-thru knows where I'm coming from when I talk about it.

The drive-thru, the savior of customers, is the bane of our existence in a pharmacy and it's not difficult to understand why.

For one, most people who come through a pharmacy drive-thru expect it to be like McDonald's. Pull up, tell us what you want, and we bring it to you in less than 5 minutes and everyone's happy. The reality of the situation never seems to occur to these people and the looks of disbelief when we tell them it's not going to be right away is pretty regular.

Some are downright shocked when we can't just hand them that tube of cream that the doctor prescribed (although this scenario also applies to inside the store as well).

It also seems the people who don't need to use a drive-thru (young, healthy, fully capable of coming inside the store adults) are the ones who use it the most while the ones who should (that old man who can barely walk with his cane) never do. I've had plenty of seniors tell me how much they hate coming through the drive-thru while I've had plenty of young adults tell me how much they hate coming inside. Weird, right?

Welfare recipients are also very guilty of the drive-thru, although they're usually a blessing since it keeps their 7 screaming children inside the van/truck/small car instead of in the store where they can wreak real havoc.

This leads me to the two cars I had the other night at my retail job. The first car was a hispanic man with his very white girlfriend/wife/lover/illegitimate child with an entire backseat full of kids. He was driving, but never said a word to me, instead choosing to look at the woman next to him to do the talking. This isn't all that unusally other than the fact that he wouldn't even look in my direction. Even at the end of the transaction when most people would at least say thank you, he just took the bag, still refusing to look my way, and peeled off.

The next car was a woman on her cell phone.

You want to talk about things that grate on my nerves, it's coming through the drive-thru while on your phone, then looking at me like I need to wait for you to finish what you are talking about. Meanwhile, the line of cars behind this person is growing and growing.

This woman wasn't so bad because at least she made the person she was talking to wait while she told me what she was looking for. She even bothered to thank me in between talking about someone's electric bill trouble.

The drive-thru just isn't my friend. I never liked it and doubt I will. It breeds even more laziness and contempt than there already is and let's face, this society doesn't need anymore laziness.