Drive-throughs are too much work

Which fast-food restaurant has the speediest drive-through?

Honestly, this was not a question that has been burning a hole in my frontal lobe, but this week The Washington Post’s data analyst answered it anyway. The winner — to save you from reading this whole essay if you prefer to move on to something else — is Taco Bell. No surprise there. How long can it take to reheat Southwest-seasoned cat food?

But I am interested in this report because American sloth is a phenomenon that fascinates me no end. This is not at all to judge; I too avail myself of every available shortcut, because as the late Junior Sample once said, “Work, well, that just kills me.”

For example, I don’t know for a fact that Junior Sample is dead, but anyone who weighed in at 400 pounds back in the ’70s probably lacked a certain long-term physiological durability. But it would be too much effort to look it up, so Junior, if you’re still hanging in, my apologies. I’m sure you would understand.

Naturally in a nation where we do all we can to avoid the back-breaking work of getting up to change the thermostat or bending over to put on our shoes, of course we were quick to adapt drive-through technology.

I grew up in a town that had no fast-food restaurant, so as teenagers we had to drive 26 miles to get to a McDonald’s. And hold onto your hats, kids, because we had to physically get out of the car and walk 100 feet into the building. My first visit, at age 15 with six other kids, was a terrifying experience because I had no idea what to do.

I was unaccustomed to the concept of giving hamburgers names, so I didn’t know for a fact a “Big Mac” was food. Similarly, I shied away from ordering an apple pie because I thought you’d get, well, an entire apple pie. So I just parroted the order of the kid in front of me in order to avoid any sort of fast-food faux pas that would have made the rounds at high school and cost me no small amount of hard-earned teenage social capital.

They tacked on a drive-through to this McDonald’s a few years later — an ungainly prototype that somewhat resembled the sidecar on a motorcycle. It almost felt like cheating. Like you were jobbing the system by sidestepping the line inside.

The first drive-throughs, no surprise, were California concoctions, and you would actually drive through — as in, straight into the restaurant through a garage door. This changes with two-way speakerbox technology c. 1951, and you can find some really creepy photos of the first Jack In the Box drive-through, with a disheveled clown doll atop a speakerbox with the words “Jack will speak to you.” If you were a child, no way this isn’t traumatizing. I’m sure there are still some California septuagenarians who twitch anytime someone asks if they want a burger.

It is odd to me — although maybe it shouldn’t be in a nation where no one ever shuts up — that we find talking easier than doing. It takes half the time to push a button on a remote than it does to explain to a smart TV what you want to watch, but that’s the way we’ve been trained.

I have a major psychotic hatred of talking to inanimate objects, so I always go inside. I am also unskilled at making snap decisions and visit these places infrequently enough that I don’t remember/keep up with menu changes, so it takes me a while to read over the menu and decide what I want, and in the fast-food drive-through ecosystem there is no greater sin.

You know exactly what I’m talking about, If the car in front of you sits there for more than 15 seconds, then it’s because the driver is a MORON who can’t place his STUPID ORDER by speaking into the STUPID BOX and getting his STUPID FOOD so he can go back to his STUPID HOUSING PROJECT (probably) where he’ll glom his STUPID sandwich in front of his STUPID SHE’S THE SHERIFF RERUNS.

Call me lazy, but I’d rather just stay home and cook.