Oh yeah, I wrote this.  Have I spent too much time working in food service?  Probably.


So, you've decided you're going to stop at your local fast-food joint. Here are a few pointers for those of you out there for whom common sense is not quite so common.
1. When ordering at the drive-through speaker, please make sure your windows are down. We cannot hear you through the glass.
2. Speak clearly and politely. "Please" and "thank you" get ever so much farther than "didn't you hear me the first time, you f***ing idiot?!?"
3. Please remember that not everybody who works at this location was necessarily born and raised in Canada and may therefore not be as proficient in English as their co-workers. Chill the fuck out, and be patient. In fact, they deserve a gold star for how much English they DO know. Having traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia and all over Europe, I can say English is a fucking hard language.
4. Didn't your mother teach you manners? Don't be rude to people who make your food. I judge people based on how they treat people who work in food service. Don't act like a dick.
5. If you're rude, we remember your face. We recognize your voice the second we hear it in our headsets. We recognize your order if it's something you order often. And we all find jobs that need doing RIGHT THAT SECOND, just so we can avoid dealing with you.
6. Not everybody who works in food service is an idiot, and they are most certainly not "beneath" you just because they're on the other side of the counter. If you came through and I was making your coffee, you'd get decaf instead of regular coffee for being such an asshole.
7. Please do not flirt with anyone working unless you are reasonably within their age bracket. And for the love of Christ, please don't be creepy about it. This means you, old men who flirt with obviously much younger girls and think you can get away with it.
8. I've been lucky enough to work for people who thought the customer was sometimes right, but they would still come down on the side of their employees. THE CUSTOMER IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT. Any good employer would rather lose your bit of petty cash than one of their employees. Insisting that the customer is always right earns you no points, and makes you look like a twat.
9. No, you cannot "add to your order" at the window. Stop asking, and don't whine about it. Put the big boy pants on, admit you forgot something, and go through the drive-through again rather than fuck up the times and orders of the people working inside.
10. We don't care why you're ordering what you're ordering. Just order, take your order, pay, and leave. We like serving you if you're nice and if you're cool, but we have other people to deal with besides you.
11. I don't give a rat flying ass if you're having a bad day. Don't take it out on the people who are working.
12. If we tell you we don't carry something, don't have a hissy fit. Say something like "whoops, my mistake, thought you carried that here" and pick something else.
13. IF YOU HAVE A HUGE ORDER, DON'T GO IN THE DRIVE-THROUGH. Park your car and walk your ass in. Trust us. It'll be faster and everybody will be happier.
14. Do you know how fucking fast we have to work in drive-through? We're working double-speed because our bosses have told us that we have to try and keep each order, no matter how big it is, at a specific time. We get our asses chewed out if our times are high. Be nice.
15. The person at the counter does not have control over what our prices are or what we have on the menu or how things are run unless they are the boss or supervisor. If you have an issue, take it up with management.
16. As hard as it may be to believe, if you asked for a specific order and a mistake was made, chances are we didn't mean it unless you were being a dick. If a mistake was made, POLITELY inform us of the fact.
17. We will not throw out your garbage for you at the drive-through window. Don't ask us to.
18. To our nice regulars- we love you. People like you make it easy to get through the day.
19. We are not psychic. Do not assume we know what you want.
20. DRIVE-THROUGH GETS PRIORITY. That's not our decision. That's by order of our management. If there are people at the counter and someone comes in drive-through and we don't have enough people on at the time, don't bitch. We'll get to you in time. We'd rather not get yelled at by our management for not adhering to store policy.
21. If ordering a hot drink, please do not throw it through the window at the people working in drive-through if it's not what you ordered. Believe it or not, you can get burned from having boiling hot coffee thrown at your face.
22. Hand us your money nicely. Don't throw it.
23. Please, for the love of God, know the differences between the products and know what you're ordering.
24. Drive a diesel truck? We're sure it's nice. We're sure you're proud of it. But please turn that monster off when you get to the speaker. We can't hear your order with the engine running.
25. PUT YOUR CELL PHONE AWAY UNTIL YOU ARE DONE ORDERING AND HAVE LEFT THE DRIVE-THROUGH.
26. People who blow cigarette smoke directly in our faces at the window? Fuck you. You are at an air intake. Do not fucking smoke in the drive-through.
27. We can't really hear people who order from the passenger's side of the car. Let the driver make the order, as that person's voice will be easiest for us to hear.
28. Pull in close enough to the window that we can take your money and hand you your order. I've had to launch myself through the window with my co-worker holding my feet because some stuck-up broad didn't want to pull in closer and refused to even get out of her car to come over to the window. She just sat there, window down and hand out, looking disgusted.

This probably looks like it's a lot longer than it needs to be. But I've worked in food service for far too long - these are deserved for the outstanding idiots out there that the underpaid people behind the counter are forced to deal with on a daily basis.