There is a very specific form of temporary brain failure that only occurs when you pull up to a drive-thru speaker.
You can be a perfectly capable adult for the rest of the day. You can hold conversations, attend meetings, remember passwords, deal with bills and successfully operate a motor vehicle. You might even have rehearsed your food order for the previous fifteen minutes. You know exactly what you want. You’ve discussed it with everyone in the car. You’ve checked the menu online. You’ve mentally repeated the order at least four times while sitting in the queue. There is absolutely no conceivable reason for anything to go wrong. Then you reach the little black speaker, a voice crackles through it and says, “Hi, can I take your order?” and suddenly you no longer speak English. Everything you knew about communication disappears. The word “chips” leaves your vocabulary entirely. You stare helplessly at the brightly illuminated menu as though you’ve never encountered food before and respond with the confident opening statement: “Erm… yeah… can I have… one of the… erm…” Brilliant. You’ve been preparing for this moment since you joined the queue and somehow you’ve been defeated by a box with a microphone in it.
The strangest part is that you’ve already decided what you want. This isn’t a genuine decision-making problem. You wanted the chicken burger meal. You’ve wanted the chicken burger meal since approximately three roundabouts ago. Yet the second somebody asks you to formally request it, you begin reconsidering your entire position. Your eyes suddenly start scanning the menu for alternatives you’ve never previously considered. What’s that wrap? Have they always done that wrap? Would you prefer nuggets? When did milkshakes become relevant? You don’t even particularly want a milkshake, but suddenly you’re investigating flavours while a queue of twelve cars waits behind you. Eventually you remember the original plan and say, “Can I get the chicken burger meal, please?” Success. Communication has been established. Then comes the devastating follow-up question: “What drink?” Of course. The drink. Somehow, despite ordering meals hundreds of times throughout your life, you’ve completely forgotten that drinks are involved. You turn towards the passenger as though seeking urgent advice from a senior government official. “What drink did I say?” Nobody knows. The whole car has collapsed under pressure.
Ordering for other people makes everything considerably worse because you’ve now become an intermediary between two parties who apparently refuse to communicate directly. Before reaching the speaker, everyone in the car is extremely confident. “I’ll have the burger, but without mayo, large fries, Diet Coke, and can you see if they still do those cheese bites?” Fine. You memorise it. Then, just as you’re about to order, the person beside you begins changing things. “Actually, make mine regular.” You turn towards them. “Regular what?” They whisper something you can’t hear. The speaker says, “Sorry, was that two meals?” You panic. “No, sorry, one… well, two, but one is…” Now somebody in the back shouts, “Can I get barbecue sauce?” You’re attempting to communicate with three different people at once while the employee on the other end presumably wonders whether you’ve accidentally driven into the lane during a family argument. There is always someone who refuses to decide beforehand as well. You’ve been sitting in the queue for seven minutes, directly beneath several enormous photographs of the available food, but only when you reach the speaker do they announce: “What do they have?” What do they have? They’ve had an entire geological era to investigate this.
Then there’s the speaker itself, a technological device apparently designed specifically to make two ordinary humans sound as though they’re attempting radio communication during a hurricane. You place the order. There is a crackle. Then a voice says something completely unintelligible. “Sorry?” Another burst of static. You catch perhaps three words, one of which might be “sauce”. “Yeah, that’s fine,” you reply, despite having absolutely no idea what you’ve just agreed to. For all you know they’ve asked whether you’d like seventeen apple pies. At this stage you simply want the interaction to continue moving forward. Then your order appears on a little screen and contains something nobody requested. “Did you order six nuggets?” you ask the car. Nobody did. Where have the nuggets come from? Do you correct it? Of course you should. But correcting a drive-thru order requires speaking into the box again, and frankly you’ve already used most of your available vocabulary.
Eventually you reach the payment window and things temporarily become civilised. There is a real human being there. Fantastic. You can do humans. You’ve spoken to loads of them. You tap your card, exchange a polite “Cheers”, and begin to believe the difficult part is over. Then you’re directed to the collection window, where another strange phenomenon occurs: you become terrified of holding everyone else up. The food arrives in several bags, drinks are passed individually through the window and suddenly you’re trying to fit four cups into cup holders containing sunglasses, loose change and a bottle of water that’s been living there since June. Someone passes you another bag while you’re still holding the first one. You place it on the passenger’s lap. Another drink arrives. Where is that supposed to go? The entire vehicle has become a logistics depot. You’re receiving food faster than you can distribute it and still trying to maintain sufficient politeness to keep saying “thank you” after every object. “Thanks. Cheers. Thank you. Brilliant. Cheers. Thanks.” By the sixth item you sound like you’re personally accepting awards at a ceremony.
Then comes the most dangerous moment of the entire operation: checking whether everything is actually there. You know you should pull into a parking space and investigate properly, but there’s always an overwhelming temptation to conduct an immediate bag inspection while slowly leaving the collection window. “Have we got the chips?” Someone rummages through the bag. “Yeah.” “Both lots?” More rummaging. “I think so.” “What about the nuggets?” Nobody knows. The car is moving. A drink is balanced precariously between somebody’s knees. You reach into a bag at a traffic light and discover three portions of fries, two burgers, several napkins and enough ketchup to survive a national shortage, but no sign of the side order you definitely remember requesting. Now comes the terrible decision: do you go back? Going back means entering the drive-thru system for a second time, and you’ve only just escaped with your dignity partially intact. Most people will happily accept the financial loss rather than face the speaker again.
And eventually, after all the preparation, panic, miscommunication, forgotten sauces and frantic bag inspection, you drive away eating chips from the bag before you’ve even reached home. Within minutes, your ability to speak has miraculously returned. You can once again construct full sentences. You begin discussing how ridiculous the whole experience was and, inevitably, somebody points out that you forgot something. “Where’s my drink?” Silence fills the car. Everyone looks at the cup holders. You have your drink. The passenger has theirs. The third one clearly never made it into the vehicle. You consider turning around, but nobody wants to go through all that again.
So you keep driving.
Because sometimes a missing drink is simply the price you pay for survival.
And the most ridiculous part is that next time you’ll promise yourself it’ll be different. You’ll prepare properly. You’ll make everyone decide before you leave home. You’ll write the order down. You’ll have your card ready. Nobody will be permitted to make last-minute changes. You’ll approach that speaker like an experienced professional and deliver the entire order clearly, confidently and without hesitation.
Then the voice will crackle through:
“Hi, what can I get for you?”
And you’ll lean towards the window and say:
“Hi… yeah… sorry… can I have… erm…”
And just like that, the word “burger” has gone again.
What I changed: I kept it in the same long-paragraph style as your supermarket, plumber and bedroom-chair pieces. The comedy builds from simply forgetting the order into the whole car collapsing under pressure, then carries the joke through payment, food collection and the inevitable discovery that somebody’s drink is missing.
