So I’m fine with the idea of fast food. It’s terrible for you, tastes so-so, but it’s good in a pinch. Unfortunately, my local McDonalds is taking efficiency at the drive-thru to a whole new level.

While running to the bank today on my lunch break, I popped into McDonalds to grab a quick lunch. It was raining and I had no desire to get out of my car, so I figured I would eat at my desk; I know, I know, how could I possibly resist the incredible ambiance of the McDonald’s eat-in dining area? In the drive thru line (I will continue to spell this incorrectly as McDonalds paid some brilliant marketer to coin this very original and clever term years ago), I pull up and I am greeted by a man with a clipboard at my car window. He asks me what I want, but as I am far out of 20/20 eyesight range of the big illuminated menu, I tell him I need a minute. I roll forward and I am greeted by a second employee with a clipboard. I still have yet to have 1 second in front of the menu, so I ask her to wait and she shoots me a look of shear annoyance. I feel like I am under the gun now, so I order the first thing I see and before I can finish my sentence she’s telling me to move along.

I proceed deeper into the depths of this fast-food gauntlet and then a 3rd employee walks up to my window. I am getting annoyed now because I mentioned the reason for being in the drive-thru was to avoid the rain. So I roll my window down again which at this point has no further use because the inside sill of my door is soaking wet. He tells me the total and asks for a credit card. Like any reasonable person, I don’t want to give some random stranger my credit card in the back parking lot of a McDonalds, so I tell him I’ll just pull up to the window. He does not seem to understand and again tells me the total and puts his hand out for money to which I give in and hand him a $5 bill. He proceeds to walk about 10 feet over to the window that I will be passing in roughly 5 seconds and gives my money to a woman working the register. At this point in the story I have interacted with 4 McDonald’s employees and I can’t even smell the food yet. The man hands me my change as I pull up to the first window and I continue on down the line.

At the 2nd window and final stop in my adventure a woman fills my drink and hands a bag of food to yet another woman leaning out the window who in turn gives it to me. As far as I can tell, the 5th employee has a very useful purpose of fetching the food and taking care of drinks, but this 6th person does not take orders, change money or fill drinks. No the 6th paid employee in a process to squeeze $4.36 out of me has the very important job of sitting at a window and handing off food to cars as the pull up.

Since I don’t frequent many McDonald’s I can’t tell if this is standard operating procedure or merely a failed exercise in gross over-efficiency, but I do know that it made an already mediocre dining experience even less enjoyable.