A short time ago I was pulling into the drive-through lane of a certain much revered coffee and donut establishment for a tall paper cup of something hot and caffeinated. I had chosen the drive-through in favor of exiting the car and entering the store for various reasons, not the least of which was the interesting picture before me.
Quick note: You may be perplexed by my spelling of this evolutionary icon of junk-food delivery service. I am fully aware that by and large this phenomenon is normally spelled in the economical and streamlined ‘drive-thru’. I am using a proper spelling as a form of protest, as I feel I owe little to economical English and less to the fast food windows of our culture.
As I was idling in line in front of the oversized glowing picture menu, I could see some fellow patrons ahead. To put it gently, they struck me as frequent patrons of both the drive-through and the billboard menu’s super-size section.
Now I’m not one to be so audacious as to deny the extent of my hypocrisy. Yes, I dabble in fast foods, combos and concoctions of cheese, bacon and the word to ‘double’. In my defense my indulgences are in moderation, in both the act of eating crap and the process of waiting in my car to purchase crap. I always regard the people around me when I’m in the low points of this moderation, when I’m being weak, to wonder about the weaknesses shared around me. I wagered quietly that my fellow patrons fell in their moderation perhaps more often than me.
As I was watching what appeared to be a mother and son ahead, I noticed the adjoining restaurant, a junk food joint of a slightly different genre, fries and burgers sharing the building with coffee and cakes, and offering between them every variety of the foods none of us should be eating. Their respective drive-through lines intertwine around their shared building, making one visible from the other. From that vantage point I watched as the mother and son in the vehicle ahead get their food at the pick-up window and then do something simple and at once mildly astounding.
They drove through to the other drive-through.
Simple to conceive but astounding to consider.
I understand why this sort of thing happens, but still find it troubling to accept that it does.
Some strange things get under my skin. Acknowledging that not everybody is annoyed by bad toupees, pop idols that use ‘Z’ instead of ‘S’, overly manicured chinstrap beards, people who own huge dogs and live in small studio apartments downtown, lists, politics, unnatural blonde hair, and people that won’t shut up doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of catharsis, not to mention much in the way of change.
The interior of the shared building I’ve mentioned houses both of these popular restaurant chains as part of one shared dining experience. Basically, there are two counters serving one big room. I don’t doubt that most reading this have been in one very similar. In these rooms the counters are no more than three meters apart, providing one of the few instances I can think of where the option to walk is quicker than to drive.
Why and how is twice driving around this building of twinned fast food restaurants a better option than parking and standing at twinned counters for roughly the same amount of time?
Am I odd for finding this strange?
Am I opposing some new form of evolution?
Maybe we could start having drive-through office buildings where one can drive to one’s desk, grocery stores with aisles and an express lane with a more literal capacity, drive-through lanes at the barber and the bank… wait…
We could build houses with garages as family rooms. Imagine it, you hit the button on your visor to open the big door, it rolls up to present a roaring fireplace and a cuddly bearskin rug for you to park on. There’s plenty of parking spots in the kitchen a handy poop-through washroom and even a drive-in crawl space for storage. Line-ups can happen during rush hour, but for the most part, the wait is minimal.
There isn’t really a solution to speak of, we’ll always gravitate towards the business that has a convenient way for us to orbit it and quickly get home to consume the goods they serviced us with. The road less travelled, as they say, is often less travelled for a reason. That reason: laziness.
Every now and then you see those 'what no to do' scenarios unfold before your eyes. They show you the bar and where you need to be in relation to it. I learned something about myself watching that mother and son's short trip, more perhaps than I could ever expect to learn in a line like that.
I guess it would be nice if more of us made the right choices, but what the hell, sometimes it feels cozy to be caught in a vice.
…Especially when that vice comes with large fries.
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