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Was this taken during covid lockdowns when the indoor section was closed and there was no other option?
Lotta places are just like this anyway.
This shit happens daily at the in-n-out near me. My wife swears th wait is worth it. Drives me nuts.
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Looks like covid lockdown time.
Though it's true that this particular picture was taken during covid time, it does not mean its any less true in conveying what North American car culture has actually done to our cities and infrastructure planning/implementation.
Here is a video of how school drop off's work in North America for example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLpCMdVcqTI
Looking at this particular plot of land in the image OP has posted. Land use is very poorly utilized. You have one business surrounded by a parking lot. This same space could have easily in a European city fit 5 or more businesses with plenty of residential units above and still be left with place for green space or a park.
30 people getting coffee vs 30 people getting coffee.
And a comparable parcel of land roughly the same size. Its night and day in terms of utilization of land alone.
Reminds me of how my (able bodied) mom would drive around looking for a closer parking spot for far longer than it would have taken to just walk from the first available one.
Literally! Anytime I go to Costco i intentionally go to the furthest spots because they're likely to be open and I'm fully capable of and enjoy walking.
You also can’t ride the cart through the parking lot if you park too close. Then you just look silly kicking it up to speed for just a short ride.
(I’m almost 40 and still do this every time I have to go shopping, like a reward for completing the draining task)
Tough with the full cart (choo choo) but esp. rewarding when returning the empty: yee-haw!
My trick is to park further away but on a straight line to the entrance, not diagonal. I think it's often shorter.
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The paradox of laziness.
the only time I do that is when I'm getting stupidly heavy objects, like freezers or furniture.
My dad's like that. One time he came to visit he didn't like that the closest spot was 2 blocks away, so he drove around until he found a spot 5 or 6 blocks away
I park far away cause I hate people
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Because if you go in there is just no one taking your order and they completely deprioritize it too. Takes just as long or longer half the time I've tried
They'll tell you it's because "nobody wants to work" when the reality is that people just stopped putting up with that job for the scraps they were paid. These places were never successful and deserve to go out of business as they rely on poverty wages for their existence.
That's part of carbrain culture. Where I live, both options are equally fast because drive through is seldom used. And Germany is actually very carbrainy, but perhaps not completely lost yet.
Until you realize that they purposefully understaff and now your front counter guy has to prioritize drive thru times over your order because that's the only metric corporate measures.
First, the city should be ticketing every single vehicle that is parking in the road and blocking traffic. If I was a cop, I would just park myself right there and hand out easy tickets all day every day. Being in line for a drive through does not excuse blocking traffic.
But the bigger issue that people here are missing is that going into the store may not actually save you any time. Often when I've tried that at places like McDonalds, the drive through is far faster than waiting in the kitchen. Their whole operation is optimized for the drive through, and in-kitchen orders end up stuck in this weird ghetto backlog that they'll get to when they feel like getting to it.
The US is a silly place.
'Silly' is a word
genuinely every time I go inside a place, it's faster than drive through
There is a popular place near me where the line could be as long as the photo and they would get you through in a few minutes. Of course that involves having several people walking the cars getting orders and taking money. The window hands out the food as fast as the drivers can pull up. It's insane but impressive.
Csa places and innout.
If you are in the appropriate lane for the turn you intend to make, and the car in front of you isn't moving, I'm pretty sure the law doesn't require you to pick a different destination or ram the car ahead of you. What the law should be is a different question, but cop you would just see a bunch of tickets thrown out in quick succession. I don't know what that realistically means for the job, but it can't be good.
I don't think those are actual roads; they look like the parking lot roads you find in various commercial complexes. They are technically considered private property, as such traffic laws don't exactly apply the same way.
Unrelated, but why are there two different styles of crosswalk? I'm not from the states and I've never seen either before.
There isn't really a standard crosswalk design over here. Likely each one was done at different times, part of different jobs.
This is probably during COVID when the inside was off limits.
Plenty of people still use the drive through, but the complete lack of anyone in the carpark is sus.
I work fast food. When shorthanded, which is all the time, if the line is wrapped around the building but the customers are at least not coming inside, service can be at least normal slow instead of slower than fuck. More customers can be served per hour via drive through than front counter with any level of staffing. When people start coming inside, suddenly drive through employees are getting stuck standing in front of registers and overall service speeds go from just slow to slower than fuck.
Nearly every fast food place in the UK has gone to self serve machines because of that, and taken away the ability to even take orders at the registers.
Although in practice it now means a bunch of staff helping old people use the self serve, rather than just taking the orders.
I very rarely even go there. The food isn't even fast. It seems mostly cooked to order because it's cheaper to waste my time than it is to give away a handful of old burgers at the end of the day.
Not to excuse it but some restaurants prioritize drive through over the people who order inside.
The brain rot is insane. Every Starbucks and Chickfila.
Only one car parked. Either most of the staff is taking transit to work, or this place is dismally understaffed.
Plot twist: They're all working there, they are just getting a coffee on the way to their job.
McDonald's Inception
Or they aren't allowed to park in customer parking?
There's 26 spaces and 2 disabled spaces. There's about 35 cars waiting in line but it's not clear if they're all in line for the restaurant or if they need to be in that lane for other reasons. Only one space is filled in the parking lot, 25 of these cars could be parked and have people inside, leaving maybe 10 cars for the drive through but even then the 10 in the drive through would be blocking cars from coming or going.
These drive-thrus are always so fucking badly designed.
Carbrained and fast-foodbrained. Cook a fuckin meal and you might save more time, jeeze.
50 tons of social stratification
I hope this isn't a photo from mode pandemic... I mean fuck cars and all that, but drive thru was clutch for a bit there.
I was ready to go in here and say I won't get out of my car until I see the others in my group show up to whatever place we're eating. I've got some social anxiety issues though.
This though...this is fucking stupid. I see this shit at coffee stands like Dutch Bros all the time. They have a walk up window. It's like 5x faster to get the fuck out of your car, order at the window, and walk away with your sugar bomb.
The same with fast food. My wife worked at BK on an AFB for a long time. Airmen would line up in the drive through. Inside was near empty. Same deal. It'd be much faster to get out of my truck, go in, order my shit, and leave. Then they'd have the audacity to complain that the place was "wasting their lunch break." Bitch, there's a commissary with fresh sushi in it, always stocked, a made to order deli sub place in the back, and lots of other healthy things. You could also bring your own food from home. You could also get out of the fucking car and get it.
I'm not fully anti car as everyone on here, though I do get it and wish there was better mass transit and walkable areas. I do think vehicles have their uses, and that MT isn't an option for everyone. That said, this type of shit is stupid af. Stop clogging up the roads. Stop wasting gas. Stop polluting with your idling bullshit (I'm seeing at least 3 gas guzzlers in the pic in the comments.)
This is also incredibly dangerous. Blocking a lane causes backups further down. It causes people to have to merge into other lanes. Often times people don't pay attention and dodge at the last minute, or they get frustrated/angry and make stupid decisions.
They call it the Chair Force for a reason. Getting up and walking would go against their ethos.
Was chair force, I can confirm. There were a lot of lazy ass people.
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They just need to add one more lane, bro.
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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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