I feel the same way about the fast food industry, honestly. I've gotten to the point where I'll only eat the hardest thing on the menu to screw up. If it involves more than taking it out of the bag, frying it, and putting it into a container, I won't bother with it (pretty much limits me to chicken nuggets, and I occasionally brave a burger... though that's normally fixed wrong...).

And around here, going to a fast food joint is like leaving the country. Even the McDonald's on base only hires Mexicans. I remember one morning having this conversation:

[Order - 1 hotcakes plain, 2 hash browns, 1 medium orange juice]

Drive-thru attendant: May I take your order?
Me: I want an order of hotcakes, no sausage.
Drive-thru attendant: Coke?
Me: No, H-O-T-C-A-K-E-S, no sausage.
Drive-thru attendant: You want parfait?
Me: NO... HOTCAKES!
Drive-thru attendant: Orange Juice?
Me: Screw this, I'm coming inside.

I went inside, and only the manager even spoke any English. Thankfully the manager understood enough so that I actually got my food.

The absolute worst place around here, though, is Friendly's. Back when Crystal and I were dating, and for the first few years after we were married, we used to go there a lot as a nice cheap date spot. The one in our hometown was good. The one in Beaufort was nice. The one here should be shutdown and restaffed. Even when they're almost empty, you're looking at a 30 minute wait before someone notices you. Then it'll be another 15 minutes until someone realizes you'd actually like to order. And, when your food comes out, it will be some mixture of wrong or improperly cooked.

My food was so bad one time that they actually offered me a free meal on my next visit. We came back, I ordered chicken tenders and fries (figured it'd be hard to screw up), and the chicken was still mostly raw, and the fries looked like they had been made the week before. I sent it back, and 10 minutes later they brought it right back to me. Nothing had been changed, except now it was colder from having sat on a counter. We haven't been back since.

It's a vicious Catch-22. The only fast food places I've been to where the attendants speak English are invariably vermin-infested health hazards. It's either Spanish language help or food poisoning.

Looks like I need to learn Espanol.

Thank you, Chigster. I hope this will open a floodgate of hate that will inspire others!

EDIT: My own contribution is directed to the Wendy's in Cambridge, Maryland, home of the greasiest burgers evar: What did you fry this hamburger in, a f*cking wok?

I have to second not understanding the curly fry hate.

If you want the people serving you to speak English, don't go to the places in the city and avoid the ghetto at all costs. Stick to the burbs and smaller towns and you'll be all set.

1) I speak Spanish, and it is nice to be able to fall back on that if need be.

2) A lot of times they catch your order, but are told to try and "up sell" things like parfaits and the like. Side items and drinks have better margains. If you order anything, they'll often prompt you to buy something else, the same way they'll prompt you to biggie-size it or w/e. Thing is, when they ask, "You want (a) parfait?" it can sound like they are misunderstanding you. This is why the little displays of your order are so great.

But I'm not as angry as Chiggie generally. And I don't drive or eat take-out that often.

Which is completely understandable. It's a business. The more money I hand them, the better off they'll be. A quick "no thanks" and we complete the sale.

Yes... they're nice when the person knows what you're saying. This one had one, and I got to watch as she voided half the menu trying to figure out what I was trying to order. Hence why I just went in. I just decided it was a battle not worth fighting.

I used to pay like that, but stopped when they would always say that I gave them too much. I would tell them to ring it in so the computer could make the change and then they wouldn't have to rack their brain trying to figure out my change. Now all I pretty much ever use is my debit card.

That being said, service is still a mixed bag - Jack in the Box and Taco Bell are both typically good, McDonald's is typically bad, and Carl's Jr. is somewhere in the middle.

Eh, I dunno. There are a few places you can still get decent fries. Hardee's/Carl Jr's aren't bad, and Whattaburger is halfway decent for being shoestrings. The local Wendy's I go to aren't horrible either.

However, nothing, and I mean nothing beats going to a hot dog stand or a roadside burger joint and getting french fries made from yukon gold potatoes that they sliced for fries less than 5 minutes before frying them. Absolute Win.

I eat at 'fast food' restaurants maybe twice a year, when I'm making a long road trip or something. Having worked in the casual food industry (not fine dining but not 'fast food') I recognize that the work generally sucks, the customers are unfriendly more often than not, and the pay is generally low. Unfortunately, for many people this is the work that is available, and if it puts food on the table for the family, that's all that really matters. As such, I generally try to treat service workers with as much kindness and respect as possible, knowing that the majority of people they interact with will have a sense of entitlement that vastly overshadows their sense of gratitude. One of my dearest teachers once said that he "tries to find the divine in every person that he meets, and to interact with people ONLY on that level". Whenever I'm able to remember that, it always makes a difference in my experience interacting with others, and I hope that it makes their experience of me a bit better, too. Ultimately, it is about taking responsibility for your own life, and every interaction you have with someone. Chances are, if you're going in expecting sh*tty service, you're likely to get it - and I'd go so far as to say that you're partly to blame.

That's usually why I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who complain about the quality of food, or the quality of service in that industry, where the vast majority of people who are employed are the working poor, and are treated as such by their customers. I often like to imagine those drive-through workers thinking to themselves:

"You know...If you can't hear me through the speaker, and I can't hear you well enough to accurately place your order, and you're going to give me a hard time about the language I speak, and you don't trust me to accurately place your order anyway and will probably get angry at me if something is wrong, please get off your fat a*s, get out of your f*cking car, burn a few of the calories you're about to pack on and come inside. Place your order at the counter, where you can verify the accuracy of the order, and the contents of your to-go bag as it is handed to you."

I worked at KFC in my high school days.

I would have spit in your cole slaw.

I rarely do drive-thru. I prefer to park and go in. My jeep's AC doesn't work anyway.

Indeed if God wanted us to get mad in public, He would have made internet forums a sin instead of drunkeness.