Trouble at the McMerge

General Discussion
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Today I went to McDonalds to get an Iced beverage for my wife and myself. I went to the outside order lane and ordered the items of my choice. There was a lady in the inside lane ordering stuff presumable for her and her kids in a suburban.

I was not able to pull up from the speaker right away because there was a backup and she didn’t pull up very far and that combined with a big vehicle did not allow me to move forward much. When traffic started to move forward she went and merged in, I moved up a little starting the McMerge and the line came to a stop again. A red pickup in the inside lane pulled up and ordered and when he was done pulled up a bit.

As soon as the line started to move I began creeping forward he roared his engine and jetted forward and tried to squeeze in the area between me and the curb. I abruptly stopped to avoid a possible collision. He stopped and could not move forward because there was no room. He motioned me to back up which I could not and would not do.

He seemed like he was raging behind me in line and I proceeded to get my stuff and he kept pulling up almost to my bumper.

Well I got my stuff and all was well and I was waiting at the light to turn onto the 4 lane highway. I was waiting to turn left at the red light and he pulls up and went and turned right on red which is allowed there. He roared his engine and I mean Roared it resulting in a huge cloud of black smoke and his truck got a little sideways and he almost hit a semi in the left lane.

My question is this, what are your opinions of proper double drive thru etiquette?

Have you had anyone start McRaging on you after McMerging?

P.S. To be fair he had a Brodozer pickup with all kinds of lewd graphics on the back and two pistons hanging from a chain on the rear pintle hitch witch is supposed to replicate a part of the male anatomy. In my experience guys that drive these trucks tend to have big wallets and small… never mind.

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:sleeping:

I don’t really give very much thought to that topic, in accordance with its relative importance in my life.
:wink:

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Sounds like this guy in the truck has something to prove to the world

he’s probably going to cause an accident, have a stroke, or BOTH

No point worrying about guys like that, as they’re all over the place

Those are the same guys that when you are on the freeway with a safe following distance to the car in front of you, they swerve in, forcing you to slam on the brakes

The same guys that view driving as some sort of competition/game, and they always seek to gain some kind of PERCEIVED advantage

An all around loser, and not worth losing sleep over

Probably EVERYTHING in his entire life is financed and/or leased. His cards are probably all maxed out, and he’s stretched so thin, that just about anything would cause his whole house of cars to come crashing down. yeah, I’ve known plenty of guys like him. A trainwreck waiting to happen

Hopefully his wife and kids love him, because everybody else probably hates him

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I’m unaware of any double lane drive through in my area. Sounds like a bad design to me.
But the guy clearly is trying to compensate for something. All you can do is ignore him and hope he “gets his”.

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I have a simple solution to problems like this. I park as far away from other vehicles as I can, walk in and place order. Receive order, walk back to car and leave while the same cars are lined up at the drive thru.

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That guy in the truck is his own worst enemy

Some day, something bad will happen, and he’ll have nobody to blame but himself

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Yup!
That is also my approach.
In addition to avoiding the delays (and potential problems with other vehicles) at the drive-up, every little extra bit of exercise is a positive thing for your health.
That is the same reason why I don’t use drive-ups at banks.
I actually find it rather amusing to see how little progress has been made on the drive-up line when I exit the bank or the fast-food joint after my usual fast transaction.

The only time that I used drive-ups–anywhere–was when I had a broken foot about 8 years ago.
For the handicapped, those drive-ups are great. For those of us who–by the grace of God–have no handicaps, I just don’t see the sense of sitting on my butt, wasting gas, and taking longer to do the same thing that could be accomplished by simply parking the car and walking inside.

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I never use the drive through. Waste of time and gas IMHO. I also try not to get in a “fight” with insecure drivers. There are a lot of things that give it away, and a loud exhaust is one. Road rage can get really ugly, you have to assume everybody has a loaded gun and is on prescription drugs for some psychiatric problem.
On a similar note, I see quite a few young dudes at the local gym, getting buffed while taking pills and driving huge trucks with squeaky clean beds. I know what a few of them do for a living and a Toyota Yaris would suffice for their needs. It is just a mindset/ego thing.

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+1 to EVERYTHING that galant stated!

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There are two Mcdonalds in this town and a few years ago they tore down one and put a new one in and it had the twin drivethrus, and the existing place had the twin drivethru put in about a year ago. It does seem to go a little quicker with the two order screens since some people take forever to order.

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Speaking of loaded guns . . .

A few years back, one of the electricians at work got fired, because the work vehicle he was using got stolen, which is not unheard of. They do go to some extremely bad neighborhoods

The reason for getting fired . . . inside the truck was an unregistered and loaded handgun

While he made the right call, when he informed his supervisor about the gun, he was fired, because . . .

it was unregistered

he had no concealed carry permit

his employer would NEVER have allowed him to take it along, even if he’d asked

And he hadn’t asked “permission” anyways . . . when the truck got stolen, that was the first time anybody found out about the gun

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Believe it or not I usually walk in as well. I had my 3 yo with me and I got lazy and didn’t feel like doing the car seat thing again, plus then I would be juggling 2 drinks and trying to hold her hand and watch out for the idiots speeding thru the parking lot. it was just easier to go thru the driveup. but I do agree, we have gotten lazy.

You are on point about the warning signs, I will add that when a pickup truck has been converted to run semi truck tires and rims, the guy driving (its always a guy) is usually driving very aggressively.

I thought I drove my camaro and mustang like a complete jerk back in the day, but I never tailgated, got aggressive, or put anyones life in danger other than my own (or my willing passengers, my buddies who also drove like idiots.

If I had someone who I didn’t know really well in the car I would always take it easy, although I had one girl tell me my car was “scary” just because it was so loud. I was driving it as tame as possible at the time with her in it, shifting as soon as possible ect…

But when I was alone or with a gear head buddy and got on an empty back road, or pulled out on 4 lane 63 and it was clear, oh boy. Watch out. Foot to the floor, power shifting, the whole 9 yards. Completely moronic behavior on my part. But that car still makes me tingle thinking about it sometimes. I got pretty good changing clutches on my mustang, if i got 10k miles out of a clutch I was doing good.

I remember one time I was at a friends girlfriends house in a nice subdivision. I felt like a complete jerk when my buddy and I left cause it was 11 at night and the car was so loud. I short shifted and got it into 3rd gear turning like 1000 rpms and crawled out of there trying to minimize the noise. I felt like a tool.

These guys in these Brodozers, oh my. And I have seen this behavior by them while sitting in a Wendy eating and looking out the window so i know its not just me or my driving, Its like a diesel drag strip, they floor it pulling out of a shopping center and fly up behind traffic and slam on the brakes at the last possible moment, then they usually cut someone off and fly around the car and then do the same thing to the next person driving.

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Every one I know who owns a large pickup are no more then 5’5 and weigh 169lbs. Their punks. Ignore them.

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Well ,I have a problem with drive thrus also ,but it seems the are priority especially for the stock stuff in the bin,it seems it takes me longer to get waited on in person ,I guess it depends on how much $7 an hour help they have (some of my worst experiences have been at Taco Bell ) I am not dissing the low paid help ,its not their fault the owners and companies are making money hand over fist.
Much the same with the Chinese back rubs and spine stompings ,you begin to realize these girls are slaves,I dont plan on patronizing anymore of these places ,but if I do the Girl will get a good tip (the last one I went to told me all about her working arrangement ,so she got a very good tip and no more for Me ) People will always be taken advantage of due to circumstance ,Oh BTW ,forget the moron in the Diesel truck,He lives in a small universe .

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The guy in the truck sounds like “one of those”. There’s plenty of them here. As far as the Mc place goes I never set foot there unless my better half wants something. I just park and go inside; it’s much easier and I’ve never seen any courtesy issues at the counters.

As for the guy in the truck, if he was in a place like OK and got out of the truck to make an issue of things he could end up prone on the pavement and deceased. OK has both Make My Day and Stand Your Ground laws and lethal force can be used to stop a threat perceived to cause death or injury to the person holding the gun.

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A good portion of the people around here are armed (including me). I would hope something like that would never escalate to that level but if he hopped out I would have kept the windows up and the doors locked and called the police if he just stood there, if he broke out a window and went for me or started to pull a gun, well lets just say I had my friend Ruger with me and in my lap.

Its getting so bad around here I usually answer the door with a pistol in one hand (hidden behind the door) if I dont know who it is. One Saturday night in winter around 10pm our doorbell rang, my wife and I were watching tv. I answered the door with pistol in one hand and my hand on the trigger (hidden behind my back) after seeing a younger woman standing there and no one else. She said her and her friends were lost and needed directions. She told me where she was going and I gave her directions. The whole thing was very odd. I still wonder to this day if our house was being cased.

We get a lot of random people stopping by, they are people selling things, The Jehovahs stop by every now and then, one time an elderly man needed to use my phone because he was heading to a banjo concert in an old cavalier with bald tires and he blew a tire and couldn’t change it himself ( I changed the tire and put air in the spare tire for him Btw). I am usually very friendly and not rude to random visitors, but that night still bothers me.

My driveway is about 300 ft. long off of a highway and I don’t know who in the heck would pull up here in the pitch black to get directions, especially in the era of smartphones, BUT, to be fair, cell phone signal is spotty around here and back then we didn’t even have 3g here. Still I wonder.

I don’t live all that far from where the 1977 hollandsburg massacre took place so you can never be to careful.

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But unfortunately he’ll still blame some one else, since he knows for sure it isn’t his fault. :confounded:

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I do believe the Drive thru orders get priority because at our Mcdonalds they have a clock that starts counting down when a drive thru order is placed and I know its tracked and its all about the wait time in the drive thru. If those times consistently get too long they manager gets scolded. the people waiting at the counter are not timed from what i gather.

The Mcdonalds and Wendys in our town has some of the best service of any fast food place I have ever been to. Those folks work hard, don’t get paid much ( I wont get into the wage thing but I will say that a lot of folks, including myself, couldn’t do that job, its harder and more skilled than some people think), and I honestly really appreciate the good service. Yes fast food is not good for you, I eat too much of the stuff, but some times it is what is needed at the time and for better or worse its an significant part of American culture.

Last December a week before Christmas My wife and I took our daughter to the emergency room out of an abundance of caution because of a high fever and a seizure scare (It turns out she was just shivering, Thank God) and we when we left my wife went home with our daughter and I went to McDonald to get dinner. ( I was on-call so I had the truck).

It was an emotional day, I was scared and damn near in tears at certain times that day, It was 8pm and we needed food and fast. I got wonderful service and I sure was grateful that the option to go to a fast food place was there, I am thankful for those folks that work there and the service they provide.

Like it or not some days some of us run on big macs, i have had some long days working storms and have had a crew member go get burgers and fries and I will tell you what, when you are that hungry it sure tastes good. I often wonder if the nameless faceless person who made the food knows how much it means to me, and how much I appreciate their work. When I get my food I always tell the person “Thanks, I appreciate it”, usually they respond like its not something they hear very often. Yes I know I paid my 6.99 and I am then entitled to my bigmac, but those folks are human and not robots, I have seen some of the most entitled behavior by customers inside fast food places.

BTW What is a spine stomp?

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Assume you meant finger on the trigger guard. Your finger directly on the trigger behind your back is very dangerous.

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Could we bring this back to a more automotive realm, please?