Your visit to this site tells us that you have most likely experienced the following request;

"May I please get you to wait in the waiting bay?"

After such a request by a vulnerable teen and although being completely frustrated and annoyed by the innevitable request you politely respond with a , "Sure, no problem". To make things worse, you more than likely had spent some time thinking about the forthcoming request and had firmly decided that this time you would just say no!

Arriving at the payment window of the drive-thru your anxiety builds and... there it is, the dreaded waiting bay request! However this time sadly the words you speak do not match your pre-determined thought process. Noooooooooo!!!!!

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The Waiting Bay

It would be naive for us to think that it's not already common knowledge that requests to wait in the waiting bay are purely to better the timers that record how long each car spends in the drive thru per transaction. Agreeing to such a request allows the fast food business to take as long as they like preparing your food, with no sense of urgency whilst maintaining a perfect timer result.

So at the expense of our time senior management can then produce falsified reports to their corporate chiefs showing they take an average of let's say 30 seconds to complete each customer transaction, when in actual fact it's probably closer to 2-5 minutes per transaction at best. Sipping on a latte they pat each other on the back while the chief bellows, "job well done!".

Recently I ordered two fish burgers from a drive thru and as per usual I was asked to move to the waiting bay. I politely declined and said, "Why am I asked to wait in the waiting bay everytime I visit your store?" The attendant replied, "Please if you wouldn't mind moving to the waiting bay, we're cooking your fillets of fish fresh". I politely responded, "that's fine, I'll just wait here if that's okay". You wouldn't believe it... my fish burgers were delivered through the drive thru window within seconds of me indicating I wouldn't move to the waiting bay.

Giving the benefit of the doubt to the attendant and that she was speaking truthfully, I became concerned that if my fillets of fish were being cooked fresh at the time the attendant told me so, then my fish was cooked for about minus five seconds prior to being served to me if I deducted fifteen seconds for preparation and packaging of the product. Alternatively, the fillets of fish were already cooked and possibly even in their final resting place between two buns and the temptation for the attendant to lie in order to better the timers was simply too great!