42 Awkward Situations And Wild Drive-Through Stories As Customers Don’t Know Employees Can Hear Them

Was listening in while someone was listening to a sermon and was like " Amen, hallelujah preach it preacher!".

Once had the opposite happen. My friend and I worked at fast food place and friend randomly asked "whatever happened to Chelsea Lastname?" No ill intent, we just hadn't hung out with her in forever. Then from the drive thru window we hear a man roar "What about Chelsea Lastname??!" Yep, her dad was at the window.

Worked at a 24hr Panda Express. I got the pleasure of taking the order of a group of women coming back from a late night bridal party. All I could hear besides the quiet DD ordering was the girl in the passenger side throwing up into a plastic bag. It was...fun.

I wasn't taking the orders but I use to work at McDonalds making the food in the back so I had a headset so I could start working on orders as soon as people would place em.


I heard a lot of yelling, a lot of terrible music, but the one that I recall standing out was someone who ordered their food "To Go", like, what's the alternative? Ya gonna eat it in the drive through?

Quietly to himself,

"I'm going to regret this"

Into mic,

"Uhh, I'll have a Double-down and that's it.".

I was working drive and I had a customer pull up to the speaker and then order. Then afterwards she didn’t pull up to the window. And I can still hear what she says even tho I’m not taking her order. She then started having a loud phone conversation and started talking about how was cheating on her boyfriend. I gave her a little time and then said “you can pull up mam”.

Used to work at a mcDonalds, overhears a woman verbally bashing the passenger who was a male. It was definitely odd to overhear and made even less sense to my 16 year old brain because socially women are never seen as aggressors and it was just a shock.

One time a bee got in a customers car when they were at the speaker and we could hear them screaming. It was pretty funny.

Sooo many parents yelling at their kids to "make up their minds." Also once had a guy ask for "Jail-a-peen-os" on his sandwich, I started laughing, and he got super mad and demanded to talk to my manager

EDIT: I feel like I should clarify. Jail-a-peen-o man was an old redneck in the middle of Missouri. So it was funny not only because of the pronunciation but because of the Southern/Midwest accent. I also didn't mean to laugh at him, both me and my coworker forgot our headsets were on, my coworker said it the same way he did and I laughed, and when he pulled up to the window, that is when he asked to see our manager.

I ran a fast food place during the graveyard shift for almost ten years, but don't operate a drive through anymore.

1. A phone call where the women was upset that she received crabs from the person she was talking to. We interrupted her and she just left out of shame.

2. Verbal mistreatement usually aimed at children or a spouse. There is a line between a parent being frustrated at a kid and the things I have heard. I remember a poor kid who was so upset over the driver screaming at them to pick something to eat that the only thing the kid could manage to do was cry. The kitchen was used to yelling, but the tone and volume of the driver made everyone stop and listen in shock and anger. The driver was still screaming at the kid as they sped off without ordering.

3. Two women planning to attack me when I came out with their remakes. The buns were originally too toasted.

4. Large truck engine sounds. Speakers are usually tall enough to catch only the engine sounds of a large truck trying to order. Nothing else can be heard except for the occasional snippet of human speech almost completely drowned out by a constant, incredibily painful, piercing white noise blaring directly into the ear. The sigh of annoyance from the driver is usually crystal clear as soon as they turn off the vehicle though.

At least with the company that I worked for, as soon as a drive through person talks to a customer via speaker, any following conversation can be heard via kitchen speakers, for all staff to hear and depending on how loud, some of the customers dining inside can hear too. Even if the employee puts the customer on hold, everything can be heard.

I didn't work there long and it was a few years ago. Saturday night at about 12am and a taxi pulls up with a load of drunk lads in the back. I'd just turned my head away to get the drinks and I hear one of the lads say "do you think she thought I was Madonna" in a genuine, drunk voice. He must have been nearly 20st and black, he did not look like Madonna.

One time we had a person sit in the lane for seven minutes having an argument with the other person in the car over their divorce. Stuff can get weird.

As a customer, the chick-fil-a always had really really hot window workers. I rolled through with a friend and after putting in the order looked to my friend and said, "I recognize her voice, she's smoking hot". We rolled up to pay and sure enough it was one of the smoking hot ones and right after she handed me my card, "Oh thank you" all exaggerated. Clearly she took it positively but I get really embarrassed as my friend started audibly laughing at me.

I'm not the worker, but the customer. My mom drove my sister and I to a Steak N Shake drive through, and it was super busy. We didn't have to wait long to get to the speaker to order though. Once we got there, the woman over the speaker said "Hi, welcome to steak n shake." She didn't ask for our order, or tell us to wait a bit, just that. We were waiting for at least 15 minutes before my sister and I were super impatient and tired, so we kept saying in a tired voice "Hi, welcome to steak n shake, how may I take your order?" We were tired and thought this was funny, and plus we were just hoping if we said it over and over again soon the person over the speaker would ask for our order. After a few minutes of all of us doing this and laughing, (my mom wasn't doing it, but she was laughing along), we hear the woman on the other end very angrily ask us, "Are you mocking me?" All three of us just sat there, because none of us knew that she could still hear us, and because how do you explain to someone that we were just laughing at ourselves? Since we hesitated, she asked again. "I said, are you guys mocking me??" This time louder and angrier. My mom and I both said in a very pathetic tone "No, we were laughing at our own jokes." The lady scoffed at us, and didn't say anything else. We felt terrible that she thought we were mocking her when in reality we were just tired and stupid. So we drove off without ordering, and got food somewhere else like dogs with their tail in between their legs.

Okay I work at chickfila and I didn’t *hear* this but one time I was outside taking orders on an iPad and this old lady came through (prob 60 years old)

She had her phone on her lap with the font HUGE and I’m nosy soooo I looked at it

The last text she received said “easy there tiger you know I have back problems” and no, I have not recovered.

A few years ago in MA: Some hicks having a long argument about nuking North Korea and whether they'd nuke us first.

That and the drunk lady yelling at her dog in the backseat of her car, before and after she got arrested.

Worked at Mcd's for 3 years. Funniest I'd heard was a guy asking the passenger what he could get for a Big Mac. Worst, had to listen to a women list off std's her doctor told her she had and what treatments to get, literally begged the grill team to hurry and move the line.

I used to work at Star Bucks and some mom was yelling at her kid who I thought must have been a teenager because of her voice and all of the cussing. She pulls up and her kid is like 6 years old. I heard it all.

A woman was talking to her passengers, children perhaps? And we heard sounds of children.

When she pulled up, got her shakes, and left, the drive thru person said there was no children in the car.

My daughter just got her first job and is working a drive through. When I read her this question she scoffed and said, “people blowing their noses.”.