Our menu doesn't change that much, how hard is it to order?

As usual, yesterday I was in drive thru back booth, taking money and doing orders. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the fact that people will wait in line, sometimes for several minutes, and then, when they get to the speaker, need a few minutes more in order to look over the menu and see what they want. Drive thru is supposed to be about speed, so why do people wait until they get to the speaker before ordering?

People often tell me that they need to look over the menu in order to decide. Newsflash: our menu doesn't really change that much! We still have the same old basics, which is what people who need that minute to decide typically order. What seems to make this even worse is that some of these people go to mcd several times a day, so they should have a very very clear idea as to what is on the menu.

And yet they struggle day in and day out when it comes to deciding what to cram in their faces today. I mean, when I go to a fast food place, I will have written out what I want, and I remember enough of the menu in order to actually figure out what to get before I get to the speaker. Please, have the presence of mind to do the same!

On another note-- one of the worst types of people I hate are the ones who come in drive thru for a glass of water. At our chain of mcds we don't charge for water or the cups the water goes in (I know of some other mcd chains that will charge for the cups.) As a result, there are people too lazy to walk inside for their free item, so they go through drive thru. What makes that crappy is that we can't actually ring up for a water, because our system doesn't allow us to take an order if the only item on there is free.

The reason of that is because in the past there would be employees that would scam the system by doing promos on food for their friends and/or family.. this way if there's an order that has nothing but free items, the manager goes to the back in order to punch in their code to allow the transaction, and thus they are able to detect if there's something fishy about the order. We're not going to go bug a manager to punch in their code to allow us to ring up waters, because managers have better things to do.

And so we get a person with water who skips ahead of all sorts of other people, and it can throw things in chaos because of course their order won't appear on the screen. It just seems lazy that a customer can't simply go into the store for a free item, because it actually takes less time in order to come into the store sometimes. Drive thru at any mcd is typically busier than inside the store, why sit in a drive thru line and waste your gas for possibly 5 or more minutes just for a water, when you could have gone into the store, gotten your free water, and left by now?