After looking at pizza places, coffee, and grocery stores, I had to look at burger chains across the country. The data was just sitting there. (Thanks, AggData.)
As before, the map above shows the nearest burger chain out of the selected seven. I chugged along every twenty miles, checked within a 10-mile radius, and then colored each dot accordingly.
With pizza places you saw a lot of regionality despite the national coverage of Pizza Hut. You saw a lot of Domino’s on the east, Little Caesar’s in California, and Godfather’s in the midwest. Similarly, with coffee, Dunkin’ Donuts reigned in the east and Caribou is popular in the midwest.
However, more than a handful of burger chains cover the country somewhat evenly, which gets you this map that resembles sprinkles on a cupcake, save a couple areas of interest. In the Oklahoma and Arkansas areas Sonic Drive-in dominates, and Jack in the Box established itself well in California. We saw a similar geographic pattern in Stephen Von Worley’s burger map a few years ago.
But still, McDonald’s is sprinkled throughout, which shouldn’t surprise since it has more than twice the locations than its nearest competitor Burger King. Keep in mind this includes all the Golden Arches in Wal-Marts, airports, and college food courts.
Because of this expansive burger coverage by McDonald’s and the other major chains, it’s more useful to look at the locations separately, shown below. I also included all the other chains with at least a hundred locations.
As you expect, it looks like population density in the beginning. Chains are gonna open where the people are. Once you get past Wendy’s though, you start to see region-specific chains.
I’d say Dairy Queen is well-established nationally, but it’s interesting to see a gap with Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Do the folks there not like Dairy Queen? Maybe Sonic has a stronghold on the states in an epic battle for burger supremacy. Or it’s just a totally mundane reason like Dairy Queen started in Illinois, expanded east, and then saw growth opportunity in Texas.
In any case, the separation is more obvious when you look at just Dairy Queen versus a competitor like Sonic, using the same distance formula as the first map.
The rest of the chains kind of have their regional pockets: Whataburger in Texas, Checkers in Florida, and of course, In-N-Out in California.
Then there’s all the local joints, which I didn’t even touch on yet. I’ll have to leave that for another day though. In case someone is interested, Yelp seems like a good place to start. I poked around the review data for a bit, and it was interesting that the local places almost always reigned review-wise, and profiles for chains basically serve as somewhere for people to complain.
I was working at a Tim Hortons in Newfoundland when I was 15. A guy comes up to the speaker box, orders his coffee, and then I heard a weird noise that sounded like an elephant. He approaches the window, lo and behold there is a baby elephant in the back of his pickup. At the drive through. On an island in Canada. I was so confused, but just couldn’t bring up the elephant in the room – or pickup bed I guess.
Working at McDonalds my sophomore year of high school, some lady went through the drive through at about 1 AM. Someone accidentally gave her a large diet coke instead of a large coke or something, so she threw the drink back through the window.
The drink landed quite heavily in the fry oil and splashed all over one of our co-workers. The girl drove away pretty fast, but the manager got her license plate number off the cameras. She was sued pretty badly.
I was out in the car-park taking care of bins when a big bulky family car that had just been through the drive thru started circling and revving profusely. It caught my attention because it wasn’t like it was a sports car and I didn’t get why he was revving.
I soon found out it was because his kid had gotten the wrong topping on his ice cream, which he yelled through the window at me as he slammed into park right by me. His little bastard kid threw the ice cream at me, ruining my uniform. I was pretty pissed off so I picked it back up and threw it back at the car.
As it was sailing it’s creamy way toward the car again it suddenly dawned on me that this guy might get out and get me fired, so I froze. Luckily it landed on the roof cream side down AND the guy hadn’t noticed! So he drove off with his car wearing a little waffle hat.
I wish I’d been there to see his face later on. I quit about a week later when an angry customer smeared shit on the walls of the toilet.
Maybe not the weirdest but the most dickish. I was hanging out after hours with a friend who was finishing up her shift. She was working drive-thru which was the only thing actually open. Some people came through and just asked for a couple cups of water. She says it costs 0.50 for that but they said they didn’t have any money. She said ah well, no big deal, come on through, and handed two cups of water to the person in the back seat (that’s how they pulled up.)
The guy yells “THANKS, BITCH” and throws the two cups of water on her, then drives away.
It was about 9:30 at night so the store was nearly closed. A car pulled up and I greeted them several times with no response. I eventually waited for them to just decide they were ready (which happens often). The person behind them got impatient, and decided that honking wasn’t enough to make them move. I watched on the camera as this lady backed her car up and floored it to rear end the guy at the order box! Redneck and some lady immediately both get out of their cars and star hurling vulgar things at each other, meanwhile I’m laughing because I can hear the whole conversation. “Are you out of your F*&#$ mind lady?!” “Dumb@$$ redneck, this isn’t your squaller hole! You don’t have all night! Some of us want chicken!!” etc. My manager called the cops when they started pushing each other around. That was one of 4 wrecks I saw in our drive thru!
I’ve seen 4 people accidentally rear end someone while checking their bag, along with 2 flat tires, and 3 cars that died so we had to push them out of the way.
I’ve seen a girl getting fingered, and a guy getting a hand job, and a girl that had clearly just finished giving a blowjob.
I’ve seen a few dudes rolling joints.
I’ve seen a woman without any underwear on and her skirt up.
One time a lady came through and demanded I give her a shake that she didn’t get with her meal when she came through 11 months ago.
Was working at McDonald’s presenting a few weeks ago and this lady comes to pick up her milkshake and she says to me “you’re doing a great job keep it up!” And proceeds to hand me a small fluffy toy snake. I closed the window and started laughing so hard.
I once worked at a Dunkin Donuts for a few months, until I realized I hated that shitty job. Once we had a lovely woman pull up at the drive through twenty minutes before open. Naturally my co-worker and I ignored her while we hurried to set up because without the headset on, we had no idea she was even there. And there was no way I was putting that thing on a minute earlier that I had to.
Eventually she pulled up to the window with a pissed, evil-looking face. We gestured, “sorry” and that we weren’t open yet. Apparently she took it personally and started banging on the glass. When we opened the window to explain that we couldn’t serve her yet, she began cursing and squeezed her fat ass out of the car, and hung thru the window spewing off insults. We just stared in awe. I think we told her the cops were coming or something and she left. She was a crazy bitch.
I worked in McDonalds before going to university to help pay for things, as my foster parents didn’t really have the means to help me much.
Anyway, there was this one man who came through the drive thru, late 30s, clearly a farmer from his vehicle and dog in the back. He was always nice enough, pretty quiet and I remember a couple of times that he tried to make nice small talk. When I worked either side of New Years, he asked me how things were and said I should be out having fun my age, asked if my christmas was good and all that. I remember thinking he always seemed real lonely or was sad when he drove through, and tried to carry conversation with me. I felt bad having to be quick with him and dart off, because he just seemed like he wanted someone to talk to.
Long story short, he drove through one day and asked if my last name was what he thought it was. After a sideways glance from my manager, I said it was. He looked real sad and took his hat off, said that he reckoned he was my dad. My bio-mother didn’t know who my dad was (she slept around as a teen, then got pregnant with me), so it was possible. My manager let me go on break.
So over my dinner he explains that he slept with my mother around the time that she got pregnant, he was only 16. He was really apologetic/kind of seemed ashamed, and said he said he was real sorry he didn’t seek me out, make sure I wasn’t his, that sort of thing. He was from a town about an hours drive away, so that was a part of it. And no one ever showed up to tell him he was a dad or anything. I told him I was happy with my life, gave him my number and told him to give me a bell sometime.
And yeah, that’s how I met my dad. My bio-dad, I should say. After a few years when I heard from my bio-mother again, she said that yeah, he was who she thought the father was. The other two guys she was sleeping with were black, and I ain’t. We went out for coffee 3 or 4 times, but we didn’t have much to talk about. He and I never really maintained contact, the last time we spoke he told me he’d been diagnosed with MS. He had a couple of sons but I was his only daughter and he said that he was grateful we had met. He’s still got my number somewhere.
So I’m working the drive through at Mickey D’s and this dude pulls up and orders an ice cream cone. I’m surprised because he’s actually nice to me and I suspect that he’s a bit high.
I leave to get the ice cream and when I get back to the window he’s holding up a 5 dollar bill.
“Duuude, look what I just found on the ground!”
“That’s awesome, wish I had that luck,” as my shoulders sag a little closer to the ground.
“Hey, how bout you take it. Ya probably work harder than I do anyway.”
I’m look to see if anyone is watching me, quickly snatch the cash and discretely put it in my pocket. I don’t think I was allowed to do that but fuck the system.
I used to work at Tim Hortons and when I had to work on the window I would barely ever look out it if it was crazy busy. I’m 6’2″, for me to look out of the window I basically have to double over and look through it was so low. Anyways, one time I was really distracted and I took the persons money and didn’t look and handed the coffee out the window and let go when I felt a hand grab the cup. Immediately I heard “Oh shit!” so I look out the window and the guy has nubs for fingers and is waving his hand back and forth trying to get control of the cup enough to bring it in his car. I apologize profusely and he leaves after a couple minutes.
I had some old guy and his granddaughters around christmas singing christmas carols beside the speaker because we were lined up and really busy. He must not’ve known the speaker still picks up noise while the person is idling there, but it put a smile on all the worker’s faces.
I was working the drive thru at Starbucks and I got these trashy people (I could tell they were trashy because of how much extra Carmel Drizzle they wanted on their Vanilla Beans) and when the car pulls up the girl (in the passenger seat) is giving the guy (the driver) a hand job. His dick was just out in the open. They gave zero fucks. They were so casual about it like it was totally normal. To this day I don’t think I fully understand what happened that night. Thinking back I wish I said, when repeating their order back, “Two venti Vanilla Beans with extra Caramel Jizzle?”
I work at Tim Hortons. One night, guy pulls up to the window. As I take his money, I think I saw his dick in his hand but I wasn’t completely sure since it was dark. I already took his $20 bill and I owe him his change so this time when I open the window I look down at his lap, sure enough he is masturbating. Except his penis wasn’t even erect, he was just jerking this small floppy penis. I froze for a few seconds, then gave him his change and said have a good night and shut the window.
When I was in high school I worked at a burger joint. At first they’d always put me on the fryer, and that fucking sucked. The guy who supervised me was Joe. Joe was pretty much a dick, and was always yelling at me for some shit. Way above and beyond new guy shit…. Anyways
One day they take me off that son of a bitch fryer, and put me on the window. Start my shift, and shit is going good. Then, near the end of the night this one ole boy rolls back around the drive through. I open the window, and he looks me dead in the eye, and says “my tots aren’t fucking done you stupid piece of shit!” AND THROWS THE BAG AT ME. Guess who’s on the fryer? THAT PIECE OF SHIT JOE. So, we cooked the guy some more tots and Joe somehow blamed that shit on me. I worked there like 5 months. Did not have much fun. Good shakes though.
I was working the drive through teller window at the bank one day. Then a guy pulls up with a fully clothed blow up doll in the passenger seat. “She” was all buckled up and everything. I looked at “her”, and then at him, and he creepily said “It’s so I can use the carpool lanes.”
I had an experience where a drive-thru worker was being weird? Does that count?
One early Saturday morning in high school, my buddy and I were blazing really hard. We had started smoking right after school got out around 2:30p on Friday, and were rolling all the way until around 2a Saturday morning. We were gonzo as shit — and we were doing this marathon thing trying to block the munchies. Every time one of got an urge to eat, we would force ourselves to take another rip to tide it off. Long story short: we were toasted.
We ended up caving around 2a and driving (I know, dumb to drive) to the nearest Burger King. We go through the drive-thru, it’s totally dead, not a soul or car in the area, and we order a shit-ton of food. We pull up to the cashier window, and the cashier is this older 50ish year old dude who seemed to the only one in the entire restaurant.
He looks right at us, and asks with total sincerity, “you kids got herb?”
My friend and I both bust out laughing, vehemently denying it, naturally. But the man persisted and asked three more times — eventually we caved and said yeah, we did. He then propositioned us with as much free food as we wanted and could eat that morning if we split a blunt with him in the back.
We naturally fucking agreed.
We met him around back near the dumpsters, rolled a paper, and blazed the shit out of the back of the BK. We finish the blunt, he proposes we roll another. We decline. He gets mad. Starts charging at my buddy, trying to take the rest of the weed stash. I help him fight this rouge BK worker off, and the guy is absolutely irate. Yelling and shit, freaking the fuck out.
We sprint back to the car, and peel the fuck out. We looked back and the dude was chasing us down the road on foot. Wild.
A bunch of stoners came through the drive through and only managed to order exactly $4.20 worth of food, paid with a $20, and left without their change.
Had a man and woman come thru and order. They get to the window and he falls asleep in the 60 seconds he is sitting there. The lady wakes him up and he pays. Then before we could hand his food out to him we noticed his truck started to roll. I get to the window in time to see the truck scraping the building. He got onto the highway woke up and floored it. He came back 30 minutes later and ordered something completely different. He didn’t know that he had been by KFC already. Manager called cops and we kept him in the drive thru until they got there.
Worked at a Starbucks through high school and part of university. We were supposed to chat up the patrons in the drive thru to make their wait a little more bearable.
Anyway, couple comes through, and they ask me, “If you were a dildo, what colour would you be?”
Green, duh.
And then there was this one time, Another couple came through in a big pickup truck. I ask how their day has been, and the female responds with “I was just released from the hospital.”
I say, “Good to hear you are all better!” and she then proceeds to tell me she was in a car accident and is paralyzed from the waist down. My jaw hits the floor and I am speechless. I hand them their drinks, wish them off, and watch as the wheelchair speeds off in the back of the truck. I’ll never forget that encounter. That made me feel like a piece of shit.
I worked at McDonalds for almost two years. The strangest incident would have to be the kid who attempted to pay me in pokemon cards by explaining how much each was worth on eBay. When I explained to him that his cards could not be used as currency he became upset, accused me of being a “dirty Yu-Gi-oh fan” and drove off, leaving me confused with both his cards and his food.
I had dude driving without arms come through my line at Taco Bell, driving a modified Gran Prix with his feet. It appeared to be a defect he was born with, he was even able to count out change and hand it to me with his toes!! I was 18 at the time, and it taught me that the only limits we have are the ones we place on ourselves. Inspiring.
Car with 4 ghetto black guys receive their massive order of $1 burgers. Before they drive off they say “Ey, you gotta light?” “Yeaaaa” Give them my lighter. They literally light up a blunt in the drive thru.
Valentines Day. Who brings their date to Mcdonalds? Well mostly high-schoolers, it was also next to a movie theater so whatever. Then, this 50 year old woman comes in by herself. Orders 2 meals while repeatedly mentioning that her husband will be here any minute. He never came, I’m sure he never existed. Sad.
Seeing homeless people come out from the forest drunk, pay for a few burgers in dimes and nickels, stumble back to the forest.
Morning, car full of construction workers in a van, getting food before their shift. Passing around a blunt. Personally I find nothing wrong with weed, but seriously.
Nice quiet, polite kid came about 3 times a week. Always brought his massive German Shepherd in the back. I sure he got some burgers.
Got screamed at by an old black guy because I didn’t give him Splenda on the side. SCREAMED at.
15 teenagers in the dining area being rowdy, whatever, but they’re cursing like mechanics and there’s quite a few little kids in the place. Our cherry shift manager asks politely to stop, which somehow makes her a “stupid ugly bitch.”
Woman’s food is going to take longer than expected. To keep up with times we ask her to pull in a spot. I don’t remember what she said, basically fuck fuck shit, I ain’t fucking moving.
Another older woman screaming at me because her coke wasn’t a dollar (that was the deal back then, but not when its apart of a meal). Explain this, but shes still flapping around yelling and screaming. I wasn’t even mad, poker face asked her “Why are you seriously yelling at me over 79¢?” Gives me the nastiest smile “I’d like to see your manager” They fucking gave it to her.
The stereotype of getting a diet coke with a huge meal is true. Best was when this rude, 30 year old, troll of a man came in. Large Big Mac with a diet coke. Sure that’ll stop the onset of Type 2 Diabetes. Gets another Big Mac with it. Yes I watched him eat it and yes he ate it all.
I can deal with trailer trash and ghetto people, rich suburb moms coming for Frappes were the most condescending and rude people I ever dealt with. Some would seriously speak to me like I’m mentally challenged.
Every day I would come home with at least one story like that. I mean every single day. And this was the ‘nicest’ McDonald’s in the city. I have more stories but I leave it with these three things:
Only 30% of people would say thank you. That’s unbelievable to me.
I have so much patience for fast food workers and if I need money that bad again I’ll go back. But MY GOD, there is nothing more demoralizing coming home from orientation trying on your uniform. “Yep, I’m really doing this, how the hell did I get here”
I’ve worked a few jobs and have always been a top employee. I was terrible at McDonalds, seriously one of the worst workers. I got better, but it gave me an attitude check. So much harder than people make fun of it for.
A couple years ago, I worked at a drive thru and this guy came around to pay. When he got there, he asked “hey, did I say I wanted extra pickles on that? Because I want extra pickles on that.” I informed him that his burger was already made and ready to go, but offered to have a new one fixed up with a satisfactory amount of pickles. the man paused, then had a look of realization. He looked up and said “Don’t worry about it! Now that I think about it, I think I might have some extra ones right here.” this valued customer then proceeded to open up his glove compartment and pull out a giant jar of sliced pickles. It was weird.
I was once working drive – thru orders and this lady came up the speaker, I greeted her and then told her to order whenever she was ready. She said that she wasn’t going to order anything and that she just needed someone to talk to. The customer is always right so I talked with her about how my day was going and then she told me she has herpes. I was dumbstruck, this lady probably just found out she had herpes and the only one she could talk to was the drive-thru guy? I was floored and talked to her for a few minutes and then she said that she had better go unlike the herpes she had. Never saw her face or even her car. I kinda wish I had her come to my window.
Well this isn’t a DT window story, but its funny and involves a drive thru. I was working as a manager for Tim Hortons in Ontario. And I was walking through the parking lot and checking to make sure everything was up to standard. A lady that was stopped in the drive thru queue line called me over. And proceeded to tear me a new one, that she has been waiting here for 10 minutes in front of the speaker. And that this was the worst service she has ever seen etc. After her rant I politely told her that this was a garbage can and that the speaker box was just up a bit more.
I have a few favorites, both from Long John Silver’s. The first one was when someone came to the drive-thru, clearly high, and asked for a Big Mac. I told him this is Long John Silver’s and we don’t serve burgers at all. I could hear him and his friend discuss for a second, then he said, “Oh, sorry, I guess make it a Whopper, then.” Goddamn it. It took him some convincing to get him to understand, and in the end he left without getting anything.
Another time, this dude flipped the fuck out because he had to wait too long for his chicken. He showed up about ten minutes before close and the three cars in front of him had also ordered family meals (huge orders of chicken and/or fish). Two of our four fryers were already shut down because it was so close to closing time, so we had to cook each car’s order individually since we can only cook 20-25 pieces at a time.
Once he finally pulled up to the window, he was screaming and cursing for taking so long. I handed him his change and he threw it into his car full force, still screaming about how we were making him late for something drastically important or something. I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever seen someone that angry before or since. I handed him his food and drink and asked if he wanted any sauce, and he screamed the sauces he wanted. Since he was in a hurry, I just handed him the sauce directly and he took the handful from my hand and immediately threw it back at me and peeled out. The thing is, the drive thru was just a lined area in the parking lot, so he really could have left anytime before he paid if he was in such a goddamned hurry.
The last great story was when some ginormous woman came through and ordered four large family meals. And of course an extra large diet Coke, because that makes it okay to eat all that deep fried shit. So I was a bit surprised that this woman was by herself in her car ordering so much food. She was really, really huge, so I wasn’t totally shocked, but it still seemed like a lot.
So she pulls up, and the car is just full of trash and shit. This was before Hoarders, so I had no idea that was a thing, but looking back, she was definitely a hoarder. There were food wrappers piled deep in the back seat, cigarettes and ash overflowing from the ashtray, and a fucking stained, nautically-themed beanbag chair in the passenger seat. So after she paid, I handed her the food and the drink, and out of nowhere, an arm appears from the beanbag chair and grabs the drink. I leaned down to get a better look, and sure enough, it was actually just a dude even larger than the driver. It was genuinely shocking that the two of them fit into the same car with the doors closed.
I’m not one to mock fat people to be a dick, but this was just pure shock at the spectacle of exactly how huge these people were. It was like the kind of people who would be on an A&E special. It was that excessive.
We had Elvis as a regular. Well, technically an Elvis impersonator, but still. He just came through the drive through in the morning about once a week and ordered an iced coffee. I noticed he happened to look sorta like Elvis, but didn’t say anything until one time he paid with a credit card, and I saw the name Elvis on there. I asked him, and apparently he had had his name legally changed to Elvis. Even had it on his driver’s license.
And then there was Batman. I shit you not, he had the outfit, a black corvette (with a strobe light on top) and BATMAN as the license plate number! Know what he ordered? A single bottle of water. Then he gave me a $20 and said to use the change to pay for whoever was behind him. He came through multiple times, and once had a girl dressed as Catwoman (comic book Catwoman, not movie Catwoman, thank god) in the passenger seat. He always did the same thing. Once that $20 managed to cover four other cars’ worth of food, and I got to tell them all that their order had been paid for by Batman. Fun times. And damn his car was cool.
Worked at Popeyes while in high school. With 10 minutes till closing one Friday night a customer pulled up and ordered a rather large amount of chicken and sides.
In case you are wondering they try to time these things out based on previous sales so we: a) Did not have enough chicken to fill the order b) Did not have enough side items to fill the order
So I tell the guy it will be almost 20 minutes to get his order together because we would have to drop chicken in the fryer. Dude says that’s cool and pulls around after I give him the total. I am not happy about the event since the cook has left for the night so I have fry the chicken, re clean the frying station, open new side items bags/ingredients, and update the cooks inventory sheet (since he already left). Plus I will be late, but what ever it’s a job.
Dude comes to the drive through window, I slide the widow back, and I tell him his total. Guy never turns his head towards me keeps his eyes straight ahead and proceeds to throw a wad of crumpled up cash and coins at my face. The snowball of dirty change hits me straight in the face when I hear him say “catch”. I stand there stunned while the currency falls to the floor and watch in disbelief as he (still looking straight ahead out his windshield) pulls the switch to roll up his window. Guy never looks at me.
Since it was almost closing time I already counted my drawer and now I am going to have to bend over pick up the bills and coins to insure my register amount is correct. Well some of the dimes, nickels, and quarters rolled underneath the tables which sucked. Why? Because the floors still had the cleaning solvent put down since everyone was in cleanup mode when this happened.
So I’m a senior in high school, working Friday night, got hit in the face with balls of coins and cash, and now my pant knees are going to be wet the whole way home since this douche decided to just fling money at me.
20 minutes go by and I start to bag his order. I put the chicken box in, I put the mash potato, dirty rice, and mac and cheese containers in, I pull back the sealing lids on top of the side items just slightly, and I approach the drive-thru window.
Now the guy rolls his window down when I slide back the drive-thru window and looks at me with a smile on his face because he is about to get his order. I sling the bag of fried chicken and side items as hard as could out my window, through his window, and the bag explodes against his passenger side window. Mashed potatoes, dirty rice, and mac and cheese are everywhere. I yelled “catch” when I did it.
Brotherly love does not include having it your way — when a bomb threat is involved.
Norfolk ConstabularyLuke Brown made the 999 call (The UK equivalent of 911) claiming a bomb was due to go off in a shopping mall in six hours’ time.
A British man made a hoax bomb phone call — because his brother wanted to finish work early.
Luke Brown made the 999 call (The UK equivalent of 911) claiming a bomb was due to go off in a shopping mall in six hours’ time.
Brown told police his brother was working in Burger King and “wanted to go home early.” He said his brother had asked him to make a call to police and “make something up.”
Norfolk ConstabularyLuke Brown made the 999 call (The UK equivalent of 911) claiming a bomb was due to go off in a shopping mall in six hours’ time.
Olaf Protze/LightRocket via Getty Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesThe shopping mall was searched but no bomb was found.
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