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13 Drive-Through Workers Spill the Craziest Things They’ve Seen at Work

It takes a brave soul to work the drive-through.

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Drive-thru
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Working the drive-through is no picnic

Fast food workers get a bad rap for being lazy. All they have to do is take orders, give change, and hand people their food, right? Wrong. On these Reddit threads, current and former fast-food workers revealed the weirdest things they’ve seen while working a drive-through window, from the confusing to the downright creepy. You’ll also went to check out the 7 dirty secrets restaurant staff won’t tell you.

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alcohol
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Morning cup of… what?

“Had a guy come through Tim Hortons in the morning. Go to give him his coffee and he asks me to wait a second. Grabs the beer from his cup holder and chugs the rest of it. Throws it out the open passenger window, takes coffee from my hand, says thank you and drives away.”

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skeleton
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The odd couple

“I worked at a McDonald’s last year. We had a regular drive-through customer who was odd. He had a huge beard and was always wearing a Hawaiian button-up shirt, and always had a fake skeleton wearing a hat in his passenger seat. I still don’t have any ideas as to why.” Fake skeleton or not, learn the 9 foods nutritionists never order at fast-food restaurants.

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Pizza
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Pizza for you, nightmares for me

“A guy nonchalantly ordered a slice of cheese pizza while his hands were covered in blood a few days ago. He didn’t acknowledge it at all. I gave him some extra napkins.”

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couch
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SUV: Sofa Undercover as a Vehicle

“Was working drive-through at Hardees as my first job. It’s about 10 p.m. on a Friday night and someone comes into the drive-through. They order a strawberry malt. As part of my ‘scripting’ I ask if they want to add two apple turnovers for $.99. They gleefully agree! Cool! ‘Your total is $3.14, pull to the next window.’And they didn’t. They were laughing. And there was lots of noise. And the noise continued and there was more laughing. Tentatively, I poked my head out of the window and saw 6 high school kids carrying a sofa. They hauled the sofa to the window and asked for me to dump the milkshake all over the sofa. Whatever, they paid for it so I enjoyed it! When I gave them the pies they proceeded to smash them and smear them all over the sofa. Then they carried it to the parking lot and loaded it onto a truck and drove away.”

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dog
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Our new mascot

“Once a guy handed us a Chihuahua puppy through the window. Said something ominous about ‘getting rid of it’ if we didn’t want it. Luckily, the supervisor at the time was cool about it. Little guy hung out in a fry box for a while. The supervisor’s younger brother ending up adopting it.”

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teddy-bear
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I scream, you scream, the dolls scream

“A friend of mine worked at an ice cream place. The woman ordered five ice cream cones. When she pulled around she saw that the woman had four dolls buckled into the back seat.”

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monkey
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Monkey see, monkey jump

“I work at an Arby’s in Indiana. About a year ago a woman came through with a pet monkey in a diaper on a leash. She handed me her money, acted like everything was normal. When I went to hand her the change the monkey jumped in the window took the change and hopped back.” Hmm… we’re wondering how that pet monkey even got there, but we don’t have to wonder about how these 8 popular fast-food restaurants got their names.

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shaving
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Personal hygiene always comes first

“Working at McDonald’s I’ve had a regular customer who drives through just about every day twice a day and he is always shaving his face with an electric razor. Every single time.”

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tattoo
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Our Father, who art lovin’ it

“We had a guy with a cross tattoo come through our McDonald’s drive-through. The worker asked him about it and he said ‘Oh. I’m Jesus Christ, I’ve come to judge the world, turn water into wine, and bring the dead back to life.’ Fully serious.” Memorize these 75 facts about McDonald’s before your next trip.

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sleeping
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One broken heart to-go

“So a girl and her boyfriend come through the drive-through, get their food, and take off. Next car pulls up, and it’s a guy just bawling his eyes out. Turns out the girl in the car ahead of him was his girlfriend and she was cheating on him with the guy.”

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elephant
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Would you like peanuts with that?

“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.” These food stories are almost too weird to be true.

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HDR image, Taco Bell restaurant, drive thru highway sign - Revere, Massachusetts USA - March 10, 2018
QualityHD/Shutterstock

What happens on nightshift, gets put on Reddit

“My first real job in high school was at a very loosely managed Taco Bell where one of the supervisors had been fired recently. While I was working the overnight shift, he came through the drive-through, pointed a gun at me, and robbed me for all of my Cinnamon Twists. He took the whole pan of Cinnamon Twists. Right through his car window. We cooked a new batch. Didn’t even call the cops. Nightshift is weird.”

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ice-cream
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Have a magical day!

“I handed some 50-year-old guy his ice cream cone and when he took it he asked me with a straight face, ‘Do you believe in unicorns?’ I was taken by surprise at his question and before I could answer he slammed the cone on his forehead and just drove off normally.” Well then! Now that you know some crazy things drive-through workers have seen, learn the 33 things your fast-food worker won’t share.

Claire Nowak
Claire is a writer, editor and digital strategist with more than 10 years of experience reporting on facts, trivia and quotes. Her natural curiosity lends itself to stories on history, trivia and "Did you know?" curiosities, and her work has appeared in Taste of Home, The Family Handyman, The Healthy and iHeart Media. A former editor at Reader's Digest and proud Marquette University grad, she lives in Milwaukee with her fiancé and their corgi and enjoys binge-listening to true-crime podcasts.