With the massive influx of wild n' crazy stories relating to the fast food industry, I felt it was high time that somebody make a node for it all. If you've got a story, write it here! If you've already got a story (or 14, if you're RimRod) already noded, hardlink them. It's fun!

My first story requires a little background and a short geography lesson regarding the Burger King in Springfield, IL that I was working at during the summer of 1996. My drive-thru window faced North, towards a road travelling east-west, and a bank, which is across the street. The bank's parking lot opens up onto the east-west road, and there's a 9-foot-deep drainage ditch between the BK property and the road. The ditch is 20-30 feet across, and it's separated from the road by a 6-inch curb and a heavy wooden guardrail.

I was working the drive thru, taking and passing out orders like usual, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a big piece of metallic junk fly through the air and land in the ditch. Believe it or not, this doesn't always happen, so I was kind of interested to see what was going on. I leaned out the window to get a better look, and much to my amazement there was a car facing South inside the ditch! Apparently, some old lady had mistaken her accelerator for the brakes when she was pulling out of the bank across the street. She smashed through the guardrail and jumped her car, Dukes of Hazzard-style, over the ditch, nosediving into the other side and flopping back down into the water.

I immediately yelled to the manager to call 911 as I ran to the door to the second drive thru lane. I yanked open the door and ran to the ditch, throwing my hat to the side. I scrambled down into the ditch so see if the lady inside was okay. She looked like she had hit her head on the steering wheel pretty hard. It was all bent out of shape, and there was blood streaming out of her nose onto her blouse. I opened the door to give her some fresh air, but I knew it would be a bad idea to try and move her, so I interrogated her about her injuries. She was kind of delirious from the impact, but she managed to tell me that her nose and her chest hurt. At this point, one of her back tires started to deflate and the car started to slip back deeper into the 4 feet of water in the ditch.

I looked back at the store, to see why nobody else was out there giving me moral support, and I saw a couple workers and managers clustered around the side door, but nobody came out to help! I yelled to see if anybody had had the presence of mind to actually call 911, and they said yes, they had. Then, instead of asking if they could do anything or even coming out to make sure everything was alright, they went back to filling fast food orders!

After the emergency personnel arrived on the scene, I was able to go back inside. It seemed that all my managers could think about was how screwed they were because the ambulance and fire trucks were blocking up the drive thru! Nobody even asked me how the old lady was!

The moral of the story? Hell, I don't know. Fast food managers aren't very smart and they tend to have one-track minds. Also, lots of people apparently don't react well to strange situations, especially Burger King employees. Imagine that.


Other fast-food related nodes: