McDonalds Drive-thru

This will be hard to visualize unless you have a good imagination – some effort on your part will be required

Today, my wife was in Beijing. I was out late last night. My daughter was out late as well. Needless to say I was running late getting my daughter to the bus and getting myself on the road to work. Breakfast was just not available to be had this morning.

I decided to treat myself to a Chinese McDonalds. There is a McDonalds near where I work which happens to be the first McDonalds in China with a drive-thru window. I have never used it because I don’t drive and I wouldn’t be able to tell my driver what to order. Now picture in your head the way you and your family goes through the drive-thru. You’re leaning out the window ordering while each family member barks out their order and you repeat it into the speaker. That scenario won’t happen in my van due to the language barrier.

Today I went to the counter and as I was ordering I noticed something odd at the drive-thru window. Again, I need to preface and say the design of the drive-thru’s are slightly different in China but it has the same concept; Order at the end of the building – drive to the first window to pay (but here it is always closed) – drive to the second window to pick-up. The pick up window is huge. The window is probably 12 feet wide and about 6 feet tall. It goes from the floor to the ceiling – when you look out you can see the entire vehicle: top to bottom - front to back.

Well, the thing I saw today was an expat paying, talking, and picking up his food from the back of the van. The oddity was that he had the sliding door of his van open and he was conducting this transaction from the captain’s chair of his van. It just looked so odd to see the inside of a van completely exposed at the drive-thru window. He looked like a king (a fat one at that) sitting in his carriage atop the men’s shoulders who were carrying him.

Oh, how I wish I had a camera