edit: it's the customers, as expected, but now I have a better picture of how they can slow things down this much.
i arrive to find two people in line
car at front: sits at window for 15 literal minutes. receives single drink
car after them: sits at window for 15 literal minutes, receives single drink
me: pulls up to window, places order, receives drink within 2 minutes
what could they possibly be doing up there? there can't be a beverage that takes 15 minutes to prepare, I would think, and it can't just be "they're busy" because then I would have to sit at the window for 15 minutes at least once in a while, but this has happened well over fifty times, and not once have I ever had to wait more than 2 minutes for my order, even if there's 10 people in line and only one person working. It has to be something these other patrons are doing to slow down the process, but I can't fathom what it could be.
I've never worked at a stand but I've got about five years of drive-thru experience at the big corporate coffee chain and nine times out of ten it is the customer doing something to make this transaction take much longer for everyone involved. Sometimes this can be benign, like just having a good conversation with whoever's on the window, but most of the time it's something like their preferred payment method not working or a last-second addition to an order at the window. The latter bit seems like it shouldn't add double-digit minutes to an order fulfillment but we're all running in routines so customers adding things at the window requires more than one person to pull themselves out of routine, fulfill the request on the fly, and then get back into routine, and I really wish it were so easy to do that as it is to type that.
And every now and then we goof up and it turns out there's not an ingredient prepared for an ordered beverage and we have to also drop out of routine to get it made so we can make the drink. That one's on us, sorry!
