

The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order - netrus
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/11fast.html?pagewanted=all

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maerek
This is actually quite a fascinating article. It's pretty impressive that
current technology allows someone several hundred (thousand) miles away to
interact with you, yet still receive your physical product a mere 15 seconds
later. I'd be even more interested to see the sort of technology behind the
scenes (load balancers, load switching amongst call center employees,
pipes/servers/protocols being used).

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jsherer
It gives me pain every time I see an interesting, yet irrelevant article on
HN, especially one that is 5 years old.

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dpapathanasiou
The only thing that surprises me about this article is the continued
widespread existence of drive-throughs.

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noahc
Care to explain why drive-throughs are a surprise?

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dpapathanasiou
For one thing, they're relics of the cheap gas era, when it didn't matter how
many miles per gallon your car got, and you didn't care how much you wasted
while idling in line.

They also don't make much sense in daily life: are people really so busy they
can't stop to eat?

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noahc
I would argue we are still in an era of cheap gas. Expensive gas is more like
$5 - $7 in the midwest. I'm sure out on the coasts you're pumping up against
that already. You're idling for maybe 10 - 15 minutes, so most people don't
care.

In my experience a drive through is a dine-out experience. It's not so much
we're eating in our car and not stopping, but I'm going to go get fast food to
go.

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dpapathanasiou
Maybe gas is still cheap (relatively speaking) and so people don't care.

There is, however, a lot of lip service about both energy conservation and
healthier lifestyles, and in that context, drive-throughs represent the
antithesis of both.

