Decades after the drive-in movie theater’s popularity has waned, the drive through restaurant window remains a fixture of modern suburbia. Even if we choose to enjoy our greasy burgers and fries on plastic molded chairs in the dining area of our favorite fast food establishment, the drive through window may be useful. When we’re feeling especially peckish, we can go through the drive through lane and grab a snack to tide us over till we’re parked.

While the drive-in movie is nearly a thing of the past, its remarkably low fidelity speaker system is still alive and well and is used to order meals as we look at professionally photographed food items, airbrushed to perfection to stimulate our taste buds. Clearly none of that advertising money went into the speaker system though, because a simple inquiry such as “Hold the vanilla?” can all too easily become “No salmonella?”

After placing an order, the driver’s told the price and instructed to pull ahead to the pickup window. This is not the time for him to become a correct change hero or search the glove compartment for napkins from a previous visit. He should simply drive up to the window with an eye for any vehicles in front of him, because it’s tricky to pass burgers and fries around the car once the airbags have been deployed.

If you’re extremely famished, the drive-thru offers you the opportunity to buy several orders for your own consumption under the premise that it’s for more than one person. As you’re being handed several food items, you could say out loud “One for Betty, one for Gordo and one for me” to disguise the fact that you’re the only customer involved with that order. If you want to make it more believable, you could try to get different combinations of condiments to further the illusion that there’s more than one palette to satisfy.

If you’re craving a more exotic item on the menu, such as a veal sandwich or broiled chicken breast, you may not want to order it from the drive through. If it’s not a hot seller then chances are they don’t have one on standby under the heat lamp and they’ll have to make it from scratch. In this case, you’ll probably be asked to pay for the meal and park nearby to wait for that item to be delivered to your car. If you were ordering Italian food from a motor home at this point, the experience would be remarkably like receiving delivery from a pizza place.