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A person in a car can't jump through the service window faster than the employee can close it. A person on foot might. Cameras also work better against cars -

A person in a car can't jump through the service window faster than the employee can close it. A person on foot might. Cameras also work better against cars - even if they have no license plates, you can get a make, model, and approximate year. A pedestrian might go any which way after robbing the store; a car has to stick to paved surfaces.

tacheiordache 3y ago
Telling you to step back a few feet could solve the problem. I had this issue where I had to get a covid test in Orlando and we walked there but they were expecting to come in a car. I ordered an Uber for that, just to sit in the car in a drive through. The whole experience was ridiculous.... The hotel we were staying at was just 5 minutes and we initially said let's just walk.
- devilbunny 3y ago
  It doesn't solve the problem of how you pay them (which would be feasibly fixed with contactless methods) or get your food without exposing the employees - very few (if any) drive-through restaurants have a sliding drawer that they can use to exchange payment methods or the ordered food, the way that banks and pharmacies do.
  - FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
    This makes no sense, because what do the car drivers do? You're about three feet away from a person either way. They're handing you cash or a credit card either way. The only difference is that one is sitting in a vehicle with the window open, and the other is on their own two feet. Any difference in "exposure" is completely psychological, maybe due to some perception that the person in the car is "in another room". But there's no less physical contact. Sure, I'll give a pass for some degree of paranoia at the time -- lots of us were uselessly Clorox(TM)-wiping our groceries -- though, we were well past the peak when this happened -- but at this point we all know that worrying about surfaces is almost completely pointless. So all this "contactless" stuff is just a bunch of technology providers and payment networks trying to ride in opportunistically on peoples' fears. Which, mercifully, have subsided along with most of the threat.
    - xboxnolifes 3y ago
      You're assuming reasonable people and ignoring the original objection of "jumping through the window". A person in a car isn't going to go from a sitting position to jumping through two windows faster than someone standing.
    - devilbunny 3y ago
      It's not about touching the same things. It's about potential violence. A person who is sitting in a car has to go through two windows and rise from a sitting position to attack someone inside. A pedestrian can be facing the window directly and grab with both hands. If a driver pulls a gun, the employee can duck. A pedestrian can lean inside and shoot them anyway. A person in a car necessarily excludes the possibility that there are accomplices hidden just outside of employee view. Pedestrians, not so much.
FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
> A person in a car can't jump through the service window faster than the employee can close it. A person on foot might. This just seems paranoid. Anywhere that does have a counter, anyone could theoretically put on a Hamburgler costume and jump over it with a big sack to raid the kitchen. But we don't worry about it, because it's vanishingly unlikely. You can't run a society if you can't trust people at a basic level. You don't fortify every shop against Viking raids. I mean, I've been in some Bad Neighborhoods where the shopkeepers all have plexiglass and bars and loudspeakers, but it's not remotely typical. I'll also grant that there are a handful of places where basic norms have broken down, but I think that's mostly overblown by the Right. You should be able to just interact with people like a normal human being. And mostly, you can. People have just gotten twitchy for dumb reasons.

tacheiordache 3y ago

Telling you to step back a few feet could solve the problem. I had this issue where I had to get a covid test in Orlando and we walked there but they were expecting to come in a car. I ordered an Uber for that, just to sit in the car in a drive through. The whole experience was ridiculous.... The hotel we were staying at was just 5 minutes and we initially said let's just walk.

devilbunny 3y ago
It doesn't solve the problem of how you pay them (which would be feasibly fixed with contactless methods) or get your food without exposing the employees - very few (if any) drive-through restaurants have a sliding drawer that they can use to exchange payment methods or the ordered food, the way that banks and pharmacies do.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
  This makes no sense, because what do the car drivers do? You're about three feet away from a person either way. They're handing you cash or a credit card either way. The only difference is that one is sitting in a vehicle with the window open, and the other is on their own two feet. Any difference in "exposure" is completely psychological, maybe due to some perception that the person in the car is "in another room". But there's no less physical contact. Sure, I'll give a pass for some degree of paranoia at the time -- lots of us were uselessly Clorox(TM)-wiping our groceries -- though, we were well past the peak when this happened -- but at this point we all know that worrying about surfaces is almost completely pointless. So all this "contactless" stuff is just a bunch of technology providers and payment networks trying to ride in opportunistically on peoples' fears. Which, mercifully, have subsided along with most of the threat.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    You're assuming reasonable people and ignoring the original objection of "jumping through the window". A person in a car isn't going to go from a sitting position to jumping through two windows faster than someone standing.
  - devilbunny 3y ago
    It's not about touching the same things. It's about potential violence. A person who is sitting in a car has to go through two windows and rise from a sitting position to attack someone inside. A pedestrian can be facing the window directly and grab with both hands. If a driver pulls a gun, the employee can duck. A pedestrian can lean inside and shoot them anyway. A person in a car necessarily excludes the possibility that there are accomplices hidden just outside of employee view. Pedestrians, not so much.

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago

> A person in a car can't jump through the service window faster than the employee can close it. A person on foot might. This just seems paranoid. Anywhere that does have a counter, anyone could theoretically put on a Hamburgler costume and jump over it with a big sack to raid the kitchen. But we don't worry about it, because it's vanishingly unlikely. You can't run a society if you can't trust people at a basic level. You don't fortify every shop against Viking raids. I mean, I've been in some Bad Neighborhoods where the shopkeepers all have plexiglass and bars and loudspeakers, but it's not remotely typical. I'll also grant that there are a handful of places where basic norms have broken down, but I think that's mostly overblown by the Right. You should be able to just interact with people like a normal human being. And mostly, you can. People have just gotten twitchy for dumb reasons.