Last night, the Hurricanes got a bit of revenge upon the Seattle Kraken and kind of spoiled long-time TV play-by-play voice of the Carolina Hurricanes John Forslund’s return to PNC Arena with a 3-2 victory in regulation.
And you know what that means?
Yet another free chicken sandwich from Chick-Fil-A assuming they unlock the promotion in a timely fashion so that you have until midnight to open up the app and claim the reward.
Mind you, with the game being played on a Sunday and Chick Fil-A being famously closed on that day, the promotion award in the app didn’t actually unlock until 0335 this morning which was spotted by Ms Pat and I just happened to see her text as I was staggering back to my bed after getting a sip of tea from the UCF Tervis guarding the washroom sink.
So with lunch eventually to be sorted, I was glad to lay back down for a couple more hours of nightmares for what passed for sleep before it was time to go collect kids and puppy for the start of the new week.
Katie had lacrosse training in the afternoon so that seemed the best time to duck down to the Garner location at Timber and US-70 and have a bit of a late lunch of what is probably my favourite incarnation of the Lord’s Bird in the greater Raleigh area.
So here’s the play-by-play of their drive-through:
- 1455 – Mobile order placed at Ligon Middle School
- 1505 – Arrive at shopping centre where I’m the only car in the drive-through queue still out in the street waiting to join the conga line proper
- 1508 – Reached the order taker after moving only one car length. OK, it’s fairer to say he walked a lot farther toward me than I moved toward him! There’s a new third drive-through lane (presumably for the mobile order QR code bypass they use at Brier Creek) that’s blocked off so I’m about 30m from the single-file choke point in the outside lane.
- 1515 – Made it to the order board, 5m to choke point
- 1517 – Alert comes through that mobile order is ready, 2m to the choke point
- 1518 – At the choke point and single-file
- 1521 – Arrive at the window, get food and depart. The new queue lane seems to have made it impossible for them to send kids to deliver orders round the side of the building which I generally thought was unsafe anyway.
Queue length is identical to what it was when I arrived…one car stuck out in the travel lane with a full two-lane queue of cars.
So, 16 minutes from arrival in the queue to departure. Certainly not a particularly quick time for “fast” food but given how the queue was stuffed even at an “off” time, this was about the average queue wait time I’ve experienced during the pandemic.
Ironically enough, as Alex and I are waiting at the stoplight to turn left onto US-70 on the way to Sam’s for the cheapest petrol in the immediate area (cheap being rather laughable at the $3.799 but less than the gouging in the New Bern Av/Rogers Lane metroplex!), we spot Ms Pat turning into the shopping centre presumably on the way to redeem her free sandwich.
And wouldn’t you know it…yet another long queue to get into the petrol station.
16 minutes to the pump, in fact! 😉