The fries come from afar, and the orders do, too

Just when you thought the fast food industry couldn't get any more impersonal: the person taking your drive-thru order may, in fact, be sitting in an office hundreds of miles away. (Not to imply that you, dear readers, are avid fast-food consumers. I daresay most of you aren't.)

Indeed, for the past 18 months, McDonald's has been experimenting with long distance order processing, according to this piece in the New York Times. Specially-trained employees at call centers around the country take and process orders from drive-thru customers and then immediately e-mail them to the franchises, who put together the meals and hand them to their oblivious customers. This system is designed to save a few seconds on each order — and make more $, of course, for Micky D's. ☼