We already have the “extra big ass fries“, now AI is taking our orders, too.
Key Points
- Idiocracy’s Carl’s Jr. kiosk scene feels close to reality. Fast-food chains are rolling out AI drive-thru ordering.
- The tech is glitchy and unwanted, but corporations push it anyway to cut costs.
- In the process, entry-level jobs and the human touch that made fast food culture tolerable are disappearing.
Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
Anyone who’s seen Idiocracy knows this outrageous interchange between hungry fast-food goer and dumb tech kiosk:
When Idiocracy was released back in 2006 (yes, almost two decades ago) this concept was pure satire. A Carl’s Jr. kiosk rejecting a poor woman who spent her last penny on ‘extra big ass fries’ that the machine fails to dispense her. Out of warranted frustration, she makes a remark about her starving children. The automated kiosk sprays what I assume is nitrous in her face to help her calm down, just before placing her ‘starving children’ into the custody of… again, Carl’s Jr.
Mike Judge’s humor on money hungry corps and AIs taking our orders is getting a little too real.
Actually, very real.
In 2006, the Carl’s Jr. kiosk scene was meant as hyperbole on real future fears. I’ve seen some concrete evidence that Idiocracy has predicted the future before (*ahem*, Crocs), but this one snuck up on me.
My friends and I were starving on the way home from our mountain trip. We arrived in Belmont, NC after 3.5 hours in the car, and stopped off at Taco Bell. I was just expecting to pull up to the window (like a normal person), but my friends already had their process nailed down.
We pulled into a parking spot, placed our order through the app, and proceeded to the drive through speaker.
I was still expecting a human when an overly friendly chatbot asked for the name. We gave the eerily upbeat bot the name on the order, and everything on the screen was wrong. We tried to correct it at the Idiocracy level speaker, but it failed many times, giving us repeat responses that sounded uncannily similar to the movie scene.
Finally, we pulled to the window where the humans easily corrected the issue, looking as exasperated as we were.
Releasing glitchy beta tech = unhappy humans.
If the humans on both the employee and consumer side hate it, isn’t that a red flag?
Evidently, this has been debuted in select locations across the country. Wendy’s has been rolling out its “FreshAI” voice as early as June 2023, and it is not alone. Taco Bell, Checkers, Carl’s Jr., and even KFC are experimenting with AI taking orders, promising efficiency, accuracy, and cost-savings.
I prefer the human. Even when it’s more like, “Can you repeat that” five times before they finally click in all in correctly with their talon level nails. I’ve met plenty of excellent employees in that position that have made me smile every visit.
Live deployment as the sandbox.
In 2023, Wendy’s announced a partnership with Google Cloud to create “FreshAI,” a voice assistant designed to take drive-thru orders. By early 2025, FreshAI was operational in around 100 locations, with expansion plans for up to 600 more by the end of the year. Executives claim it frees workers to focus on food preparation, reduces human error, and ensures consistency across the chain.
It sounded polished in the press releases. In practice, it has been a disaster. Customers report interruptions, misheard orders, and frustrations when requesting simple modifications. Speech impediments and accents can throw the AI into a loop. The experience is a disgrace to efficiency, with human intervention at every inevitable failure.
Some real instances could have been written by Mike Judge.
McDonald’s tried its own AI system at over 100 test sites and pulled the plug in mid-2024 after viral clips showed bizarre mistakes: butter packets added at random, bacon on ice cream, and orders ballooning into absurd quantities. Fast Company chronicled the debacle, pointing out how quickly these “efficiency” experiments turn into public relations disasters.
Taco Bell and Checkers are not immune either. Online forums are filled with stories of AI order-takers bungling requests so badly that staff had to override them almost every time. One Reddit user described the AI at their local Taco Bell as “pretty much 100 percent guaranteed to hand your order back to a human because it can’t get it right.” Another recounted their Carl’s Jr. experience, where the AI was so clumsy that it tripled the order time.
This is precisely the dystopian humor of Idiocracy: tech that promises progress while delivering nonsense.
The corporate obsession with saving money.
It’s not a secret why all of this is being pushed: cost savings and control. AI does not call in sick, desire raises, join unions, or get thrown in jail. Though, if the Idiocracy clip is a prediction, it might throw you in jail! AI always upsells, doesn’t take breaks, and never says no.
That’s corporate perfection, that’s an ideal employee.
Take Hungry Jack’s in Australia (a Burger King franchise). When they unveiled their AI drive-thru, critics immediately raised alarms about teenage jobs evaporating. News.com.au bluntly summarized the public reaction: “Every 15-year-old just lost their job.” The ethical questions are obvious. Who benefits from automation at this level? Certainly not the kids who once relied on fast-food jobs for pocket money, or the communities that need entry-level employment opportunities.
Corporations argue that automation creates new kinds of jobs in tech and support. Maybe so, but they are not the same jobs. They are not available to the same people. And they are certainly not at the same scale.
Consumers didn’t want this “upgrade”.
Or should I say “Upgrayedd”…
Polling shows that Americans are not screaming for AI chatbots in drive-thrus. A 2024 YouGov survey found that only 4 percent actually prefer it to a human. Most people would rather order from an app if they want automation. At least the app does not interrupt, mishear, or awkwardly upsell bacon on your dessert.
Yet corporations continue to push the narrative that AI is the future of fast food. The disconnect is glaring.
Nobody asks, yet corporate America gives. Just like in Idiocracy, what customers want and what corporations impose are two very different things.
Humans make the experience real.
Fast food has always held a oddly specific work culture. Part of the irony is the employees make the experience.
Just take a look at all the reels of influencers ripping on the waffle house employee trope. Or the guy who does the skits with his daughter depicting minimum wage customer service stereotypes. What would we do without them?
I miss my ultra efficient Taco Bell guy and I know my order will be right at Dunkin’ based on the face at the window.
Replace that with a sterile algorithm, and you strip away the little bits of humanity that made the experience tolerable. You also strip away jobs. When Wendy’s touts efficiency, what they mean is fewer employees on payroll. When McDonald’s kills a failed AI pilot, it is not because they have second thoughts about automation. It is because the PR was bad. Once the kinks are smoothed out, you can bet it will be back.
That is the part that feels like satire: the inevitability of a corporate idea no one wanted.
When Idiocracy tropes show up in today’s business models.
Mike Judge imagined a future where fast food and consumer culture dictated every aspect of life. Corporations like Carl’s Jr. and Brawndo were not just brands but institutions, controlling health care, parenting, and even politics. It was absurd. It was meant to exaggerate.
Yet here we are, watching fast-food chains spend millions to train AI, purely because it serves corporate margins. And yes, they are training AI for Google or whichever company as a partner. The result is exactly what the movie warned about: consumer corporations using technology to complicate our lives for their own gain.
Not to mention padding tech’s already ridiculously deep pockets.
Idiocracy shows us (in an hyperbolic way) what kind of society we build when we prioritize efficiency and profit over people. Every drive-thru interaction with a malfunctioning AI is a tiny glimpse into that world. It is funny now. It might not be funny in ten years.
We already have the big ass fries. We don’t want the chatbot.
Drive-thru windows (and their inconvenient update) reflect our relationship with technology, labor, and convenience. When Wendy’s insists that a chatbot can improve your experience, when McDonald’s quietly retreats after a comedy of errors, we are watching the collision of corporate ambition and human reality.
When you line it up against Idiocracy, the satire starts to feel less like fiction and more like a preview. We do not have a Carl’s Jr. AI threatening to take your kids yet. We do have a Taco Bell AI that cannot pull up the correct order, a McDonald’s AI putting bacon on ice cream, and executives insisting this is progress.
We’ve already had the extra big ass fries since 1995, a revenue ploy and national crisis in its own right.
Rolling out unnecessary tech is not just an annoyance. It is a cultural signpost. We are creeping toward a world where choice is limited, where interaction is artificial, and where human workers are treated as expendable.
The question is not whether AI can take your order. It is whether we want it to.
Next time you roll down your window, think of Idiocracy. Then think about the fact that your fries might be handed to you by the only human left in the building, while a machine decides if you also want butter packets with your drink.
That is not the future we ordered. But it might be the one we are served.
Maybe AI will take over selling toilet water coffees at Starbucks, too.
Do you find the AI drive-thu unsettling? Share your stories below.
Sources
- Wendy’s began piloting FreshAI (Business Insider) (People.com)
- McDonald’s AI failures and shutdown (Fast Company) (The Guardian)
- Reports of glitchy Taco Bell AI order-takers (Reddit r/economics)
- Carl’s Jr.’s longer, awkward AI drive-thru experiences (Reddit r/mildlyinteresting)
- Hungry Jack’s (Burger King Australia) ethical backlash (News.com)
- U.S. consumer sentiment about AI drive-thru orders (Business.yougov.com)
Leave a Reply