QuikTrip drive-thru may signal the end of days

Do you ever have one of those days where you’re just killing it? I’m talking getting everything on your “To Do” list done and then some?

That was me last week.

I was a multi-tasking tornado. Check this out: While my car was having its oil changed, I walked over to Target to get some shopping done and then, bam, got my first-ever flu shot.

Did I have plans to get a flu shot? No, but when I saw a sign advertising a $5 gift card with your flu shot, I said why not and I also needed it for some vaccination cred. I have some younger friends who are passionate about not vaccinating their children. And every time I share that this mama is all aboard the full vaccination express, I get the question about flu shots. As in, “How can you say that when I know you don’t get a flu vaccine?”

So, here I am at Target getting a flu shot, so I can primarily shut down the anti-vaxxers, get a gift card and, coming in much lower in priority, protect my health when the pharmacist during the injection chit chat asks me, “Did you know QuikTrip is putting in drive-thrus in some of their stores?”

Sweet baby Jesus, I felt faint and it wasn’t from having a needle phobia. The sheer magnitude and life-changing potential of QuikTrips having drive-thrus left me so swoony the pharmacist asked me if I was having a reaction to the shot.

I told him I was most certainly having a reaction, but it wasn’t to the shot. It was to the QuikTrip news.

And yes, I would need a minute to recover. It was just all too much to process — good and bad.

First, the good news. I wouldn’t have to get out of my car. This would be beyond excellent because it never fails whenever I’m having a great hair day, as in my hair is not only lush with full volume it also smells intoxicating. So intoxicating I’ve been known to let strangers rub their face in it. OK, maybe not rub their face (that much), but for sure sniff a couple of stands for longer than perhaps is socially acceptable.

This awesome hair day is nine out of 10 times ruined when I have to venture inside a QuikTrip for my Diet Coke with crushed ice and a smidgen of Rooster Booster. As soon as I breach the threshold of the store, my follicles become swathed in the scents of, in no particular order: B.O., smoke and a mystery smell that I think is a combo platter of fuel, food funk and feet.

Imagine the quality-of-life surge if I could enjoy the greatness of a QuikTrip without leaving the first-class caliber air control chamber that is my car? Yeah, I know it’s a lot to take in.

Now for the bad news. Can you even begin to imagine the parking lot nightmare this would create?

There are already so many problems right now. You have the landscape and contractor trucks playing chicken with the folks in cars. You’ve got people, totally lacking in any home training, parking like they are vision impaired or worse just chilling out by a gas pump while they chow down on their breakfast burrito. Never mind that drivers are circling trying to find a vacant pump.

Now add in a drive-thru line snaking its way through the parking lot, or worse, a drive thru with two lanes that requires people to merge to one. As evidenced by the McDonald’s at 119th Street I don’t think a majority of humans have the IQ to pull that off.

I’m getting nervous just thinking about it. Seriously, I’m having heart palpitations leaving me no choice but to go to my happy place — smelling my hair.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.

This story was originally published October 5, 2016 at 9:51 AM with the headline "QuikTrip drive-thru may signal the end of days."