Sonic Drive-In — Restaurant in Santa Rosa

I found the burgers quite unremarkable and the experience very odd. I preferred inside seating, so I ordered inside. There is no counter, just a touch screen with a mic on a wall. So you are inside but it's the same ordering experience as a drive thru. The clerk, and kitchen is behind a wall. The weird thing was that the restaurant, despite being brand new, had one of the screens for ordering "out of order". It was also confusing because it asked you to specify a "stall number" but had no options to say, "I'm dining inside". So you order one of the burgers, but I could not figure out how to like, add pickles or request mustard or whatever. It was an impersonal, frustrating, and unusual experience. Like they are trying to save money by eliminating human interaction. But sometimes you need to just tell a person what you want, so you can, y'know, get what you want. So then I inserted my credit card and of course, it did not work. So I tried again a couple times and finally it took. Then, the food came out and it's was...ok... I guess. Pretty typical, low quality fast food cheeseburger. But, I needed more ketchup for the fries, But there was not a station with condiments you could grab. Instead you have to like "call an employee" to get additional condiments. So then I get a paper bag with 15 ketchup packets when I needed 2 or 3. I also witnessed one older gentleman get frustrated because his burger was cold, and he could not see the kitchen, could not hear the low quality ordering speaker, and did not understand if the food was made to order or pre-heated. The clerk was sort of evasive in answering his questions and kept asking him if she could remake his order. Obviously that's not what he wanted. He just wanted to know if the burgers are made fresh, which is a legit question. Another guy spent like ten minutes trying to figure out who you talk to to get a different cup for his milkshake. The ordering monitor was loud and distorted, so the clerk would eventually emerge from a door into the hidden kitchen portal and talk to you after a frustrating anti-human interaction. Before leaving I went to use the restroom. Unsurprisingly, one of the stalls was out of order, and weirdly, super overkill taped with "caution" police tape... in this brand new restaurant. Huh? For all the hype, I expected some kind of epiphany in fast food dining. What I got was a weird sort of apocalypse now descent into...

Horrible experience in drive up. Tonight we ordered 2 drinks totaling $17 and some change. I gave them my card and the person working drive up walked away with my card and then when he came back to the window he asked if I could pay cash. I only had a $50 so I thought it would be an issue, but he said it was fine and walked away from the window again. When I got back my change, I was given 2 $5s, 3 $1s and then an additional $5 totaling $18 when I should have gotten $32 back. I let the person at the window know the change was incorrect and he looked down at the money and walked away again. He came back with another employee that stated she gave him the exact change. We asked how was that possible given the change we were given and she stated she gave him a $20 that she had to get from the vault. I explained that I gave them everything he gave me and was never given a $20. She insisted that she watched him the whole time and that she knows he gave us the correct amount and that she "looked through his pockets, and he didn't have a $20 on him". Not sure how she would have had time to do that nor why she would feel the need to if she "watched him the whole time." I told them I wanted to talk to the manager and she said she was the manager so we told them to review the cameras. I asked for another manager and she said they wouldn't be available until the morning and that I could call them then. We told them we wanted the $50 back and that they can have our drinks to which the manager said we would owe her $14 more. Ultimately we returned our drinks to them and got the $50 back but I can not believe that this even happened. I will not be going back and would not trust any of the employees considering obviously something weird...

I wish it were possible to give a negative star-rating. Today we went into the Santa Rosa Sonic for onion rings and two sodas. Just onion rings and two sodas.

It was like 9 bucks and I foolishly gave the machine (no counter service) a $5 tip.

I used to work at Burger King and I know that onion rings take about 3 minutes to deep fry from frozen unless you can serve them up immediately because you already have some in the bin, which is usually the case.

25 minutes later (25 minutes, no exaggeration!!) they come out with our order, onion rings (which was really the only complicated part if you're a chimpanzee), the temperature of which I would expect of onion rings that had been sitting on the counter for the 25 minutes we were waiting. Likewise with the melted ice in what may have been drinkable soda 25 minutes earlier.

An infuriating waste of life.

I wish this store would die and be replaced by a Taco Bell or A&W. KFC already next door.

On the plus side, in the 25 minutes in the Sonic lobby, I met an interesting guy, waiting for his order too, who moved up from Pasadena for a local government job and by the time our onion rings came out, I knew his life story, which was...