Dear Fast Food Employee: The number one way to make me happy is by actually being fast. When you provide painfully slow service at a fast food establishment, it has another term: “false advertising.” Also, salt and sugar are two different things.
I’m one of those people that says I never eat fast food and that I don’t like it. That is a lie. I love the smell of grease, I love French fries and hamburgers, and I should just stay away from the drive-thru. One Friday night it was unavoidable. Terry and I were on our way to a required pre-marriage retreat across town. It started at 6:30. The clock read about 6:10 and we’re waiting in the drive-thru. We were at the window. It wouldn’t be long now.
Oh, but it was.
As we looked through the window, poor Terry wanted nothing more than his large coffee. I think he could have traded the rest of the meal for an IV of caffeine. Finally a teenager came to the window to let us know that the food was almost ready. His company baseball cap could barely contain his mop of curly dark hair. He never cracked a smile.
He handed over Terry’s coffee and then the window slammed shut with my debit card in his hand. Terry needed sugar for his coffee so when this boy-man returned with my card, I politely asked for sugar.
“Sugar? Uh, okay.”
The window slammed again.
When he opened it again he had both hands heaped with blue and white packets. I cupped my hands, got the packets and handed them to Terry. As he was about to dump a packet in his coffee, he realized all of the packets were salt.
So we passed them back and informed boy-man that we needed “sugar” not “salt.”
“Those are salt? Weird. Okay.”
He returned with a mound full of sugar packets.
From the passenger seat I heard Terry ask for a stir stick.
The boy-man said, “Have a nice day,” and started to close the window.
He must not have heard Terry, so I repeated, “Could we get a stir stick?”
I don’t know what he thought I said to him, but his jaw clenched and he yelled, slowly emphasizing each word, “I said, ‘HAVE A NICE DAY.’”
From the passenger seat comes Terry’s booming voice, “And she said, ‘CAN WE GET A STIR STICK?'”
“Oh…what?”
Terry explained to him that we needed something to stir the sugar into the coffee. A spoon, knife, fork – didn’t really matter at this point – we were so late to the retreat.
The good news is we can’t accuse the restaurant of false advertising. We inhaled the food and didn’t really taste much of the grease.
I guess it was fast food. Oh yeah, and HAVE A NICE DAY.
What restaurant adventures do you have to share?