As my wife loves to say, I just have to “vent” some. For
supper I stopped by a local fast food restaurant on the way home from work. I
consider myself to be an exceptionally patient and long suffering person. After
this stop however I am convinced that humanity is doomed.
Being such a nice guy, I try not to overwork the minds of
the young people working the drive up line. So I try to always keep my orders
as simple as possible. Tonight I did exceptionally well by choosing to get the
same exact meal that my wife and daughter were getting. Assuming that statistically
most people tend to get more than just a single kids meal when going through
the drive through I chose to give them my son’s kids meal order first. My logic
was that this would delay if not prevent them from immediately trying to ring
up the total and send me around to the next window before I am able to get in
any more of my order. By the way, in case you are wondering, speaking fast or
non-stop to try to get out the entire order first ultimately fails
miserably. This tactic usually results
in getting the wrong food items, sometimes I am not even sure the stuff they
hand out is made by that brand of franchise. But I digress. On this particular
evening my plan of starting with the kids meal works perfectly. Realizing that
I am not a child, the person on the other end politely asked me if I have more
to order. Yes! Now I get to use my master plan. With great anticipation of
exiting the drive through having experience a pleasant and successful encounter
I order a chicken sandwhich, baked potato with butter and sour cream, medium
sized with a Mr. Pibb to drink. I watch the screen fill up with my order just
as I asked. So far so good. Now the real test. I tell the young person, “OK now
I want 2 more of those EXACTLY the same.” There is silence for a time. Then I
hear, “You mean you want another chicken sandwich, with baked potato butter and
sour cream, medium sized and a Mr. Pibb.” My first thought is to say “no I want
it the OTHER exact same way.” But still holding on to the hope of pulling off a
win for the home team I politely say yes. Of course now the individual is
asking, well more like pleading, that this is the end of my order. So they tell
me my total and I pull around to the side.
As I am pulling away from the window it dawns on me that the
amount quoted to me is much less than it should have been for 4 items. When I
pull up to the window I quickly tell the young person that I had actually said
I wanted three total of the chicken combos. The look of panic, horror and
lostness evident on this young man’s face was what I expect will be common
after the rapture. He finally realized that I did actually want more food than
what they were preparing to give me. He understood that I wanted another
chicken combo but the concept of exactness seems to be foreign. I will admit
that at this point I was failing at not showing any frustration. Trying my best
to be polite I suffered through repeating my chicken combo order, yes you counted
right, for the third time. Apparently this threw everyone into such chaos that
they asked me to pull ahead while they sorted it out. After waiting for five
minutes or so they finally brought out the bags.
End result…. My little guy did not get his drink but he did
get a bacon cheeseburger that is not even possible to get in a kids meal. I only
got two out of the three baked potato but on the up side I got two extra large
fries. So much for trying to be efficient. I have to wonder, could that young
man not figure out how to extrapolate what three of the same thing meant, or
was he so enslaved to the technology that the system falls apart if you get
things out of order. As I said, doomed!
No comments:
Post a Comment