So, last night I get out of class at about 9 and decide that, as I skipped dinner again, that I wanted some foodstuffs. By the time I get home to my town it’s about 9:15 and most of anything that is still open is mostly ready to close… long lines, skeleton crew, etc. since they close their doors in about 45 minutes. Now I’m thinking, hey… Taco Bell is open late – I was just there last week and they said their Drive Thru is open until midnight on a weeknight. Since I was looking for foodstuffs, as opposed to something defined simply as “food” and requiring silverware (Taco Bell offers sporks!), Taco Bell would do nicely – the quesadillas are mostly real food! In the attempt at dinner last week, I spent about 15 minutes the Drive Thru line – they were that crowded. As I waited, I’m seeing people pick up their food, and since TB has that external “Pay this Amount” thing going on, I see the people in front ordering $10 to $20 worth of food. Now, if you’re unfamiliar with TB, $20 worth of food from their menu is nearly impossible.

[It’s actually been quite a while since I’ve gotten the time (or the energy) to write up a Rant on a Friday morning… especially lately. I’ve been spending a number of mornings cleaning up the web site from the horrors of grammatical and idiotic errors – when I started writing up some of the original pages, I honestly didn’t expect very many people to read them… I guess I underestimated the power of the Web. Well, anyway, in reading some of the older posts, I discovered that I had uploaded them ‘net without proofreading most of them… even though I’m deep in the Archive posts at this point, I belief it’s something that I have to do, and that takes some time. I’ve also been working on getting the home setup completed with the Mac and PC in a co-existing technological biosphere and my part time job at University has started up again… busy busy busy! Anyway… enough of that.]

I mean $10 could feed the majority of a small town in Indiana. $20 could probably feed most of Cuba. You’d have to order at least three of everything on the menu to get above $20, and that also would get you an employee of your very own as an added takeaway. Consequently, the line was huge from both the number of people and their large orders – naturally I got stuck in this quagmire and waited my 15 minutes.

Well, last night, I checked the front door first – not only were they still open but only one guy was waiting at the counter and the Drive Thru had five cars – tough decision! I was being smart like Fredo for a change! Of course I need to remember that Fredo got whacked because he went up against Michael, but I seem to forget that. Anyway, I go in and get to place my order immediately – yay me! It’s at that point that I noticed that there were another four people waiting in the dining room, with a value-added bonus of couple that had just finished dinner and now making out. Welcome to the “usual” Hell that is my night dealing with the public. And just a little background on the whole Taco Bell thing in the first place. The bastards programmed me! It was long before that stupid dog started speaking Spanish in their commercials. It was the Run for the Border campaign that did it. That distinct and ever present *bong* of a bell that they end their commercials with. I heard that and you may as well think of me as a Pavlov dog – I will instinctively go and hunt out a local Taco Bell and order something. It’s scary.

So I get my order number and I’m banished to wait over by the soda machines. Which I do… and while waiting for the first ten minutes I’m watching the employees in the kitchen… they’re working their ass off. No joke. There’s not one slacker in the lot. They’re all working. This basically tells me that I’m waiting for reasons that have nothing to do with the store – so why complain? There’s no reason to; they’re all doing the best they can, and the only thing worse than waiting in line is listening to someone bitch and moan while you’re waiting in line. Also within the first ten minutes there, the first guy in line picks up his order: 15 double decker tacos, whatever those are. They just sound like they are time consuming to make. This was the bottleneck – this one order tied up the kitchen and backed up both the front counter and the Drive Thru. Normal, believe it or not, that this can happen. So the kitchen crew continues to work.

Over the next five minutes, those of us still in the dining room (because they filled two of the first orders by now!) hear, via the speaker at the Drive Thru window, both a woman yelling and the order taker starting to laugh and yelling “Hey, [insert manager’s name here] – get ready for an angry woman coming inside.” Sure enough, a few minutes later, in storms this obnoxious-looking, gravitationally-challenged woman oozing disdain and rage all over the floor. She comes in with her small Mountain Dew, blows past the two of us still waiting for food, and slams the drink on the counter screaming “GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK!” – excuse the Caps, but you could audibly hear her yell in all Caps. Manager looks over and gets her receipt; starts to ring in the void, making her wait. Heifer (as we’ll call this pleasant specimen of female mammal) looks at the guy standing next to me and says to him, “Can you believe this? Fifteen minutes I’ve been waiting. Fifteen! I coulda made a whole meal for this amount of time!” Guy looks at her and says with in a monotone, “I got no sympathy for you.” Heifer gets wide eyed – doesn’t quite know what to say… what could she say? She’s snorting and huffing and stomping around like a small child that lost her lollypop and now a “comrade in arms” just told her, more or less, to shut the hell up. The kitchen staff, who was watching (while still working, mind you) starts to snicker and smile – and the manager happens to pop up at this time, with taco sauce on her shirt and a “had enough” look since she’s working in the kitchen tonight too, and just gives the woman back her money. She also takes the two tacos the woman was waiting for and chucks them in garbage while she’s standing there. Heifer, obvious to the fact that her food was ready and just got thrown out, says to the manager, “I saw that kid in here – he just got a sack full of tacos! A whole bag full! At least ten tacos! I was only waiting for two!” Manager replies to her with “have a nice night!” and walks away. Heifer, now even more annoyed because for all of her theatric she got mostly ignored and mocked, snatches her money and makes for the door – but not before the guy standing next to me shouts out at her “Oh, like you needed the extra food – you could skip a meal or two!” adding to the kitchen crew’s glee.

There’s a moral to this story, actually… I mean I like it when other people can share the hell that is sometimes my life – offers validation to the fact that I’m still alive! – but the lesson to be learned here is two-fold. First, don’t act like a child because you never known when your own stupidity and tantrums can be thrown back in your face – or published on an internationally read web site, for that matter. If this doesn’t bother you, no worries. However, in my experiences, when an adult acts like this, they not only care about what other people think of them but they need other people’s approval before they are “happy” – if they believe that other people don’t approve of their actions, they will change their actions to get that approval. Me? I couldn’t give a crap as to what people think of my actions – there’s a certain freedom in that, because I will act however I want, without fear of disapproval. The other lesson is not to piss off people that work in food services. See, I found out, after Heifer left, that the guy that she was bitching to owned his own restaurant. He said it himself – with a woman like that, you should gladly tell her to get the fuck out, and keep her $4, because you don’t need her business. You don’t want to mess with people in food services – they are too good at extracting revenge. Go rent Road Trip, and order the french toast without powered sugar, if you don’t believe me!

I know my food was fresh and “unmolested” when I finally got it, last night… if I was Heifer, I would just go to McDonald’s from now on!