I keep hearing my second-best old ex-teaching buddy Karen's mocking sing-song voice in my head. "When will she E-E-E-VER learn?" Right before she'd snatch all my Rold Gold pretzel sticks acting as poker chips off the table and into her haystack-sized pile. Now, the pretzels are again mocking me.
Of course I can't stay away from Dairy Queen's soft pretzels. I wish I knew how to quit them. Okay. I'm not trying very hard. I KNOW they might be burned. Might be of substandard length. But they're SO GOOD! And they only cost $4.33 in combination with two chicken strips. Yeah, yeah. I KNOW the chicken strips might be of substandard length, and superstandard breading. But they're PRETTY GOOD with the honey mustard sauce, which I usually have a bit left in the container, for my own hard pretzel sticks later in the evening. (Nobody is going to win my pretzel sticks in a poker game these days!)
Anyhoo... I went to the DQ drive-thru. And was NOT satisfied with my experience. You didn't see that one coming, DID you?
I pulled to the window with my money ready. A TEEN GUY was leaning on his elbows on the stainless steel counter inside the sliding window. Like he barely had the energy to stay conscious. The minute he slid open the window, a hand darted out holding my bag. It was a tiny bag compared to what I usually get, but I never know exactly what shenanigans to expect from that place. Sometimes I get a giant bag, that I could put over my head like the Unknown Comic.
Anyhoo... the hand was yanked back into the dark recesses of the drive-thru bay by its attached girlish arm. TEEN GUY then put his own arms out the window to hand me my change. I though he was gonna give me the two-hand bereavement handshake. It was like he wanted to cup one hand under mine while depositing my coins. Maybe he's had to drag himself outside one too many times for dropped change, and he was being cautious. Or maybe he is so used to people paying with cards that he was afraid of those metal disks that trickled from his fingers.
Anyhoo... when I got home and ripped open my tiny bag, I was HOT TO TROT! And not in a good way.
NO HONEY MUSTARD!
They had given me GRAVY! A styrofoam, lidded container of GRAVY. Seriously, people. HONEY MUSTARD and GRAVY have only TWO LETTERS IN COMMON! They don't even sound alike!
AND... the gravy container was jammed into my soft pretzels! They were flat! As well as burned, and tiny. But the chicken! It couldn't even peek over the side of the cardboard coffin that it comes in! Two bready nuggets. Without even honey mustard sauce to drench them with.
Yes, I know you're tired of telling me to complain. You don't have to tell me again. It's pretty obvious by now that I'm not going to risk body fluids in my next purchase. But I WILL snidely say, peeking into the bag next time, while holding up the line: "Just checking to make sure I have my HONEY MUSTARD, and not GRAVY, like you gave me last time."
The food itself was not even my major issue this time. It was the behavior of the workers. TEEN GUY has no idea what it's like to REALLY work for a living! He's standing in an air-conditioned building, with a tiny window he can close, and walk away, if a customer gets "horsey" with him, as my dad used to say. TEEN GUY isn't sweating over the grill, or over-frying chicken strips, or waiting on customers over the counter where they can see him clearly and expect a smile. It's not like he's walking the streets for 11 hours a day, in the heat or rain.
I'm pretty sure it would have killed either TEEN GUY, or THE ARM, to say "Thank You."
5 comments:
At first, I connected the old folk song, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" to this post, since the refrain is "When will we ever learn?"
Then I connected it to the movie Brokeback Mountain. I seem to remember a line something like, "I can't quit you."
Perhaps this calls for one of your world-famous parodies...
I see no problem at all with you holding up the line while you check the contents of your bag of goodies. and if it is wrong, then you hold them up longer while the order is rectified. but that's next time. For now I think you need to phone or email DQ headquarters and complain about consistently wrong orders. Be anonymous.
Sioux,
I'm feeling too lazy for a parody. No folk song reference, that was just my second best old ex-teaching buddy taunting me. It WAS a Brokeback reference. I was channel hopping late-night, and caught part of it. Not the "quit you" part, but the part where the guys take off on a "fishing trip" and come back without fish.
***
River,
What if they SHUT DOWN my DQ??? Then I would be biting off my nose to spite my face!
Whoops! I missed the song from the title. Who DID that song, that begins, "Welcome back my friends, to the ____ that never ends. You're/We're so glad to come inside, come inside, come inside"? (I might have messed up the words completely.)
Sioux,
I had to look it up. Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I've never heard of the title: Karn Evil 9: First Impression, Part 2. Kind of obscure for a song that I can remember that lyric for. To the SHOW that never ends.
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