Another Sort of Restau-Rant

A few months ago, I had a rant about people who waste restaurant patrons' and workers' time by ordering food for their entire office, one person at a time, rung up separately. Today, I train my ire upon a couple of restaurant workers themselves:

Just down the street from the grammatically-challenged Sonic sits a McDonald's that I visited on occasion. I only went there to play the Monopoly game that they've been doing, and to take a break from my usual Tuesday Burger King (with 15 minutes for lunch on that day, I can only eat in certain places and still get out on time). So I order a McChicken Combo (#10 on their menu) and supersize it for the extra game pieces (I don't eat all the extra fries, don't worry). Without supersizing, it comes to $3.39, I think....so I'm shocked beyond belief when the cashier tells me it totals out to $5.79. That either means that supersizing is now $1.75, or tax went waaaay up while I was in third period. *shudder*

So I say to the lady, "that can't be right," and point to the price on the menu board. She looks at it, agrees with me, pushes a whole bunch of buttons and still can't fix it. Someone who looks like the manager comes over and pushes a few more buttons, and she can't fix it either. Finally, the kid with the mop in his hand comes over, shows the two cashiers the right buttons, and fixes it. That's right--the kid with the mop! Somebody needs a promotion, and two more somebodies need a de-motion, methinks. Turns out that what she did was charge me for a 10-piece McNuggets instead of a combo #10. Geez...

After that's all straightened out, my sandwich and drink come up, but guess what--they've run out of fries during this fiasco. I tell them I'll take the rest now, since I don't have a lot of time to eat. They then proceed to totally forget about me. Fries come and go, the cashier even takes an order out to someone in the parking lot, and I might as well be invisible. Finally, I go up there and ask for my fries in a to-go bag; I'm guessing I'll eat them in the car on my way back to school. I do this, and go to the car to leave.

As I'm pulling out of the McDonald's portion of the parking lot, a catering truck comes up from my blind side, forcing me to screech on the brakes. The fries fly everywhere, and I let loose with an expletive that I'll have to ask supreme forgiveness for tonight. Can this day get any worse?

Only one good thing came out of this: The fries didn't fall directly on the floor, but onto a copy of the Dallas Observer that I had sitting there. Since I've eaten off newspaper before, I deemed them to be clean and continued eating, though some of them had to be scooped back up into the box and consumed during a student's lesson (I apologized for being a cruddy role model).

At any rate, I really need to find a way next year to force myself to have more than fifteen minutes for lunch. I'm not sure how that's gonna work, since the HS and MS schedules don't line up so well, but I can't be having road rage (food rage?) in the middle of the day--especially a 14-hour teaching day like today. I need to work on this. Oh, and I won't be back to that Mickey D's anytime in the near future.

UPDATE: The next day at Subway, the computer tried to charge me $6.79 for a cold-cut trio meal and one cookie (this is over a dollar more than usual). At least the guy there was competent and friendly and figured out the computer's mistake immediately (it charged me for a "phantom" second drink). Seeing as how Subway is healthier than Mickey D's, that begs the question: Better food=better service? Maybe, although this was the same Subway where the girl behind the counter had a weird concept of mayonnaise a few months ago.