Have you ever walked into a place where you know you’re not wanted? I do it all the time. There’s this little chain of fast-food places that I go to sometimes, if there’s nothing else on-hand or in the refrigerator. It’s called McDonalds. You may have heard of it. Anyway, as I walk in the doorway, I notice five black women behind the counter, all talking to each other. There are five registers in total, and only one is staffed with one of these women, who has her back to the customer that is already standing there, with a look on his face that could kill a charging rhinoceros. A long queue has formed behind this customer, so naturally, to avoid the line, I walk up to an empty register.
Now, if you know me, you know that I am not racist in any way. I simply think that stereotypes are funny. I laugh at Asians who are really good at video games, Mexicans who stand outside of Home Depot waiting for work, African-American gentlemen who put $5000 sound systems in $300 vehicles for no other reason than to blow the windows out of my truck, and basically every other stereotype known to man, including my own. (Case in point, I can't dance. I know I can't dance. I do it anyway. It's funny; a win-win.) This was one of the times where I laughed at stereotypical black people. Not a single one of those women had a fingernail shorter than two inches, they were all popping gum (No, not chewing, popping. I hate any person who pops gum), and they all spoke in ebonics, or as I like to call it, ghetto-jive-yo-fresh-diggity-homeslice-speak.
*Wow,* I muse to myself,
*this is ridiculous. I’m all for affirmative action… if they’d actually WORK! If they don’t want to work, that’s fine, but they shouldn’t expect to get paid for sitting on their asses, doing nothing. If I was their manager, I’d fire ‘em all. What I wouldn’t give to just walk in here one day dressed like a ninja and karate-chop the counter in half. That’d get their attention.* I envisioned it, and I had to strain to hold back the laughter, and I wasn’t sure that if I went up to the counter, I wouldn’t die of an aneurism from holding the guffaws in my gullet. I collected my wits and all of my patience, because I knew that this would be a battle. Nearly every single fast-food chain that comes anywhere near Louisiana has horrific service, no matter the color of the people behind the counter. I’ve wrestled with wrong orders, late orders, cold food, missing french-fries, hot drinks, and stale burgers before, but this time, I think, is destined to go down in my Hall of Records (Yes, I have a Hall of Records. Don’t you?) as the only time I’ve ever walked away from a fast-food tussle where I actually won in the end.
My laughter finally suppressed, I step up to the counter, to one of the four open registers. Let me say this again: there are five registers, with five attendants. One goes on each register, right? WRONG. They had one woman on one register, with the other four talking to each other, and the woman at the register was facing away from where the customer gives their order. I sit there and wait.
*Maybe they’ll take notice of me all by themselves, and jump to work, happy to at least have a job, like I would be.* Nope.
A minute passes.
I clear my throat loudly at them. “Ahem.” Nothing.
I do it louder. “Ahem!” Still nothing.
Again. “AHEM!!” Nothing! I’m truly amazed by their lack of work ethic.
“Hey!” I say to one of them, who turns lazily in my direction, popping her gum. Finally, a response! I thought I was invisible for a minute there.
“Wachoo waunt?” she says in her most ghetto-tastic tone.
*So, ebonics, my archenemy, we meet again.* “Are you going to take my order or what?”
“Dat registah close. She’ll get ya orduh,” she whines as she motions with her head to the woman at the counter with her back to me, who (detecting her cue, maybe) turns lazily and gives me a look that I’ve gotten many a time before, but only by girls when I was at Notre Dame: the look that says, “You’re not even worth the time it would take to speak to you, go die.” I’m not one to hate people without getting to know them first, but with these women, I’ll make an exception.
I look back at the line of sordid lunch-goers, which is now too long to fit within the confines of the lobby without having to make a curved, L-shape. I remember, in high school, seeing pictures of Jews in the Nazi concentration camps, and found that these people looked quite similar, imprisoned by their need for a daily helping of fat from Mickey-D’s.
*Thank God I don’t come here every day. These poor people…* I do sympathize with them, but I’m not going to wait for them. I’ve got places to go. Hell, why are these people waiting in the first place? It’s lunch! Screw that. If the attendants are the Germans, and the people in line are oppressed Jews, then I'll be Patton, storming my way through those Nazi bastards.
“Closed!? You’ve got four people back there doing absolutely nothing! Do I really have to speak to your manager to get service around here?” Apparently, “Manager” is the McDonalds equivalent of “Open Sesame,” because suddenly, the register I stood at opened! Simply amazing! …Except for the fact that the other registers remained closed, and there were still three useless employees sitting behind that counter, still filing their nails and talking, but they were no longer talking about whatever they were talking about before, though. Instead, they were talking about me, and how crappy I looked in my t-shirt and blue jeans, and those, and I quote: “stupid big words I used, like ‘service’ and ‘absolutely.’” I laughed at that later.
“Wachoo waunt.” The question is no longer a question. It’s a statement. That makes me angry.
“Well…” I look down at her nametag and read it out loud, trying to comprehend the stupidity of her name, “Shakisha, (I shit you not, that was her real name) what I want is a hamburger, no pickles, no onions, and a medium vanilla milkshake.” I didn’t have much money on me, and that’s all I could afford. What can I say? I’m a poor college student.
“We ain’t got no shakes,” she says defiantly, as if I’m supposed to know this information already.
“…Wait, what?” I query. I’m going to have fun with this. “You mean you don’t serve shakes, or that you don’t have any shake mix left?”
“We ain’t got no shakes.”
*You cannot defeat me, ebonics!*“Yes, you said that, but the menu says ‘milkshake.’ Says it right there. You see it?” I point up to the ceiling menu, which has the words “Try a MILKSHAKE!” pasted across the front. “See? Says right there, miiilk-shaaake.”
“We ain’t got no shakes.” She’s obviously the most annoying robot on the face of the planet. That’s it. I’ve had enough.
“Okay. Let me talk to your manager. Now,” I say, my tone deepening. I realized that I sounded a lot like my dad when I did that. Since I find my dad to be an evil and sadistic bastard, I was a bit proud, and yet a bit frightened at the same time.
She ambles her way lazily to the back of the dungeon— oops. I mean “kitchen”— and returns thirty seconds later with the manager. He looks respectable in his white shirt and his red tie, and by the other women hopping to open up the other registers, I’d say he actually has consequences for people that he sees not doing work.
“Is there a problem, sir?” he asks, being the only black person in the entire restaurant not using ebonics.
*Thank you, God. Finally, someone with a vocabulary. Maybe now a message can be relayed.* “Yes sir, there is. I ordered a shake, and she (I pointed to the employee, who was still popping her gum. Ugh.) will not tell me why she won’t give me what I ordered.”
“Ah, I see. Sir, we’re out of shake mix, so we can’t make a shake for you. We should be getting a shipment in later on today, though, if you’d like to come back.”
*Come back?! I’m never even looking at this place again, much less coming back!*“Now, see?” I ask the woman. “Was that so hard?” She might not be amused, but I am. I turn back to the manager. “Now, if you’d like to keep my business, I still have an order to fill and about…” I check my cell phone clock. “…five minutes to get it sorted. If you’d like to keep my business, take my order.”
“Yes, sir, what would you like?”
“I’ll take a hamburger with no pickles and no onions,” I respond, thankful that someone in this place has half a working brain. He tells me my total, and I pay it: a dollar and seventy-nine cents. He goes back into hell from whence he came. About two minutes later, I get my burger.
“Fucking finally. Thank you, God,” I say out loud as I snatch my burger bag and haul ass to my truck. I get in and open my bag to find… what else? A cold Big Mac. With pickles. And onions. And lettuce. And tomato. Normally, I would eat it, but they pissed me off just enough for me to take revenge. I got in my truck and pulled around. I placed a fake order and drove to the window, where fortunately, one of the counter women was working. Also fortunately, she was quite obese -- an easy target. I drove up, not stopping completely, and took aim with my half-assedly-wrapped Big Mac. I engaged the target, hitting her squarely in the chest.
“You forgot cheese, bitch!” I exclaimed, laughing maniacally as I drove away, power metal blaring from my speakers.
You may wonder, why do I call this a victory? Why, with all of the trouble I went through, do I claim this episode as one-up for me? Because for one shining, gleaming moment, I stood up against the type of people that I hate the most in this world: people who think they deserve their job. The apathetic attendant at the McDonald’s down the street whose day you ruin every time you walk in the door; the despondent stock-boy at the grocery store who has his headphones on during regular business hours and hates the world because no one “understands” him; even the desk clerk at an office building, whose sole job of greeting people and giving directions is overridden by the magazine they’re reading or the friend they’re talking to on the phone.
I have a job. I hate my job. The pay is horrible and the people are worse. There’s even an on-call phone that gets passed around, demolishing the weekend plans of whoever gets it. Yet, I walk in every morning with a smile on my face and a spring in my step. You know why? Because it’s expected of me, that’s why. I need money, and if this is the way to get it, then by God, I’ll be the best phone-answering, printer-fixing, troubleshooting I.T. monkey that ever landed on God’s green earth. I do it because I have goals. I do it because I want a good future. I do it for myself. That’s the difference, isn’t it? If you take pride in your job, no matter how crappy it is, you’ll be the best at whatever you are, and you’ll make money. Above all, rudeness given is rudeness earned. If you have a job, be nice to customers! God has a way of getting back at you for your actions, and that's usually through other people. Call it karma, call it whatever you please, but I’ll bet you that that obese black woman at McDonald’s will never forget the day a customer threw a burger at her because she was a bitch. If you’re like me, and you hate people who think they're God's gift to humanity, then take up some Big Macs, and make your shots count. That is all.
Thanks for reading! :)
