| 6/11/2006 Skip the Drive-Through As I sat in Taco Bell today, waiting for an extraordinarily long time for my meal, two thoughts crossed my mind:
No. 1 is easy to explain. Kids take forever to make up their mind. It's like watching ice melt, as they stand there, hemming and hawing over whether to get the burrito with beans and cheese or the burrito with cheese and beans. C'mon kid – just pick something. Like you're even going to taste the food. And it doesn't matter if the parent is a PhD. In fact, they might be worse, because in order to allow the inner psyche to develop, they allow their dumbass kid to stand there with their teeth in their head, not knowing what they want. "Would you like the taco?" they ask in their corn syrup voice. And then they will say something that really irks me: "We're going to eat here, OK?" Like the 35-year-old parents need permission from a 6-year-old. That's known as being a Validator – you need to validate everything you do with a child. Parents need to be parents and make the tough choices: Taco, burrito, chalupa. It's simple. It's not the time to nurture your children. Do the right thing. If you want to waste time and turn your kids into a moron, use the drive-through where I don't have to look at you. Which brings me to No. 2: The drive-through. As far as I'm concerned, using a drive-through is akin to asking for directions. I just don't do it unless it's absolutely necessary. I know it's a little bit weird (yet another of my quirks), but I actually like going into the "restaurant" and studying the menu. I hate those menu boards on the drive-through that list 150 things with their 150 prices. And then you have to decide within 10 seconds what you want. When it's time to order you always feel like you have to yell into the microphone! And by the way, where is the microphone? • The first drive-through I can remember was at the Jack-in-the-Box in Sunland, California. It had this ... jester ... that was partly out of his box at the drive-through. I don't remember if it had good hamburgers, but I remember the colors of black, red, blue, yellow and white. • Maybe the "other" reason I disdain the drive-through is because it's part of this hurry-up, instant-gratification, digital-camera mindset where you think you have to have everything in five seconds or the world will end. I like going in, studying the menu and speaking to a human being. • When we worked in Poughkeepsie, we occasionally would go to the Burger King. We used the drive-through, and I think they messed up the order every time. Another reason that I won't use the drive-through unless absolutely necessary. • I think the dumbest person I ever met was not a clerk at a fast-food restaurant but a sales boy at the Best Buy in Pittsburgh. I was looking at televisions, and I asked him about a particular model. This kids spewed out two minutes' worth of nonsense that fell out of his mouth in one huge unintelligible sentence that had no punctuation, no beginning, no end and no meaning. I didn't buy a television, and I still have no idea what he said. I'll bet he grew up in fast-food restaurants, the child of a validator. |