Service Please!

(Originally posted October 31, 2008)

I don't want to always seem like I'm complaining but I have to vent. I did not take my lunch to work today so lunch became a bag of Doritos, a honey bun and a Coca-Cola. "Well why didn't you just run out and get lunch?" you may ask. I work in a school and we are not supposed to leave the building without permission. However, I see people leaving all day, without asking and without signing out. I am not one to ask for favors because granted favors come back to bite you in the ass. So most days I take my lunch or order from a deli that delivers. With today being Halloween, I just toughed it out.

On my way home, I stopped at my favorite burger place and paid $6.22 for a Grilled Chicken Salad that I could have prepared for much less but I was starving and I know that I cannot not go in the grocery store hungry. Gone are the days when I could just pay, grab the bag and pull off. Drive-thru service has gone to the dogs. Too often when I have just taken the bag, do I find that my burger has mayonnaise on it when I explicitly told them NO MAYO! How about paying top dollar for an up sized burger with pepper jack cheese, only to find that I was given a dried up Jr. burger and there was no sign of any kind of cheese. It wasn't worth the gas to drive back. How often have I gotten an order and the food was so sloppy that it looked like it had been on a roller coaster before making it to the bag? Nowadays, when I splurge and get the expensive combo (sandwich, fries and drink) why do I always have to ask for ketchup? And then they give me a damn handful. What the hell am I going to put that much ketchup on? I refuse to mention the wood chips fast food places try to pass off as fries. I try to be green when I can but damn.

Salads are perhaps the worst food to order in the drive-thru. Too much room for error. I often order taco salads and regularly missing are either the tortilla chips or the sour cream. I have started holding up the line to perform my own quality assurance. I check my order. I am not even intimidated by the impatient SUV-driving-soccer mom behind me. And I don't think she wants a black eye from the feisty-Dodge Charger-driving-pissed-off school librarian! Well today, I checked the bag and noticed that the blue cheese dressing that I ordered was not inside. I waited until the worker came back to the window and she handed me the 2 packs of dressing. I felt vindicated.

But the damn joke was on me because when I got home: the chick had given me a blue cheese and a thousand island! I don't eat no damn thousand island!