Tales from Work

I don't normally talk much about my job. I'm not sure exactly why not, I mean, I get plenty material. I guess at the end of the day I just feel like not having to think about work for a few hours. However, I had an incident tonight that was just too good to pass up. For those of you who haven't been taking notes at home, I am a manager at a quick service restaurant. We have a drive-thru. It can be every bit as horrible as you might imagine, and in order to to keep our labor costs in line the manager ends up having to run the drive-thru most nights. Oh, goody.

So, I was taking an order tonight. It was a larger order and at the speaker as the woman was relaying it to me I heard a man in the car crabbing things at her/me. When they pulled up to the window I was greeted by a rotund woman with two vacant eyed children and a greasy, creepy white trash guy. As I was taking care of their order the guy kept crabbing more demands at me from the passenger seat. Finally, I passed them the last item of their order, an ice cream, and as the woman took it I noticed an extra sliver of plastic on the cup. When the car did not pull away I opened the window and they told me that there was a hair in (or she might have said "on") the cup. I apologized and remade the ice cream. I thought they would leave after that, but no, the creepy crabby guy wanted to talk to me. I opened the window again and leaned forward to see what the guy wanted, and had one of the most creepy conversations ever.

Scary McCreepo leaned forward and asked in his hick accent, "Hey, since we had to deal with the hair could I get, er, a free ice cream for my retarded daughter?" And he made a gesture towards the one of the kids in the back seat.

[Okay, obviously the "hair" was a ploy to get free stuff. Happens all the time, but "retarded daughter"? Is it more horrible if the girl in question is actually retarded or not?]

In spite of my astonishment I kept neutral and replied "No, I'm sorry. I can't do that. I replaced the item that there was a problem with, but I can't give out free food." I hoped that would be the end of the conversation, but Skeezy Von Creepinmeister had more.

Then he says, "Hey, er, can I ask you something? Are you married?"

Naturally, I answered, "What?!?" I was thinking perhaps I had heard him wrong.

"Are you married?" he asked again. Nope, heard it right the first time. Sound the alarms, it is time to abandon this conversation. Run! Run! Head for the hills!

"That is my own personal business," I replied calmly and shut the window.

As I did though, I heard him say something like "Mine is too" or "It's mine too".

Then I locked the window.