exceptions to the rant

Here’s what happened: The staff was 90% Spanish speaking, and probably 50% trainees from the way the managers were treating them. There was an older woman in line when I got there and she had ordered a cheeseburger with no ketchup. When her order arrived, she checked it, whipped out her receipt, and made a fuss: she said she KNEW they were doing it wrong but she waited until the served her to notify the manager (who was running the front register) that she could see them putting ketchup only on her burger when she had specified NO ketchup.

Now, why in the hell would you do that? Why wouldn’t you speak up BEFORE you got your food? Tap the lady and say, “Hey, I can see them making my food, and it looks like he is reading my order wrong. I said NO ketchup, and he’s putting some on there” so they could fix it RIGHT AWAY???? AND she was a real bitch about it!!

Then, the woman behind her and in front of me was ordering 6 separate orders: apparently she was driving a bunch of kids who were paying for their own food individually. Every last one of these bratty teenagers was being picky as hell. Like, “I only want pickles, mayo, and lettuce” (eeeewwwwww), or “I want one chicken wrap grilled with ranch and I want one crispy with honey mustard and I want one crispy with just a drizzle-only a DRIZZLE-of they chipotle sauce!!” I am NOT joking. They also sent back the fries as “not fresh enough”. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been getting really pissed at this point. And the woman with them was whispering comments to the kids about how if the staff were white this wouldn’t be happening because a WHITE staff would be able to read the orders correctly. As if the fact that the staff was speaking Spanish to each other meant they couldn’t speak or read English. At this point, my order was ready and I thanked the manager, in Spanish, for my las patatas fritas, las pepitas de pollo, té helado, and I told her “Tenga un día agradable!” right in front of all the cranky, pissy, and whiny people who were saying that people who spoke Spanish were lazy and unable to do anything right. Asswipes.

I still hold that if you go to a fast food place, you should stick to the menu as much as possible. As the mom of several picky kids, I know there are times all of us are going to order things “ketchup only” or “plain” or “hold the pickle”. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, but I also know that those of us who are smart judge the length of the line at the drive thru or the counter and decide maybe we can just scrape off the stuff we don’t want rather than wait the extra time for the special order. So why, oh why, would a group of people in a busy, busy, fast food joint think that their special, ultra picky orders would come ultra fast? Los idiotas.