Not Military service mind you, but food service. Every one should pull at least two years as a cook, cashier, waitress, or bartender.
I just had my lunch where I was witness to a scene I see all too often. Some old white guy ordered his burger with no “salad”. So when his burger arrived with lettuce, tomato, and onion on the plate, (that’s right, on the plate. His sandwich was presented open face so he could douse it with ketchup and mayo) he pushed his way back to the front through the 13 people waiting for their food and threw his tray back onto the lunch counter.
“This isn’t my order!!”
“You ordered a Burger with Jack, right?”
“Yes, but I didn’t want all this” he said while making a poopy face and waving his hands at the offending veggies.
Now this is the airport lunch rush. There were only two cooks with no plate setter and they were jumping-through-their-assholes busy. They had tickets hanging averywhere. They were slammed and the cashier didn’t notate on the order that this guy wants to die as soon as possible by just sticking to the fat, salt and carbs, thank you. The cook took a minute to process the absurdity of the request and scooped the only healthy thing off the plate. I mean it was on the side to the point of being a garnish.
It took less time to pull the “salad” that it did to say “I didn’t want this”
The guy triumphantly rolls his eyes and says a very dramatic and accomplished “well THANK you, hhhhhhhhh!!”
As he walked by me to the mayo dispenser I asked him, “Was that really necessary?”
“What?” he replied with the utmost innocence.
“You really couldn’t have just taken the lettuce off the plate yourself? Do you realize how much more effort it was to walk back up here, make every one else wait that much longer for their food, so you could get the cook to stop making all those people’s ( I made a grand pointing gesture at the growing crowd) food to take the “salad” off your plate?”
“Well if that damn cashier was American, she would have understood me better and not screwed it up!!I mean this is Lori’s Diner not The Great Wall Buffet!”he said.
“That damn cashier IS American, but being originally from China her language skills make her a real asset here. Did you notice you were in the food court at the International Terminal!”
We bantered back and forth for a bit but I have a limited amount of time to eat, and I’m not going to waste my precious lunch break with this guy.
It just kills me that people think that the $8.75 they pay for a food court burger entitles them to a crew of indentured servants who must bend over backwards to repay the debt to their satisfaction. If you’ve ever spent a day in the culinary trenches you would know better. That’s the guy that gets my food spit into for being the “Ugly American”
