It doesn't matter where we eat. Hamburgers. Thai. Mexican. Greek. I could go to Jack 'n The Box and order a chicken sandwich. I'll be given a Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger, hold the onions. Fuck it that I like onions. Who gives a shit?
Because, Drivl readers, I have an invisible tattoo across my forehead that reads "Please Fuck Up My Order." You need special contact lenses in order to see it, and they hand these lenses out to everyone who works in the food service. Let me tell you about it.
I believe this plague began about three months ago. My friends and I went to eat Thai food. I looked straight at the dude and I said, "I'd like red curry with beef. Two stars."
"Red curry chicken?" says the guy.
"No, beef. Red curry with beef," I say.
He says, "Okay, chicken?"
"No, BEEF," I reply. "As in cow."
"Okay," he says. "Red curry with beef."
Ten minutes later, there it is. Red curry with chicken, four stars. I also managed to curse my lactose intolerant co-worker who received a drink with real milk instead of the coconut milk he ordered. None of us got to use the bathroom for the rest of the day.
Next up; Mexican. We thought we'd try a new place they'd opened near the university. I ordered fajitas. Pretty fucking safe bet at a Mexican restaurant, right? Not until she drops the entire thing on the floor, two feet from our table, and burns off half her hand. Yeah, I felt bad about that, but I also felt bad about how it took them twenty minutes to come up with something else and by that time, everyone else had finished eating. And fajitas aren't fast food to eat, either.
So we moved on to hamburgers. Bun, bun, patty, slice of tomato and some cheese. Bit of lettuce. I can add my own ketchup and mayo, it's okay. How to you fuck up a hamburger when the customer has written down what she wants? You DON'T MAKE IT. That was another ten minutes of everyone's time wasted while they waited for my mystery meal to appear.
I should have known better than to re-visit Mexican, but I felt like Chipotle wasn't real Mexican food anyway. What Pizza Hut is to Italian food is what Chipotle is to Mexican. So in we went. I also should have known better than to try and change something from the written-on-the-menu-board-menu. But I didn't want rice in my burrito.
"No rice, please," I say.
"Okay, white rice?" he says.
"No, no rice please," I say again. "Just peppers and onions are fine."
"All right," he says, and plunges his spoon deep into the rice, coming out with a big, sticky mound.
"NO RICE!" I yell at him. He looks confused, rice perilously hovering above the burrito shell.
"You don't want rice?" he asks.
"That's right, I want onions and peppers please," I reply. The spoon slowly begins to retreat and descend. My bulging eyes watch it do one final low-speed flyby before it lands back where it came from. Come to think of it, this story shouldn't even be in this piece. With considerable effort, they actually managed to not fuck that one up.
And that brings me to this evening and the Siam Thai restaurant in Seattle. It has been a very long day, one that began at 5am and is not yet done at 8:40. The H.F. and I drove down to Siam and I order (again) red curry with beef. And out comes green curry.
"Ah, I ordered red curry," I say. At first, the guy tries to pass it off.
"Yeah, red curry. This is red curry," he says. I look at it. It's noticeably green.
"This is green curry. I ordered red curry."
"Yeah, green curry," he says. My mind goes waaaaphhhshh like a deflating soul.
"I ordered red curry," I repeat.
"I fix it," he says, but I can't take it.
"It's okay, I'll eat it," I reply. "I can't wait another twenty-five minutes for something else."
Later, we just want to get the hell out of there but they seem reluctant to come and get our debit card.
"Holy crap, I don't need fifteen minutes to ponder whether or not I'm going to pay," the H.F. says.
Those of you who've read my crap before may know that I'm not American. This is not the reason why people always fuck up my orders. I've taken to enunciating my food-related words like I'm translating Arabic at the U.N. It's become that important to me. So my conclusion (apart from the idea that I have Please Fuck Up My Order tattooed on my face) is that people are really bloody stupid. And that's all I have to say.
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