Oh it’s here, you can smell it hours away, the dispare with a hint of dread guides us towards it like “turn right in 100 feet” sound our GPS makes. Yes friends ” you have reached your destination”.
It’s Monday and there pretty much isn’t anything we can do about it. Other than laugh at a story from my past to use as the bar to judge your Monday by. So as usual we will delve into the history case files of the one famous for epic asshattedness. Me. ThePeachy1
A kabillion and 7 years ago back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was but a Peachy bud. I worked my first jobs in Fast Food. This was back before you needed a masters to drop fries and EVERYONE understood you had to start at the bottom and work your way up. I lied about my age so I could get my very first job at the Big yellow upside down W place.
I quickly worked my way up from lobby and garbage to the fries and counter. Then I made that last non managerial leap and took on ” drive thru”. It wasn’t like today when there’s a person taking an order, another taking money, another filling the order and another actually passing it to you in the car. Also the mic wasn’t a headset, it was an actual microphone next to the window and cash register. The speaker was crappy and anyone in the front end could hear the customer. Yeah amazing how they turned that 1 job into 4 and still manage to screw it up 3 out of 4 times even with their college degrees.
Also here’s a weird and totally antiquated job description. Treat the customer well and take pride in your job. I was the over friendly person on the other end of that screwed up speaker, asking you wanted an apple pie with that purchase because we did that golden rule of ” up sale”.
My Grandparents were from Michigan and almost all of their friends were from Canada. My Grandparents and their friends were a very real, very involved part of my childhood.
My mom and step Monkies had friend from everywhere and I had lived all over the States and in a couple places not in the US. This gave me the most awesome speech patterns that and no one could actually pin down where I was from. I had picked up some cool expressions.
Even though I went to High School in Florida there were probably only 15 people at my school who were actually “from” Florida. There is no particular accent for Florida. It may geographically be the State the furthest south, but in fact, Florida is such a melting pot that depending where you are in Florida you will have various accents and colloquialisms.
I liked to over stuff the fries and pull the burgers from the back so people would get fresh food, I always made sure that if they bought more than 2 drinks I gave them more than 2 straws, and as for condiments? Let’s just say my customers never had to purchase any for their house. Our drive thru was totally kick butt, and if anyone ever had to pull up (meaning more than 10 chicken nuggets or 5 fish fillets) I would always throw in a free apple pie or a box of our yummy cookies if there were kids in the car. ( for you young folks, all food was served in styrofoam containers. We had cherry and apple pies, and boxes of fantastic McDonalds cookies that came in a box. Every store had a Ronald Mc Donald statue and a fry guy merry go round.
One very busy weekend night after yet another humiliating loss of our very good looking great at golf and tennis, but sucked at Football teams game. Our drive thru had been so busy I was running around and calling out orders like a trader on the floor of the NY stock exchange. Yet my voice was always calm cool and welcoming as I greeted each customer over that microphone with an audible smile, and flat out awesome service.
The following is a mostly true story to the best I can remember from many decades ago.
customer- “Big Mac no lettuce, Fish Fillet with cheese, 2 large fries, a Chocolate shake, and a medium coke.”
me : ” would you like a hot apple pie with that sir?”
customer: “no thanks”
me: your total is $5.27 please pull forward.
customer: “blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…..”
me: totally confused, the speaker was fine a moment ago, the person was clear and sounded good. Now it was like a grown up from peanuts had taken over my drive thru speaker. Confused and needing them to repeat it.
me: Please?
The customer floors his Oldsmobile ( the land yacht car of choice for all retirees ) and rounds the drive thru then gets to the window. I lean my entire from the waist up out of the window with a HUGE beauty pageant smile glued on my face in hopes that the customer can repeat the “blah blah blah blah” part and I can understand them.
The 70+ year old customer looks me in the face and says loudly, clearly, and with disdain,
“CAN I HAVE SOME KETCHUP……..PLEASE!”
Holy tomatoes batman, the customer thought I was telling them they needed to say please.
I was so taken aback I over stuffed the fries, threw in an apple and cherry pie and made their drinks 1 size larger than they had requested.
To this day, I avoid saying please when I can’t make out what someone is saying, I started going for ” excuse me”, but in the past decade that has also turned into a possible insult. You can’t say, ” sorry?” because if they are saying something like, ” My house was robbed and they killed my goldfish” and you say, “sorry” then they think you are trying to pacify them but you are too lazy to say I am in front of it, or you are guilty.
There is no way to polite yet brief way to ask someone to repeat them self. In college I met a chick that said, “come again”. Going by her lifestyle choices I can only assume that was used more often then, ” change for a $20?”.
So yeah unless you insult some elderly probably WW2 vet in a giant oldsmobile by accidentally making him beg for ketchup. Chances are you might have a better day than me.
So go out and kick Monday in the crotch follow it up with a throat punch, then for added fun use the eye gouge technique. This will teach Monday to mind it’s own business.
What expression have you heard or do you use, that could be misunderstood and what part of the country did you pick it up in?
xoxo
PEACH OUT