Is it a bad thing when the girl who works at McDonald's knows what you are going to order and has your large Coke cup and a senior coffee with two creams, four Splenda already on the tray by the time you get from the parking lot to the door? It's not like we go there every single day for breakfast. Well, maybe every other day.
We are not the only ones who do this. We see lots of the same people when we are there. They nod, we nod and some of us chat like old friends. There is one gentleman, Everett, who---I am not making this up---eats every meal of every day at McDonald's and has been doing it for years. He was there when the snow was twelve inches deep this winter. He was there when the temperature was 112 degrees this summer. Eva, his wife, said that even if there is a family BBQ or birthday dinner, he will go to the celebration but he won't eat there. He goes later to McDonald's. One would worry about his health except for one little detail. He is 84 years old and appears to be as fit as a kid of fifty.
I don't think I could quite do that. There was a time when the grandkids were younger that I was so sick of McDonald's cheeseburgers that I never wanted to ever see one again, much less eat it. I wouldn't say we ate there a lot but Miranda did collect every one of the thirty-two Build-a-Bears when they were in the Happy Meals. And now we have almost all the Smurfs on the list. In the past if I was keeping multiple grandkids for the day I may have been known to go early in the morning to the Playground McDonald's, get them breakfast and let them play till they started serving the Happy Meals for lunch. It beats being outside in the heat or cold. They thought it was a great treat and I read a book while they played. Sadly, they are one by one, getting too big for the playground.
If you are in a hurry and running between school and ball games and dance class and trying to get everything done at once you may have to resort to going through the drive-through, here is tip: when you are planning errands and have both the drive-through and filling up your car with gas on the same list, it is always a good idea to do the fill-up thing first. It may be a little embarrassing to run out of gas right in front of the pick-up window and cars are piling up behind you and people start to get really impatient and then they start to honk and the McDonald's people finally take some teen-age boys off flipping burger duty to come out and push your car past the window and everybody gives you a dirty look as they drive by because they had to wait and you have to walk along a busy street to the gas station holding onto your three-year-old's hand and carrying your one-year-old and not drop the Happy Meals. Just sayin'.
Sometimes it is a little frazzling to try to give your order to the disembodied voice coming through the microphone when all you hear from it is static and every kid in the car is telling you at once which kind of Happy Meal he wants and be sure to tell them a boy toy this time and not one of those stupid Hello Kitty things and you are saying "We don't say 'Stupid' in this family, young man!" just as the voice in the box chirps "mumble, mumble, mumble Mango Pineapple Smoothie with Yogurt with that today?" I have never, though, gone so far as my sister did once when she ordered "Two Big Macs, a medium fries and two large Diet Cokes, please" into the chute of the trash can that is along the side of the drive-through lane. You have to wait a really long time to get your food if you do that.
Ordering at the counter has it's own perils, however. Like the time I was distractedly waiting for my hamburger minus the pickles and onions (it always takes longer for a "special order") and mindlessly eating french fries while I stood there, which I often do. I should order extra fries to tide me over. Except this time when I looked down to reach for more I noticed I was eating french fries from someone else's tray. I didn't have a tray yet. The owner of the fries was just standing there watching me eat his food and didn't seem to want to wait for me replace them for him when my own fries came, although I did offer.
Unless we have the grandkids with us we tend to stick to breakfast at McDonald's these days. Their biscuits and gravy are better than I make, and you can refill your Coke and coffee (senior coffee: 38 cents, what a deal!) as much as you want. Besides, they know us there.
No comments:
Post a Comment