Functionally ReTodded

Let’s face it.  Life isn’t fair folks. It just isn’t.  Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.  It’s unfortunate, but true.

That said, every once in a while, you have one of those moments where you end up smiling like a Cheshire cat for the rest of the day.

That just happened to me, so let me tell you about it.

Today I got the request everyone likes getting.  "Hey, if you’ll fly I’ll buy."  For the uncool among you, that’s the FRT gets a free lunch if I’m willing to go get it."

Since you could have stopped at free for me, I took the cash and I was off like a prom dress to my favorite lunch place:

The Chick Fil A.

If you don’t know about or have never had a Chick Fil A sandwich, I pity you.  It is, without question, the best chicken sammich ever.

Combine that with the fact that the Chick Fil A nearest my office is in a heavy commercial area, it gets very busy at lunch, and especially so at the drive thru.

But Chick Fil A is the WWII Germany of drive thrus.  Fast and consistent, but without all the genocide.  They take many precautions to speed things up too.  They have someone way back in line calling the orders in ahead of the speaker box.  They have a sign in the lane by the window that says "yield to cars exiting drive thru."  They give out free sandwich coupons when it’s really busy.

And yet, there’s always someone or multiple someones who don’t think the rules apply to them.

I’m not sure why it’s so tough for people to understand that, if you block the person leaving the drive thru, he can’t leave, the line won’t move, and you’re stuck there BECAUSE OF YOU.  I’ve never gotten it, and although I used to get really mad about it, now I only get a little mad.

So as I’m the first car waiting for exiting cars to clear so there’s room for me at the end of the line (which the two cars in front of me didn’t do), we are at a bit of an impasse.  During that impasse the two cars that were fifth and sixth in the wait line ducked out, ran to the front, and dove back in line in front of me, blatantly injecting themselves in line between cars that were already in line.

I tapped my horn at offender number one who was blabbing on her cell phone and certainly had no idea of what she had done.  No one would be that rude…would they?

And the second car went one further and ducked in front of the first car even further up in line.

WTF?

Well, line cutting car #1 placed her order with the early order taker woman, and that woman then came to me.  I explained that the woman on the phone in the white car probably should have been ignored, we agreed the woman was rude, and the girl took my order.

That’s when I said "Hey.  Hey you.  In the white camry.  You know you cut in line, right? "

Her:  "Are you talking to me?"

Me:  "Yes I am. You see, there’s a system here, and you interrupted it about three times and finally just cut in line.  We were all waiting in line."

Her:  "I was waiting in line too.  I drove all the way around."

Me:  "Yes, but you skipped the waiting in line line and just cut right in front of us.  Is there an emergency?"

Her: "Fuck you."

Me:  silently smiling

And so she spends the next few minutes explaining to whomever she’s talking to what I’d done, and she got madder by the second until she just couldn’t take it anymore.

So she ducked out of line and screeched out of the parking lot to get lunch from somewhere else.

High fucking five.  The cars around me were throwing thumb’s up to me.  It was great.

So I figure that since I made one woman leave, I could live with the batting .500 on the day knowing the woman in front of us by two cars had stayed.

And then it happened.

She got to the talk box, said hello a few times and sat there as the gap between her and the car in front of her grew.  I started to smile.

Why?

Because I realized that this woman had cut in line so rudely and so far up in line that she’d qued up past the woman taking the early orders, so no one had taken her order.

And no one would.

I said "Ma’am.  I don’t think that thing’s on."

Her:  "Why not?"

Me:  "Well, when they’re busy, they put a person back further in line to take the orders so they can get ahead.  Apparently you cut in line past her, so no one is going to take your order."

Her:  "I didn’t know I cut in line."

Me:  "Oh I’m sure you didn’t mean to.  I guess it can happen to anyone."

Her: silently grimacing at the thought of having to order at the window since they’d give her the wrong food since she hadn’t been in line to place an order.

I smiled, told her to go ahead and order at the window, and she said "Thank you."

Seriously.  You seldom get two of those in a year, let alone in a day.

And to top it off, I got waffle fries.

High five.

FRT