Tales from the Pit - Taking Out The Trash

There are days when things are good and there are days when things are bad. There are also days when you go on a massive power trip and it is so gratifying on so many different levels.

This was one of those days.

The lunch rush had passed and I was idling away at the cash register. It was another Monday, another slow day. It was mildly sad on some levels and just entirely mind numbing on others. The restaurant stood empty and quiet. A truck drove past the window and turned in towards our parking lot.

The door opened and a customer walked in. He wore a yellow jacket, denoting his work with water services along with sunglasses masking his eyes. He looked around and turned to me.

"What kind of restaurant is this?" He inquired.

"It's a barbecue place." I replied mildly, automatically initiating a routine that I was so used to. He glanced around and at me.

"What do YOU know about barbecue?" He said, a tinge of accusation in his voice.

"...Excuse me?" I was slightly confused, my brow furrowed as I broke out of my routine.

"What do YOU know about barbecue?" Again, he asked me, his tone betraying a sense of disbelief and confrontation.

I appraised his body language, noting the folding arms across the chest as well as the almost sneering manner of speech. Essentially, I was being judged. I normally deal with my fair share of crap but I believe this was the first time someone actually had questioned our purpose of even bothering to exist, as if intending to stir up trouble That alone told me all I need to know about the type of person I was dealing with. I gathered my wits about me and looked at him straight in the eye.

"You can leave...if you want..."
"What was that..." He said, the first sign of mild doubt and confusion appearing on his face.

I smiled at him and gave him my death stare from hell, boring past the dark sunglasses shield his eyes and underneath the blackness of his skin, straight through the parietal lobe and back out the window.

"You can leave...if you want. The door's right there." I motioned to the door, whilst smiling politely.

"Fine, I'll leave." He stared and walked out the door, all the while muttering something that was most likely incoherent and irrelevant. As the door closed, I settled back into a chair, mildly confused and shocked at what I had done before I was overwhelming with a feeling in the pit of my stomach which I can describe simply as euphoric. That was expected since I just pretty much had a massive power trip on so many levels which was unexpectedly satisfying.

As far as my treatment of him goes, I'd say he deserves it. After all, getting insulted is below my pay grade.

Tales from the Pit - Drive Thru Con #1

The following incident occurred several weeks prior and can be considered the spark which ignited the powder keg of growing chronicles you see now.

Working a drive-thru window during the evening hours tends to be rather slow and uneventful for the most part. Generally, we received a handful of orders via drive through after dinnertime and we would busy ourselves with our tasks to take care of. I was awake this particular night, thinking of ways to escape this dismal road which I had taken. I hoped that this would be temporary but as I watched the days stretch into weeks and the weeks began to turn into months, I had to brace myself for a long slog.

This particular incident would ultimately lead me to embrace the cynic within and increase my tolerance for bullshit and pain.

The drive-thru alerted me with it's annoying beeps. I had argued that we should have a headset but we didn't have the money to install one, which was understandable in this tough recession. I ran over to it and pressed the TALK button.

"Hi, how may I help?" I inquired to my faceless customer.

"Do y'all have any kids' meals?" The voice asked, mildly grating my nerves. The slight twang and the vernacular tongue made me attempt to determine what type of person I was talking to. I felt it was likely African-American, considering I had lived in the ghetto long enough to figure out how people would talk.

"No, sir. We don't have any kids' meals." I replied.

"All right. I'll take a chicken sandwich. That'll be all."

"Please pull up."

I rushed the order down to the kitchen. Generally, most modern restaurants use a modern cash register system to relay orders to the back. But we didn't happen to have thousands of dollars at our disposal so we opted instead to use a normal till and take orders on paper. While somewhat analog in the digital age, it had its uses in the simplicity of it all. I then returned to the window to get the money from my customer.

A black man pulled up in a white car, reeking of cigarette smoke. He had a bluetooth headset on and was talking to someone at the other end.

"That'll be $4.99, sir." I said to him, ringing up his total on the register.

"All right, honey. Hold on." He said to his companion at the other end. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a $20 bill, handing it to me. As he did, he then turned to me and started to speak.

"Why don't y'all have any kids' meals? I'm sure kids wouldn't mind eating here as well." He asked, in a concerned manner.

"Well, sir. Our main clientele are the people who work in this industrial area so we don't get many children out here often." I replied.

"Well, I think you may get lots of business with kids' meals, just so you know."

"I'll think about it." I turned back to the register to calculate his change and put the $20 next to me outside the till in both our sights.

"Hold on. I think my wife wants to go to Taco Bell instead." He suddenly interjected, bringing a halt to the counting of the bills I was currently engaged in. Naturally, I was mildly dismayed but if that was what the customer wanted, then that was his own nutritionally deficient choice.

"Very well then." I closed the register and handed the $20 back to him as he reached his hands out. He continued talking on his headset, ignoring me for the most part as he put the money into his wallet. Then he surreptitiously slipped a $1 bill out and handed it to me.

I had the bill in my hand, staring at it and very much confused. I had no idea why he had done such a thing and felt it was a mistake. My instincts told me that something was unnatural so I returned the bill to his palm.

"What's this?" He looked at me suddenly, inquiring in an accusatory tone.

"Sir, it's your bill. I gave you the $20 and then you gave me a $1 bill." I replied, mildly annoyed.

"I don't see any $20 here. What are you talking about?" He proceeded to open his door, looking around at his car in a big show of searching for the supposed missing bill.

I stared at him, my eyes narrowed in suspicion and a sudden burst of rage broke through my otherwise unassuming behavior.

"I GAVE YOU YOUR $20 BACK AND THEN YOU TRIED TO GIVE ME $1, SIR! WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO HERE?!" I bellowed at him, with my hat askew and arms flailing wildly. I seethed with rage as I saw my breaths exhale quickly in the pale, cold January night.

He paused to look at me, taken aback by my outburst. To my satisfaction, I saw the glimmers of fear in those foul eyes of his.

"Hey, it's cool. You don't need to shout, mister. It's okay, you don't need to yell." He said softly, as he looked furtively around, scanning the area for any passerbys within earshot of us.

He closed his car door and stepped on the pedal, escaping to the street in front of the restaurant, like a mouse fleeing the claws of its feline predator. He didn't even pause to turn left for the Taco Bell near us but simply disappeared into the darkness from which he came.

And thus, these tales were born.

Tales from the Pit - Drive Thru Con #2

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later this time around. People often think that they can get away with trying to swindle drive-thru operators. In fact, many often do. It's one of the perils of customer service and one of the more trying methods of breaking the tedium of a languishing day.

The lunch rush was in full swing, a flurry of feet running orders to and fro for ravenous patrons on their lunch break. There was a line of cars at the drive thru, placing orders and waiting for them. A truck pulled up to the window, one among many in the line.

There were two men sitting in the truck. A short, thin black man and corpulent, pug-faced white man. The man's bushy red hair gave the impression of one who seemed to be on fire perpetually.

They had both placed two separate orders. I vaguely recall they were two sandwich combinations and a separate sandwich combination. The black man handed me a credit card and I swiped it immediately, returning the card and a copy of the receipt to him. Then he gave me cash for the second order, upon which I dispensed his change back to him.

The orders were completed minutes later and I began to give them to the men, waiting for the next car to pull up to the window. However, that didn't happen so easily.

"Hey, what's this on my receipt?" The fat man asked me. His companion paused with the bag in his hand and looked back and forth, his expression one of slight confusion.

"Sir, what are you talking about?" I replied, slightly irritated and rather petulant at this strange turn of events.

"Well, there's a tip on here. I don't remember giving out any tip." He pointed a pudgy finger at his receipt. Scrawled on one of the lines was a tip amount for what I could see as 2 or 5 dollars.

Upon seeing that, my initial thought was one of disbelief and then just sheer anger. I knew for a fact that there was nothing written on the copy I had given him. Furthermore, the ink was different form the pens we usually have. No one ever gives tips out at the drive through unless it's warranted and that has rarely happened ever since our opening day. Naturally, I deduced that this was simply an attempt to skim money off our business and by extension, me.

"Sir, there's no tip. If there's a tip on there, it's not being entered into our machines! So you don't have to worry." I exclaimed, waving my hands wildly in frustration at his transparent and idiotic attempt to scam me. His companion merely stared at the both of us in shock, a slight smile curling in his upper lip. Needless to say, he didn't expect this turn of events.

The pig-like man blinked and then muttered something along the lines of "it's okay" or "fine then" and the two of them drove off. As I dealt with the next customer, I thought to myself "Did this really happen again? Is this seriously a joke?"

Later, after the rush ended, I sat and ate an apple, reflecting on the stupidity of man and the fact that I present a rather intimidating presence to people sometimes. Needless to say, I now keep a knife taped under the register in the event things get serious. After all, you never know when you may need to skin an apple.