The other night Chuck & I took Brooks to his baseball game. The boys have to be there early for batting practice/warm-up so we dropped him off and stole a few moments to go grab drinks at the nearby Sonic. I love my husband dearly but one of my biggest pet peeves is going through a drive-thru with him. Especially a drive-thru like Sonic that he goes to fifty or more times a year. A drive-thru whose menu, WITH the exception of adding and dropping jalapeno poppers on a regular basis, has not changed since oh, we were in high school. (OK, they added breakfast but we never go for that meal, so it doesn’t count.) A visit to Sonic with Chuck goes much like this:
WORKER: Welcome to Sonic, may I take your order, please?
CHUCK: Ummmm……….yes……….I need a……ummmm……..
(Stares longingly at menu AS IF #1 He has never seen it before. #2 It’s filled with all manner of European delicacies to tempt one’s palate.)
WORKER (to herself, I’m sure): Not that hard Bozo. You got people behind you……….
CHUCK (after literally 50 FULL seconds): Uhhhh, yeaaaah, I’ll have a Sonic burger with everything on it…….except cheese. Well, no. Make that a Sonic Cheeseburger with everything……
WORKER (undoubtedly rolling her eyes): Would you like to make that a #1 meal?
CHUCK: Uhhhh…….yes, with fries and a large sweet tea. NO! Make that a cherry limeade! Yeah, a cherry limeade sounds good!
WORKER (tapping her fingers on cash register while looking away & chewing gum, I’d imagine): That will be $7.85. Will that be all?
CHUCK: Yes.
ME (waving hand): Me? Over here?
CHUCK: Oh! And a grilled cheese sandwich with two sides of pickles and a medium Coke.
WORKER (gritting teeth): Ok, your total is now $10.87. Please pull forward.
CHUCK: Oh, can I get tater tots instead of fries on that #1?
WORKER (in her mind): “OH MY GOD, YOU ASSHOLE, PLEASE PULL FORWARD! AND THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING SONIC! NEXT TIME GO TO THE ONE ON CHENAL!”
(in reality): YES. Thank you for choosing Sonic. WILL THAT BE ALL???
CHUCK: Yep, that’s it! (as if it’s been a damn pleasure to serve him all along)
CHUCK (looks at me in horror): WHAT TIME IS IT?
ME: 4:58.
CHUCK (losing at least 6 months off his life): If we had been here at 4:00 the drinks would have been HALF OFF!
This is my life every freaking time we go through a drive-thru. Every time. Sonic, McDonald’s, KFC, Taco Bell….and God FORBID, he be presented with the choices at a KFC/TACO BELL combo. Please, no. YES, you can order from both menus at no extra charge, honey.
So, back to the incident at hand. Every game night, the drive-thru at this particular Sonic is quite busy so we have some time to kill between the order and the delivery. He’s mustering around in his wallet for bills and the console for change. He gets out a brown, wood-tone card.
CHUCK: Oh, I can really annoy you now with my super-annoying yuppieness. Look at my Starbucks card. Real wood! SUSTAINABLE. From a rainforest somewhere. (Touching it to my leg…) Wanna feel it?
ME: As much as I’d love to feel your wood in the drive-thru, we need to pull forward. The game’s going to START.
Pulls forward and hands the girl his bills and change.
AND THIS IS WHERE I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. I should have seen it coming. Probably one of my biggest pet peeves in the giant, VAST, far-reaching land that is known as “Things that irritate the living SHIT out of Noelle,” comes this perennial favorite….
HE HANDS THE GIRL ELEVEN DOLLARS AND TWO CENTS. Not $10.87, which is the total but $11.02, so that in this world where people are blowing up other people and dropping their kids off at school and disappearing for 11 years & surviving day to day on a handful of rice, my husband can get back a dime and a nickel instead of a dime and three pennies! No pennies! My GOD, we cannot have such travesty in our lives as PENNIES!
This bothers me for two reasons: #1 It’s an old man thing and he is all of 44. (“Soon I’ll be 45! Won’t be long!” The man embraces aging in a way Estelle Getty couldn’t in her wildest dreams.) #2 It’s just inconsiderate.
Inconsiderate?? What kind of an uptight bitch ARE YOU?? (I can hear you.) YES. Inconsiderate. Because in this day and age, Cheerful Sonic Worker has a computer in front of her that’s sole purpose is to help move the drive-thru in an efficient and timely manner. And my husband just totally fucked with that. Now granted, the average high school/college student worker should be able to do that in their head. Please keep in mind, however, this is not the Apple store. These people get in a rhythm. You catch them off-guard. All in the name of NOT HAVING PENNIES IN YOUR PANTS! Sometimes, you guessed it: He does it JUST to see me get all worked up. He’s sadistic like that. Deriving pleasure from cruelty in the Sonic drive-thru. Needless to say, now the girl is completely confused & somehow gives him back a dollar more than she should.
Then I say, “You didn’t tip her.” So he gives her back the dollar and she thinks she’s been tipped, but she hasn’t because she gave us an extra dollar to begin with. I don’t have the heart to tell her. I’m horrified! I still feel guilty about it. At my funeral, I want people to say, “She was nothing if not a damn good tipper!” Because I am.
And NONE OF THIS would have happened had I been driving. None of it. 🙂
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