Fast Food Friendships

[Greg Torso]

I should say this was many years ago, and I certainly don't live like this now, but I used to have a pretty good relationship with the staff of a big outdoor McDonalds near our house. We used to go there to do skateboard tricks and drugs in the carpark, the staff were unconcerned and sometimes even joined in popping sick kickflips or boofing caps of perplexadrine. But as things ramped up re: drug use, I went a bit too far.

I had a hollow steel barbell through the head of my penis which I had filled with crushed-up adderall that was on a slow release, essentially giving me an intra-penile dose of swimmer-uppers every quarter of every hour. Additionally, the friction of my extremely tight underpants would cause me to writhe in triple-ecstasy as they facilitated each shot of benjamin up my sensual tube. Imagine being on the brink of orgasm for hours while rockets explode through your bloodstream. During this time, I was essentially immobile.

Anyway, I was lying down in the woodchips under the drive-thru window waiting for the beans to hit. I felt soft and warm, like a melted plastic ashtray. I knew the girl who worked the window and I somehow thought that we had this thing going where I would lie down underneath the counter and she would begin dripping ketchup down onto my gurning face. Of course, there had never been any such agreement. But I waited for it anyway.

I was aware that people were shouting at me and cars were driving past and hooting, but I ignored all that because I was waiting for the tomato pulp drip feed to commence. The woodchips felt incredible underneath and around me, they moved in time together as one but also in a million separate pieces, they rattled like mahjong tiles under my wriggling legs. Each time someone pulled up to the speaker to place their order, I would shudder as though a seismic wave were passing through my body persuaded into the world by the simple interaction of an audible human voice against the cold mesh of a speaker grille. I suppose it was something near religious, gospel vibrations.

I wanted to tell everyone that I loved them simply for getting McDonalds. We were all bound together under the spell of this slug emissary from planet Bowel Cancer that had been polluting and chewing on the world for our entire conscious lifespans under the mouldy old umbrella of the Ronald McDonald corporation. We all knew how disgusting and poisonous and murderful it was and yet we kept eating it all up, day after living day. I just wanted everyone to know that I saw all of that and it was OK.

Eventually there was a man leaning over me. I had never seen him before but I immediately identified him as management material. His hands gave him away. They were pristine, soft, unscarred, and had clearly been nowhere near a fryer or a toaster for many years. Aside from his hands, though, he gave off no authority, and I refused to afford him any. He had no badge and no power over me.

Sensing that words held no currency in my wild woodchip kingdom he reached down with his beautiful pink untarnished hands, grabbed me and hoisted me upright. I was completely gone, I could not be negotiated with. I was tingling with pleasure and bright pink in a sexual flush. I muttered something about having an adder in my penis. His face sizzled with a fearful disgust and he marched me across the carpark, away from my beautiful bed of flints, back into the public domain. I divined the knowledge that I had been permanently expelled from that McDonalds and its carpark, which made me sad, but also I felt amazing.

A few months later I spoke to the girl who worked there and she told me she hadn't even been on the window that night so I would have been waiting a long time for my ketchup baptism.

[mjwilson]

Well that certainly overshadows my lamb or chicken kebab story.

[Cold Meat Platter]

There's definitely something about a reminder that you're not the spontaneous firebrand that you might like to imagine yourself that can rub you up the wrong way. Although when you're so steaming that you can barely coherently talk it can be a boon.

In the 90s when I was a student there was an amazing kebab shop in Edinburgh called the Istanbul (where the Palmyra is now, next to Nicolson Square for Edinburgh peeps). When I went in the guy just pointed at me and said "Extra Chili!"

[shoulders]

Daddy up with the angels now see you Dad for 'jumbo sausage and chips wrapped up' in heaven 🍟😇😭🙏

[FiremanJim]

I find this significantly more likely to happen abroad. I'm not sure if it's because young people like practicing their English or because someone asking "where are you from?" is a good conversation starter, but while traveling in Europe for a month recently I had more long, interesting conversations with cafe and restaurant staff that I've ever had in the UK.

The best being with a Turkish ballerina working in a Cafe in Vienna. She was reading The Brothers Karamazov in the original Russian and we started chatting about literature generally which led to a 3 hour long free flowing conversation where we just clicked entirely, and found we had a pretty spooky amount of life experience in common. Then when the other two customers in the gaffe left she closed the place early and I shagged her in the kitchen.

True story.

[Blinder Data]

To the staff at my old work canteen, I became known as "the guy who always gets two veg with his meal". I don't think consistently eating vegetables is remarkable in itself, but I live in the West of Scotland so presumably everyone else gets chips.

[drummersaredeaf]

To the staff at my old work canteen, I became known as "the guy who always gets two veg with his meal". I don't think consistently eating vegetables is remarkable in itself, but I live in the West of Scotland so presumably everyone else gets chips.

And what was your other veg?