Midnight Jolt Run

Despite efforts to eat right and stay healthy, I think there are a lot of us who break down and crave something unwholesome and terribly salty/fatty/spicy, so I make no excuses when I tell you I frequent the McDonalds drive thru. It’s one of the only places I’ve found that is consistently not terrible at 4 in the morning out of all the places that are actually OPEN at 4 in the morning. Honestly, how hard is it to fuck up a Teen Burger and Onion Rings? Apparently, it’s very easy when you’re using three day old grease from the fryer and not paying attention to the timer because your iPod just hit a long stretch of Lincoln Park.

One morning, a few months ago, I rolled up to the drive-thru at the McDonalds closest to my home (which, by the way, takes some effort to calculate as there are no less than four within a five minute drive of me) hoping to take the edge off of my post-work hunger pangs. I roll down my window, lean on in and wait for the scratchy little speaker to start asking for my commands like an obedient Genie.

“Welcome to McDonalds!!! Can I take your order?”

I do a double take. First of all, this voice is way too fucking chipper. Nobody who works at McDonalds has any right to be that bloody happy, especially so early in the morning on a weeknight. Second of all, for the previous four of five months, the only annoyingly chipper white girl I’ve seen working at the Drive-Thru sounds a lot less moronic. Most of the staff at this particular place are Asian ESL students trying to eke out some cash to not have to rely completely on student loans in this crazy expensive city.

Whatever. It’s too early/late, and my hunger demands I act. I state my order proudly and with perfect pronunciation. Then, of course, the dream world of Ronald’s team of valley-girls is shattered when a shy, very Korean voice asks me “what would you like to drink?”

Now, being the optimist I am, I figure this will last all of three days before McDonalds gets sued for racial discrimination or sexism. What seems like an innocent little “standardized greeting” to the high-paid executives turns everyone who is working at that restaurant into the back-end grunt work of a moronically stereotyped eight-second recording. This may work on the internet when you’re ordering something online and expect never to have to see, hear, or worry about another human face, but in the real world, you still have to give your cash or card to a person, and they still hand you food and drink with flesh and blood appendages or prosthetics. It cheapens anyone behind that voice and makes them “not good enough” to be the first impression. This bothered me a lot, but apathy is powerful, so I mostly ignored it, hoping it would go away. But no. Not for weeks.

Not for months.

I asked the only white girl, a cheery, chubby high schooler who I’ve seen working once or twice before “doesn’t that voice get confusing?”

She just nods and sighs. “Sometimes I forget I’m not supposed to greet anyone anymore.”

That’s right. Even if you’re confident in your English and are willing to put your job on the line to prove to your boss you can’t fuck up a simple “hello“, well, too bloody bad. The computerized ditz has that job. Just take the order, punch in the buttons, and shut up.

I’m at the stage where I’m getting angry about that fucking chipper voice who couldn’t care if I rolled up in a tank or helicopter to blow up the building, but again, I own neither mobile weapon platform so I just let it go on and made sure I was extra polite and thankful of the real human beings behind my meal.

Then, one day, quite by accident, I went to Wendy’s.

You see, when I pick up my peeps from the C-Train station for a night of gaming and dice-rolling and mission looting, they are usually hungry, and the nearest place to get food (assuming you consider any of these fast-food joints ‘food’) is a Wendys/Tim Hortons. And I figure, why not, I’ll zoom on over with iPod and grab a Frosty for Senie so as to gain happy points from my beautiful wife. And when I pull up to the Drive Thru, I am honestly surprised when a real, happy, honest human voice says “Welcome to My Wendy’s. What can I get for you?”

“My?”

Wow. I mean, sure, it’s a minimum wage job, and sure, it’s a fast food restaurant. But you know what? I was blown away by how honest and refreshing it was to hear someone at least pretend to be proud of the place that was feeding them and paying their rent. They’re not begging on the street, or taking your taxes by mooching on the government either.  How can you possibly not like these people who are going out of their way to do an honest day’s work and aren’t even trying to get in your face about it?  They might even hate their job, but hell, at least they’re not bringing you down.

Even if it’s just a script they all have to follow, it reminds you and I, the filthy consumers, that there are real people working here, and they all are helping to get your arse fed and back on the road in a fraction of the time it would take you to cook the meal yourself.

“Welcome to My Store. Sure, I don’t own it, but it’s where I work, I have a job in this shitty economy, and it’s a shitload better than cleaning the used-tampon-collectors in the women’s washroom at Walmart at three in the morning.”

Not that I have any experience with that nightmare job.

Okay, I kid… yes I do. And I would rather flip burgers anyday. So, tonight, a week or so later, when I crave McDonalds, I figure maybe they have learned from their competition. Maybe, just maybe, people have complained enough about the voice to get rid of it. But…of course…it still is there. Chipper and annoying as always.

And when I get my order, I remember that McDonalds prints on the back of every receipt the link to their online survey. So I figure, what the hell, time to tell them what I think.

I told them how surprised I was they weren’t sued yet. How insulting it was to have a multi-billion dollar company assume all I wanted to talk to was a young white anti-depressants-snorting cheerleader. How blatantly racist and demeaning it was to everyone who was not Caucasian who worked at the restaurant, and how insulting it was to the human race in general that we are told we are no longer to have human greetings as part of our regular day-to-day lives.

Barring all that…it’s confusing as fuck to have someone change their voice in the middle of a conversation. Hopefully they get the message. If not, maybe they’d listen if I ask a pretty little white girl to send it in while spinning around her pom-poms. In the meantime, I think this is the best excuse yet to return to a healthy diet. At least I can talk to the grocery store people.