Lunch at Wendy's

So over the weekend, three of us decide to go to Wendy's. Number One Son was dying to get his hands on some chicken nuggets, this is his equivalent to Mecca, and the rest of us were in rush to get to The Bourne Ultimatum, so everyone agreed on Wendy's.

We get into Wendy's, get up to the counter, and I say "I'd like a Spicy Wrap" (or whatever the heck it's called). I wait for a couple of seconds, the woman smiles back at me blankly, and I finally say "Er, is there anything that comes with that?"

"No," she says. "But you could get a fries and a drink for a dollar extra." The way she says it implies that this is a whole lotta money, and she's not sure if I can come up with that amount.

"OK," I say. "Let's do that and make it a diet Coke. Oh, and can you add a small vanilla Frosty with m&ms?" (livin' large!)

"Um," she says nervously. "You mean a... wait a minute...." she looks behind her, carefully scanning the menu. She really takes her time, and makes a big production of this. She's straining to read the board. "It's uh..." and she reads the "official" name of the treat off the lit menu board.

Yeah, thanks for reading that one off to me: Obviously it's made a great impression, as I can't think of that name for the life of me this morning.

"OK," I say. I don't really care if it's called dog vomit, but if it makes her happy to say it, fine with me.

"Er, do you want it vanilla or chocolate?" she asks.

"Vanilla," I say again.

"Anything else?" she says, seemingly oblivious to the other two people with me - the ones that I've been chatting with the entire time. I then look at her name tag, figuring I'll see the word "Rookie" on it, or "Mentally Handicapped: Be Patient", or something. Instead, it says "Manager."

"Yeah," I say. "He'll have..." and I jerk my thumb at my son.

"Number 9," says my son promptly. "With a coke. Oh, and a chocolate Frosty with m&ms, too." He looks at me and says "I don't know how you can stand vanilla."

She looks back over her shoulder again. "A whaaa...? Oh, a..." and she names the Frosty combo again. "And what flavor would you like that to be?"

"Chocolate," says my son. Again. We look at each other.

"Is that all for you, then?" she asks brightly.

"Er, no, I think he'd like to have something too," I say, pointing to the guy with us, who orders his meal.

She then goes into fully-spastic mode, getting us three drinks. It looks like a real production back there and I begin to wonder if Wendy's has some sort of special punishment for managers. Is that why she's so nervous? Maybe if she doesn't get everything perfect, a great pit in the floor will open up and shoot her straight into a large fry vat or something.

While she busies herself getting the rest of the food together, my son and I take the tray and get the condiments, etc., and set up camp in the dining area. The other guy stays behind to get the rest of the food. My son returns to wait with him, while I plant my butt in front of a large glass window overlooking a steady stream of cars: Ah, the view!

In a minute, both guys return, laughing. "What's up?" I ask.

Apparently the manager had been looking around in panic for the tray, and when Number One Son told her that it had already been delivered to the table, she nearly tore her hair out in frustration. "I don't know what I already served you," she said in great anguish. My son told her it was only three drinks. "I... oh, this is making it all so difficult," she chided them both as she scurried off to finish putting the order together.

I go up to watch this process. She finally hands over the trays with the food, and we see that one of our Frosties is only partially filled. We point it out to her. "That's as much [name of Frosty with m&ms] as we give," she says huffily. I point out that the Frosty next to it is full.

The guy with us turns to my son and says in mock seriousness, "Did you order only 3/4 of a Frosty?" I'm afraid that she's about to correct the name again, but instead she purses her lips into a fine white line, snatches the chocolate Frosty off the tray, and takes it off to another area outside of the range of our vision, where the Frosty machine isn't.

Shortly she returns with the Frosty. Now the mixed portion is below and there's a large dollop of plain chocolate Frosty on top. Since it didn't take that long to just add a little Frosty to the top, and the machine was in the other direction, I'm tempted to ask what she just did, but I say nothing. I only ask why she didn't add more m&ms and she says "Because that's the only way I can do that!" You'd think I'd asked her to build the Brooklyn Bridge out of matchsticks. My son thinks it's fine, and neither one of us would like to send the manager into the Fry Vat Beneath the Floor, so we say nothing else.

She takes her time going over everything on the tray, matching it to everything on the receipt. She's so earnest, her lips are moving slightly as she pores over it.

Finally, we all go sit down, start to eat, and the guy with us says "Oh NO!"

"What?!" we ask.

"She gave me fries when I ordered a baked potato!" he sighs.

Here we go again.

So he goes up to the Manager, who then demands the receipt, pores over it in obvious and growing frustration, and finally dramatically admits that she goofed and she owes him a potato. He gets the potato, and sits down again.

As he digs into the potato, I ask "How is it?"

"Good," he says. "But you know how much I like sour cream?"

I nod Yes.

"Well, you should've seen how she took it when I asked for some extra sour cream," he says.