Yesterday morning, Tamara was busy and not prepared to be out and about, so I decided to ride the
Italica Bulldog 150 over to Alachua for a breakfast buffet.
I never made it to the breakfast buffet. I took a wrong turn, decided to just explore, and ended up covering about 80 miles while seeing some new territory (none of it more than 20 miles or so from home), finishing up with what was supposed to be a quick breakfast at McDonald's.
Fun ride -- an elderly lady approached me while I was gassing up and told me how "cute" my bike is: "It looks like a wasp!" I thanked her. I had, the day before, gone over all the yellow fairings with "protectant" wipes, and the yellow is back to its factory pop.
Less than fun McDonald's experience.
McDonald's is no longer really very well-equipped to take orders and accept payment at the counter. For one thing, they're just not staffed for it. They expect customers to input, and pay for, their orders at automated kiosks.
On this particular morning, two of the four kiosks were down hard, while the other two could take an order but not let you pay for an order. It took my order, then gave me an order number and told me to pay at the counter.
So, I got in line at the counter, and frankly that process seemed to move fairly quickly, except for one upset customer who happened to be two people in front of me. As best I could understand the prequel to my arrival, she thought she had ordered X, but had instead ordered Y; the manager had attempted to fix things, and had ended up refunding her money and telling her she could keep the food she got.
But this lady ... wanted. I didn't count the "I wants," but they were well into two figures. She didn't want this food, but as soon as the manager shrugged, said "OK," and started to walk away with the food, it was "I WANT MY FOOD." And the manager would hand her the food. And then she would shout "I WANT" X where X was apparently the thing she thought she'd ordered, and the manager would offer to either sell it to her or replace the order there on the counter with it at no upcharge, at which point no, "I WANT THE FOOD I [THOUGHT I] ORDERED AND THIS FOOD" and the manager would explain that after a refund and free food, she wasn't going to get an additional order at no charge. "I WANT A CODE" (for free future food). No, she wasn't getting a refund, and free food, and more free food in the future.
This went on for about 10 minutes.
At about the ninth bazillion "I WANT," I said "I WANT YOU TO GET OUT OF THE WAY SO I CAN GET MY BREAKFAST."
At which point, the manager asked her to leave, which was met with another round of "I WANT"s. Then someone else yelled "CALL THE COPS," and the manager already had the phone in her hand.
At which the point lady exclaimed that it was just fine if the cops were called because "I WANT." And manager, who continued to speak in a calm, measured, nearly angelic tone, said (again) "Ma'am, I've taken every reasonable step to satisfy you, and now I'm asking you to leave."
At which point the lady had some kind of physical tantrum involving her arms, with one hand managing to slap the motorcycle helmet in my hand, and for a brief instant I considered responding to that as physical aggression and slapping her good and hard across the face ... with the helmet.
I'm not like that, though, so even though someone behind me said "I think that qualifies as assault," I just stood there. I'd said my piece and I was unharmed.
Finally, the lady took her food. Walked away. And as she approached the exit, threw her coffee and her food at the wall before walking out.
I've only seen tantrums of that type in checkout lines a couple of times, and this was by far the most drawn-out and tedious such incident (I did, however, dine at a Burger King in Hollywood a few days after Jerry Lewis apparently threw such a tantrum, and when I asked the girl at the counter if this was that Burger King, it turned out she was the very one he'd yelled at because he wanted breakfast after they had switched to lunch).
So anyway, fun ride, not as fun breakfast. Although I do wonder whether my upgrade (I ordered the Big Breakfast, but received the Big Breakfast with pancakes) was intentional compensation or just an error.
In other motorcycle news, I finally have some panniers/saddlebags on the way from Walmart, and a transparent custom sticker with the bike's name (Olivia D) on it on the way from Temu. A recent arrival from Temu was a pair of sub-$5 fleece "handlebar mittens" -- I ordered plain black, but for some reason I got ones with big pictures of something called "Lucky Bear" on them. I guess they'll keep my hands as warm.
I expect to hit 1,000 miles on the bike -- second oil change point -- some time in the next couple of weeks. Average fuel economy so far, per Fuelly, 66.1 miles per gallon.
