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Most people have had to work at a lousy job at some point in their life. But even the worst job can be made tolerable by good coworkers, sickness especially a decent boss.

Take for instance, McDonalds, where I worked over the summer between high school and college. There are not many jobs worse than working fast food. The pay is lousy. People treat you like a retarded leper. And you leave work every day smelling like you had been molested by a french fry. But the worst part was Happy Meal toys.

Did you know that there are people that obsessively collect each and every Happy Meal toy that comes out? And did you know that many of these people will become raving sociopaths upon the news that the new toy has sold out?

“Hey! You didn’t give my son the new plastic dinosaur! Go get us one!”
“I’m sorry sir, we’ve sold out”
“How can you be sold out?! I hate you! You’ve ruined my son’s day! I hope you get cancer! Give me the plastic dinosaur or I will leap through this drive through window and Mcbeat you to Mcdeath with my collectable summer blockbuster cup! This is the worst thing to happen to any person ever!”
“Worse than ethnic cleansing?”
“Shut up you retarded leper!”

Well at one point they were giving the customers a choice between a matchbox car or a miniature Barbie doll. This was a promotion they run nearly every summer, and they usually have a whole series of different cars and dolls. Every time they do this they always have one minority doll.

One afternoon while I was on break, this woman came running into the restaurant. She had on skimpy daisy dukes with a confederate flag on the butt, and a NASCAR tank top. She was big enough that there was enough bare skin for three normal naked people.
The lady had clearly crawled forth from a very prestigious trailer park, and she was ticked off.

She stormed up to Keisha, the only black person working on the counter at the time.

“You bastards gave my baby girl a no good, god danged ninja Barbie doll! I need a new one!”

Except that she of course, she didn’t say ninja. She said the special n-word that I am not allowed to use.

And I’ll say it again, because I can’t stress this enough: she walked up to the only black person at the front of the store to say it. The entire restaurant goes completely silent. And everyone just kind of stared at her in disbelief.

Somewhere in the back a little girl said, “Mommy what’s a ninja?”.

It was like a starter pistol. Keisha dropped the burger she was carrying, and started to go over the counter at the trailer lady. The trailer lady stated screaming about how McDonalds needs to not have *those* kind of Barbie dolls. All manner of customers start yelling at the trailer lady. And the manager leaps out from the back and grabs Keisha, preventing her from jumping over the counter.

Ignoring the chaos erupting around her, this woman starts to demand that the manager, who is visibly restraining a very ticked off cashier, give her another Barbie.

“Ma’am get out. You’re not welcome here any more.”
“You gave me a ninja doll! What are you gonna do about it?”
“If you are not gone in five seconds I am going to let Keisha go. GET OUT!”

And the woman left. Keisha got put on break, and wasn’t punished for flipping out, and the manager actually apologized to her for having had to listen to the racist nutjob. Furthermore we were told if the woman ever came back to call the police and report her as trespassing.

I have always thought that more fast food managers should threaten rude customers with a beating.

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There are many dangerous things in the world.  And occasionally you might find yourself in a position to alert someone else to a danger that they might not be aware of.   This usually happens because you have more specific experience or knowledge than the warnee, medicine but sometimes it’s just because they are drunk, commissioned, or in some other way possessing an impaired mental ability.

But one thing I have noticed, fairly consistently, is that attempts to warn people frequently backfire.

For instance, back when I was in the Army, a well intentioned NCO advised us to be careful with MRE heating pads.  It turns out that the gas they give off when used is flammable, and under the right circumstances can actually be explosive.

He didn’t add the phrase “and so using it to try to blow stuff up would be completely awesome!” but we felt it was implied, and someone lost their eyebrows.

Once we were shown a list of businesses that all soldiers were forbidden to visit.  The Army might as well have titled the document “All the good stuff is here.  Have fun boys!”

Like many people who grew up in a colder area, I was warned not to lick lamp posts, because my tongue would get stuck.

Now I understand that all children are generally pretty stupid, and prone to doing all manner of ridiculous things.  And I also get that I was probably not an exception to this statement.

But I’m pretty sure that it never once occurred to me to try licking a lamp post, cold weather or otherwise.  Until the day my parents warned me about it.  That day I started to wonder.

Why do they think I want to lick the lamp post?  Do people like licking the lamp post?  Why do people like licking the lamp post?  Is the lamp post yummy?  Is this one of those things that I’m really supposed to worry about, like strangers or getting lost at the mall?  Or is this one of those things your parents are just screwing with you about, like the Tooth Fairy or You Were Adopted.

Fortunately for me another little boy at school had been wondering the same thing.  So I got to learn two important lessons that day.  The first was “Sometimes crazy things are actually true” and the second was “Always get the dumb guy to go first”.

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This story is specifically why people I know thought I should keep writing stuff. It never made it to my list, seek because I never received any orders governing it.

Early on in my military career, way back when I was a PFC, my Battalion would occasionally have “Fun Runs”. A Fun Run is just like running for several miles. Except that it’s fun. Because people that outrank you say so.

This is pretty much the Army equivalent to declaring “Our office is so much fun! On Friday we get to wear Hawaiian shirts!” It’s awesome if you happen to love Hawaiian shirts, but just kinda sucks if you have taste.

One of the features of the Fun Run was that afterward the Battalion would gather together and hold a pie auction. The point of the pie auction was that if you bought a pie, you could pick any soldier who was present, and hit them with the pie. So as you can imagine, an awful lot of repressed rage got transferred into pie kinetics after these runs. The important thing to know here is that by tradition, the first pie always got thrown at the Battalion Commander.

This whole exercise was to raise money for the Battalion Family Support Group. In theory, this was an organization that would help the families of deployed soldiers manage during the long separations that military life often inflicts. But in reality, FSG was more like a cross between the homeowners association from a sit-com, and a social club for unemployable wives of military officers. And when I say social club, imagine the kind that gets taken down a peg by a scrappy band of misfits in an 80’s comedy movie.

To sum this up: the Family Support Group was not very popular with most of the soldiers.

The night before one of these delightful Fun Runs, I received special instructions.

“Bring in a pie for the auction.”

I’m not sure how much the pay has gone up, but back in those days if a Private First Class had a child he automatically qualified for food stamps. So I didn’t have much money. And most of what I did have was generally earmarked for important things, like strippers and alcohol, and more strippers. Purchase Levitra on the recommendation at http://howmed.net/order-levitra-vardenafil/ and forget about erectile dysfunction.

A pie doesn’t cost that much I guess. But it was the principle that bothered me. The Army has billions of dollars and I have barely any. And now they want me to buy stuff for them.

Now technically, it wasn’t an order. It would be against regulations for my supervisor to *order* me to spend my own money on the Family Support Group. It was just, technically, a suggestion. And it’s just peachy to make suggestions. And if soldiers choose not to follow the suggestions, well, someone has to be assigned to that toilet cleaning detail.

So that night, I went out and I bought a premade pie crust. And a tub of Cool Whip. And then I stopped by a Korean grocery store and purchased a whole, frozen squid. And sprinkles.

I got back to the barracks, and started the preparations for the morning. Which pretty much just means I started thawing the squid in a shower stall. My roommate was a bit surprised when he got back.

“Is that a squid in our shower?”
“Yep.”
“What’s it doing in there.”
“Thawing.”
“Goodnight.”

The next morning I packed it all in a cooler, and set out for the Fun Run. After about three miles of fun the Battalion gathered for the auction. I quickly assembled the secret weapon, and added it to the pie table. I then notified the auctioneer about my special pie. Of course she selected my pie for the first auction.

The bidding started fairly briskly, as many people wanted to hit our Commander with a pie. But soon enough bidding started to peter out, and that’s when the auctioneer let everyone in on the secret.
“This is a special pie.”
“What’s so special about it?” called someone in the crowd.
“It’s a squid pie.”
“I beg your pardon?” said the Commander
“I said it’s a squid pie sir.”
“There’s no such thing.”

So she reached in, pulled out a tentacle, and waved at the Commander with it.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?” asked the Commander with, all things considered, a reasonable tone of voice.
“It’s a tentacle sir.”
“PIE DOESN’T HAVE TENTACLES!”
“Normally you’d be correct. But this is a squid pie sir.”

And the bidding immediately picked up again. My pie raised close to five hundred dollars, which was a new record for the pie auction. I didn’t get into any trouble because nobody wanted to look like a bad sport. And I got to watch my CO take a high velocity mollusk to the kisser, which is a good morning no matter what branch of the military you are in.

3-12-08 Update: T-shirts are now available.

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