“I’ll have the two piece chicken meal with a side of cole slaw,” she said.
The clerk behind the counter of the Los Angeles-based chicken restaurant seemed pleased with her order. Two pieces of chicken was enough but not too much. And cole slaw, well, cole slaw was a vegetable. Being a clerk of a fast-food chicken restaurant was hard enough without having to police America’s overweight overeaters, so it was nice when people did their part in taking America out of the “fattest nation in the World” column.
“Actually,” she changed her mind, “I’ll have the five piece dark meat meal with a side of macaroni and cheese.”
The clerk behind the counter was stunned. How could she.
“May I ask you a question,” he asked, gingerly.
“Sure,” she said.
“At first, you ordered the two piece and cole slaw — then you changed your mind to the five piece dark meat with mac and cheese. What changed?”
The woman looked at ther clerk as if he’d just crushed her entire world. She paused, thinking whether or not she was going to get angry, sad or just plain peeved.
“I got hungrier,” she decided.
“In ten seconds?”
“Yes, in ten seconds,” she shot back.
“Hmph,” he breathed. “Okay.”
The clerk refunded the two piece and the slaw back into the master computer and rung up the new order, the whole time refusing to lock eyes with the five piece dark meat and mac/cheese lady. She, too, simply stared down at her wallet with her hands on her credit card, preparing to slide it out. There was no more talking, no more questions, and no more chicken friendship.
—
Twenty minutes later, said woman walked up to the garbage pails with her tray in hand — she had eaten two pieces of chicken and hadn’t even touched her mac and cheese. She shoved it in through the flipping THANK YOU door of the portable garbage kiosk and huffed as she walked out.
The clerk’s guilt had hit here right where it mattered — and it would be a day she would never forget.
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