Taco Bell & Rudeness, Part II

I forgot about it until tonight, but I wanted to post about it because it amuses me.

Recently I was at a Taco Bell, and I was standing in front of the counter to pick up my food after ordering. After picking up his own food, a "gentleman" was headed to a table somewhere, and where I happened to be standing was in his path. Rather than go around me using the more than adequate space I left to my side, he apparently decided he wanted to continue in a perfectly straight line, requiring me to move instead. And rather than saying something even remotely polite like "Excuse me", what he decided to say to me was "Move, dude." I'm not sure exactly why rudeness like that amuses me, but it made me laugh.

This is, of course, not the first time that someone has been rude to me at Taco Bell. Maybe he and that girl in Florida are related though, and being rude at Taco Bell runs in the family.

I saw some truck nuts today.

So I guess I can cross that off my bucket list.

In case you don't know (and please excuse my own limited knowledge on the subject), truck nuts are a rubber or plastic pair of testicles that really classy people usually hang under their pickup trucks.

The pair I saw were on a four wheeler being pulled by a white van at a gas station. A very sloppy-looking guy emerged from the van and filled the four wheeler with gasoline. We made eye contact, and I think he could tell I was judging him. I was.

What's strange to me is that the truck nuts were hanging from a bar on the back of the four wheeler. To extend the visual metaphor, I was trying to decide what part of the anatomy that bar would be. It seemed to me, from the position it was in that it was the tail bone. So it was like the four wheeler had a scrotum hanging from its tail bone. It was just a really odd placement, in my opinion, and it made me glad my scrotum isn't located there. I feel like the location of the actual scrotum on the human body isn't that great either (not that I can think of a better place for it), but it's still much better than having one on your tail bone. And that's a fact.

The New School Approach To Parenting

When Patrick and I saw The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo back in January, although the movie was disturbing, the most disturbing thing about the experience was that a couple in the row behind us had a baby and a toddler with them.

At first I thought maybe we had gone into the wrong theater. And then I thought maybe they did, but the movie was starting and they still weren't leaving. Then I kept looking back during the more disturbing scenes of the movie to see if the parents were at least covering the kids' eyes, but they weren't. The kids were watching intently. Sometimes the baby would cry. At one point I heard the toddler ask "What is she doing?", referring to something Lisbeth Salander was doing in one of the more disturbing scenes, and I didn't hear her parents answer her. It was pretty distracting watching a movie like that knowing that a baby and a toddler are ten feet away from you.

Patrick and I saw Prometheus today, and at least I didn't notice any babies or toddlers in the audience. But a little while before the movie started, we were in Best Buy, and while I was looking at movies, I heard a guy behind me saying "If you don't stop actin' a fool, I'm gonna slap you!" I figured he was joking around with one of his friends or something, but I turned around to find it was a man saying it to a little girl, and he was pointing his finger right in her face. Great parenting, buddy.

Taco Bell & Rudeness

I've been in Florida for a few days with my family, visiting relatives. Yesterday we went to a beach. On our way back to my aunt's house, where we were staying, my sister and I got a Taco Bell craving. When we got to the restaurant, we walked in, and there was this divider wall between the door we came in and the counter, and my sister seemed to not know which way to go around. I said we should go to the right since that's how you usually go up to the counter in fast food restaurants. On the way up to the counter, I realized we were walking on a freshly-mopped floor, which made me hesitate for a second, but since we were already several steps into it, we just kept going. There was a "wet floor" sign around the corner which we had no way of seeing from where we came in. I am a janitor, and have been for years. Mopping is a big part of my job, and it's not that big of a deal when someone walks across a floor you just mopped. Floors are meant to be walked on. That's their purpose. And obviously they get dirty. That's what mopping is for. And whenever you mop the floor, it's only a matter of time before someone walks across it again. It's just the nature of the job. If you are bothered by it, you'll go crazy.

So anyway, there was a young girl (maybe a teenager, maybe in her early 20's) behind the cash register, and as we got closer to the counter and I smiled at her, the thought in my head was, "She's rather cute." Then she spoke.

"Why didn't you just go the other way?" It was a very rude tone, and it really caught me off guard. I wasn't quite sure how to respond. The phrase that came out of my mouth was "I... don't... know." She repeated her question, possibly with an even ruder tone than she originally said it. My sister and I both explained to her that in most restaurants there is a queue with ropes or railings, and you are supposed to enter at the right and exit on the other side where you pick up your food. In fact, this might have been the only time I've been in a Taco Bell where it wasn't set up like that. First she acted like she had absolutely no idea what we were talking about, and eventually she said "Well it's not like that." My sister said "Well obviously we can see that now." That shut her up.

We attempted to pick out what we wanted by looking up at the menu, but we could feel her staring daggers at us. I couldn't concentrate on the menu for more than 2 seconds at a time without my line of sight dropping back down to the girl behind the register. I was planning on still ordering food there, as I am pretty easygoing when it comes to the rudeness of strangers, but my sister was offended enough that she didn't even want to eat there. We walked back out the same way we came in, walking over the slightly less freshly-mopped floor.