Taco Bell Awards, Part Deux

Full of some brand new ones from tonight and some classics that I recently remembered, here is part two of the coveted Taco Bell Awards.


Winner of the award for the "Most Original Food Request"

Customer at the drive-thru: Do you have a Quesadilla with beans?

My manager Miguel and I had a good laugh and a shudder over this one. For those of you who don't know, a quesadilla is a tortilla folded over with cheese in the middle, and it's grilled. The idea of inserting beans in it is...well...rather nauseating.


Winner of the award for the "Most Mixed-Up Customer"

A lady in a van along with her family ordered a grande combo, a chalupa, and some other things at the drive-thru, and pulled up to the window. I asked her if she wanted any hot or mild sauce, and she said, "Can I get another chalupa?" So I put another chalupa on her order, collected the money, and handed her the bag of napkins that normally contains hot/mild sauce if the customer asks for any. But since she didn't ask for any when I asked her, I just gave her the bag without sauce.

She said, "Oh, can I have some sauce?"
I said, "What kind?"
She said, "Either, it doesn't matter...Hot...Cold..."

I looked over at her quizzically to see if she was joking, and she was turned to her family obviously too distracted by some conversation to realize what she had just said.


Winner of the award for the "Customer Who Could Benefit From a Dictionary"

Guy in Drive-Thru: I wanna Beef and Potato...no red...no white.

Me: You want a Beef and Potato BURRITO with no red SAUCE and no SOUR CREAM?!?!

Guy: Yah.

I really made a point of stressing those capitalized words to show him that it really wasn't that hard to say them, even though it would have been funny to read it back to him the way he said it and make the cooks decipher it for themselves.


Winners of the award for the "Crazy Old Ladies of Taco Bell"

Old Lady Story #1:

An old lady came to the walk-up, and I took her order. She said, "I want a Chupalupa." I looked at her, and asked, "You mean a chalupa?"

Meanwhile, I was fighting the urge to break out and sing the Oompa Loompa Song, only changing the words to Chupa Lupa.

Old Lady Story #2:

I was towards the back of the store prepping some pizzas, and one of the hispanic girls who works there and who doesn't speak English very well (that really narrows it down, I know) came up to me and asked me to take an order up front. I was puzzled as to why she wanted me to, but I figured she probably didn't understand what the customer wanted.

I walked over to the customer, who happened to be an old lady (go figure), and asked her what she wanted.

She said, "I'd like a Nachos Bell Grande with avocado."
I said, "You mean Guacamole...?"

Maybe she really wanted slices of avocado on her nachos...too bad this isn't the Ritz Carlton.


Winner of the award for the "Guy Who Takes Advertising Too Seriously"

Some guy drives up to the drive-thru in one of those big gas hogging Dodge "HEMI" (Hype Engineered by Money-Driven Industrialist) trucks which are advertised as being testosterone incarnate. The bigger and more powerful your engine is, the smaller your wallet becomes. Not so manly after all is it?

Anyway, he comes thru, and the automated message plays:

"Hi, can we make you a Chicken Quesadilla today?"

He replies, "Would you like to?"
I say, "Oh, I would love to."
He asks, "Is it free?" (Strapped for cash, eh? Wonder why...)
I reply, "It's almost free."
He asks, "How close to being free is it?"
I say, "$2.36"
He retorts, "That's not close to free."
I say, "It is compared to that truck you're driving."
He happily says, "It's a Hemi!"

I could almost see the joyful glee on his face after he told me what kind of engine was in his truck, as if I actually cared. After all, if he's going to pay the extra money for the advertised name, he might as well take every chance he gets to show off that he has a loud engine that runs on twenty dollar bills as opposed to gallons of gasoline.


Winner of the award for the "Most Clueless Customer...EVER"

This also happened earlier tonight, and it was the highlight of the night. This one will be hard to top in terms of utter ignorance on the part of the customer.

Customer at the drive-thru: I want 2 hamburger...low cal
Miguel: What was that?
Customer: I want 2 low calorie hamburgers
(At this point I just start laughing hysterically. The other employees were looking at me funny, and Miguel was trying to keep from laughing while talking with this guy)
Miguel: I'm sorry sir, but we only have tacos and burritos here.
Customer: Oh...(Drives away)


When the customer first said, "I want two hamburger..." I thought he was going to say something like I want two hamburger tacos or something, because that's happened before and it's a good way to clarify the type of meat that you want. But instead he kind of paused and said, "two hamburger...low cal."

First of all, why would you come to TACO bell for a HAMBURGER?
Second of all, why would you want a low calorie hamburger? What does that even mean? The bun and the lettuce only? Maybe he meant low carb and what he really wanted was one of those sissy burgers that have lettuce in place of buns. Why don't you just go eat a head of lettuce and gnaw on a cow you Atkins Diet Freaks.

Taco Bell Awards

I think it's about time that I start recognizing some of the customers who have made my day by coming to my work and making me laugh...though usually they don't know it because I usually am the one laughing at them when they can't see me. Sneaky sneaky!

Here we go, the first ever Taco Bell Awards:


Winner of the award for the "Question That Should Never Have Been Asked":

Taco Bell Recorded Message: Hi, can we make you a new 1/2 pound Beef and Potato Burrito today?

Guy at the Order Menu: Is that the burrito with the beef and potatoes in it?

Me: Yeahhhhhh...(trying to keep from laughing) (I was tempted to say "Yeah, hence the name "Beef and Potato Burrito", but I decided not to)

Guy at the Order Menu: (Completely oblivious to the fact that he just asked what was quite possibly the stupidest question ever) Ok, I'll take one of those.


Winner of the award for the "Person Who Can't Grasp A Simple Concept":

Customer: I'd like a number one.
(A number one has a burrito supreme, a taco supreme, and a large drink)
Me: Ok, one number one, what kind of drink?
Customer: I don't need a drink.
Me: Oooookk, so you just want a burrito supreme and a taco supreme?
Customer: No, I want a number one: The burrito supreme and the taco supreme, without a drink.
Me: Ok, one burrito supreme and one taco supreme, $3.00 at the first window, thank you.


Winner of the award for the "Person Who Thinks I Can Read His Mind":

Customer: (Orders some food...) ...and a large drink.
Me: Any kind in particular?
Thaddus: (my manager, who happened to be standing a couple feet away) *Starts laughing*
Customer: Umm, I'll take a Dr. Pepper.
Thaddus: *Continues to laugh even harder*
Me: *Trying to keep from bursting into laughter* Ok, anything else?
Customer: No, that's all
Thaddus: *Still laughing...he lowers his head to try and regain his composure, but it doesn't work*
Me: That'll be $$$ at the second window.
Thaddus: *Walks away into the office, still laughing*

That one makes me laugh just thinking about it because Thaddus doesn't laugh too easily, but my innocently sarcastic question really cracked him up.


Winners of the award for the "Customers Who Don't Believe In Making Good First Impressions":

Taco Bell Recorded Message: Hi, can we make you a new 1/2 pound Beef and Potato Burrito today?

Actual Customers Responses:

• A BEEF AND POTATO BURRITO???
• What did you say?
• A Beef and Potato Burrito? Hmm, is it any good? (My responses range from "It's breathtaking" to "Yes, it is" which usually elicits a response like "You're not lying to me are you?")
• A WHAT!?!??
• Hell no!
• No thanks, it's not good for you.

I wish I could remember some of the gems from some of my earlier years working at the bell. Those four are recent ones that have stuck out in my mind as being funny for me to witness first-hand. I'd write more, but my miniature rubber chicken that is perched atop one of my speakers is looking at me suspiciously. I think he's up to something fowl.

Career Shmeer

Well, after putting it off for as long as possible, I suppose it's time to give some thought as to what I want to do for a living. I've never really had a clear-cut vision as to what I want to do...I've had ideas but nothing has ever really struck me as being "The Thing" for me.

So I went to the career center at my college to do some "Career Assessments", which are basically tests which are supposed to give you some insight as to what you might like to do. Of course it didn't do diddly-squat for me. Though I did enjoy browsing through different jobs types...
 
For example, one of the tests was an online quiz that asked me some incredibly general questions like "Are you interested in activities that use tools, machines or objects, in working outside, or physical labor and using your hands?" (i.e. manual laborer, street monkey) and "Do you add, subtract, multiply and divide whole numbers, decimals and fractions with little difficulty, or can you work with abstract numbers and complex mathematical relationships?" (Mathematical Relationships?)
 
This last question threw me off because I didn't know math had any relationships. I thought math was just a lonely subject that always got picked on by the cooler subjects and sat off in the corner by itself during recess. Since when does math have any outside relationships anyway? It must be having a secret affair with an equally boring and nerdy subject like Astronomy (Ok class, which Power of the Cosmos made THAT star?) or Health Education (Basically, what you learn is don't eat anything that tastes good, exercise 15 hours a day, never drink alcohol, and you should live a long and healthy life of boredom.)
 
But this new revelation of mathematical relationships does clear up some things. This explains why math went from "2 + 2 = 7" to "Find the circumference of a hemorrhoidal circle using proofs to show the congruity of the imbedded right angle within the OH SHUT UP ALREADY!!"
 
Simple adding and subtracting math must have BRED with some corrupt and devilish subjects to produce the math of today, like Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus, and Mormonism. Basically, anything with the suffix "metry" is inherently evil and should be banned from teaching in public schools. Also, it would be advisable to make special alterations to certain subjects to have them banned from schools also, like Calcumetry, Frenchometry, Astronometry, and Barbiemetry (Cheerleading).
 
Anyway, back to the quiz I took. As I expected, freelance writer, journalist, novelist, editor, and careers like that were on there. But there were also much more strange and down-right weird career suggestions for me, like clown, perfumer, tattoo and body artist, ballet dancer, storm chaser, and so on. You know, the types of sucker jobs that people who don't do well in high school end up with, like joining the armed forces.
 
Also, something I noticed was that if you didn't answer any of the questions, and you went straight to the career selections, there were a bunch of jobs that basically required next to nothing skill/talent-wise. These included trash collector, farm laborer, aggressive inline skater, window washer, and quite possibly the worst job in the world: Medical Transcriptionist.
 
The description of a Medical Transcriblahblah is: "Listen to recordings made by medical doctors and put their words to paper. You'll translate medical terminology into everyday language." Then deeper in the description, it says: "Transcriptionist T.J. Currey says it's more demanding than people think...Some physicians insist on eating or shuffling papers while they are dictating. It makes it awfully hard to hear them sometimes."
 
Good night. As if trying to understand what customers are saying in the drive-thru wasn't hard enough. Plus you have to memorize all the cryptic medical terminology and deal with all the accents of the crazy foreign doctors with names like Arabuyyah Montousson III, Killum N. Run, and Miya Carisexpensive.

So I guess knowing what I don't want to do is a step in the right direction. Maybe if I eliminate every job I don't want to do, I'll be left with my one dream job. Or maybe my blog will become famous world-wide and I'll get paid for blogging and I'll be inducted into the Blogger Hall of Fame and and and...Or maybe I'll just have to find a real job. Shya, and monkeys could fly out of my butt.

Happy 7th of July!!!

Ok, so I'm three days late. So what.

I had an interesting 4th of July. My parents and I got in the family car around 6:15 pm to head down to Main St. to get something to eat, and ultimately watch the fireworks show at the beach which was scheduled to start at 9:00 pm. Of course, even with our exceptionally poor planning, there was absolutely nowhere to park within flying distance of the beach. My dad was driving, and my mom and I were his crack-parking-spot spotting team. One of the conversations that we had went something like this:

Dad: Ok, you guys have to look for parking spots because I have to concentrate on not crashing or running over anybody.

Mom: Sean? Are you looking?

Me: There's a spot. *Points*

Dad: You mean the place in front of the fire hydrant?

Me: Oh...

So several false alarms and half a tank of gas later, we finally found a spot, got out, and hailed a taxi to drive us to the airport so we could go to the beach.

Eventually, we made our way down to Main St. which happened to be more crowded than I've ever seen before. And strangely enough, we weren't the only people with the idea to eat dinner here at 7:00 pm. We were originally thinking of going to some sit-down restaurant, but after seeing the crowds, we decided fast-food might be better suited to this situation. So we walked down to Taco Bell (Oh boy, something different) and looked inside. At first glance, there didn't seem to be many people in there. So I started to get hopeful and began to think about what I wanted to get. As we walked to the end of the building, we realized once again that our idea was far from original. Sure, the inside of Taco Bell wasn't too populated. But the line that led outside of the store and halfway down Main St. was another story. Time for a change of plans...again.

Since we didn't want to risk being in that line and missing the fireworks show, we decided to try going to Subway. The good news was that there was no line. The bad news was that they closed at 6:00 pm, in respect for July 4th according to the note on the door. I think that was just their excuse for avoiding the mad dinner rush. So instead, we got in line for some hot dog place next door. 2 minutes later, we got impatient and decided to go back to Taco Bell and brave their unmoving line. 2 minutes later, we decided we weren't that hungry, and decided to go to Jamba Juice. I got a regular size Strawberries Wild, after about a 15 minute wait.

After we all got our Jamba Juice, we went down to the beach to wait about an hour and a half for the fireworks show. If I could have done three things differently, this is what I would have done:

1. I would have gone to the bathroom first.
2. I would have brought something more than a flannel shirt to wear over my t-shirt.
3. I wouldn't have gotten a drink made from ICE to have at the beach when the temperature and the wind were already freezing cold and the sun had almost set.

That's a killer combination. A big drink + no bathroom trips for over 3 hours + sub-arctic temperatures + inadequate clothing = 1 frozen bladder. And oh was I feeling it.

At a little after 9 pm, the fireworks started. They were launched off of a barge in the ocean. However, the people putting on the show had some tough competition. Some people about 50 feet to the left of us had a fireworks launcher and were shooting them off into the air during lulls in the show. They were getting more cheers and attention than the people actually doing the show. The real show was rather lackluster for the most part. It had its moments, but it also had a lot of downtime and it progressed really slowly. And it was only about 20 minutes long, if that.

The end of the show meant the beginning of two things. The search for the car, and the search for an unoccupied bathroom. Of course, my mind was more focused on the bladder, err, I mean the latter. So along I waddled, gritting my teeth as I tried to go as fast as I could without making any sudden moves. Of course all the public bathrooms had lines, along with the port-a-potties and the bathrooms in one of the parking structures. Eventually I realized that I was just going to have to make my own bathroom.

So as my parents and I were trying to find our car, I was on the lookout for a secluded spot to do number 1. Unfortunately, there were hundreds of other people trying to find their cars too, so there weren't many secluded spots anywhere. Just as I was about to give up hope, we came upon an alley that only had a few people in it down at the other end. So I frantically looked for a good spot, and came across a dark driveway with a fence blocking the view of the house, and it was far enough in to hide me from the people in the alley, unless they walked by. Perfect! So I started to run to where the fence was, and ended up tripping and nearly falling over a practically-invisible foot-tall metal fence enclosing a garden or something...it was too dark to tell.

Anyway, long story short, I peed like a horse, and several minutes later we were back to our search for the car. At one point as we were looking for it, I was trying to see a street sign, so I took a couple steps off of the sidewalk and stopped to look at the sign because I couldn't see it from the sidewalk. Evidently this reckless action of mine scared some lady riding her bike because she rang her wimpy little bike horn at me, even though I wasn't even in her way and I had clearly stopped before she was even within several feet of me. I even saw her before I entered the street, which is why I made sure to stop before I got in her way. But nooooo, according to my parents and some slack-jawed yokel at a stop sign in that intersection, I "almost got ran over!" Oh dear me, a girl riding her bike with the wimpy bell-like horn going 5 mph nearly flattened me. Except for the small and seemingly insignificant fact that I STOPPED BECAUSE I SAW HER COMING AND I WASN'T IN HER WAY! OH DEAR LORD, I ALMOST DIED!

Since we didn't get to eat at the Taco Bell on Main St., we decided to go to the one that I work at to get some late-night snacks. When we got there, it was a little past 10:00 pm. By the time we left, the drive-thru line was stretching out and around the parking lot.

The next day at work, I talked to the manager that was working there last night, Thaddus, and asked him what it was like. He said there were non-stop orders for several hours, and that they were mostly huge $10-20+ orders, including a whopper of a $30+ order, from drunk people who probably had little idea of what they were doing. He said they were all really loud and obnoxious and there were even drunk people walking up to the window asking for free tacos throughout the night.

Just when I thought I really missed out (Yeah right), that day at work, after Thaddus told me that, the same basic thing happened. There were non-stop orders from about 5 or 6 pm to 9 pm. I was supposed to get off at 9 pm. I ended up getting my break at 9:30 pm, and leaving at 10 pm. So yeah, I had an eventful July 4th and 5th. Whew, this was a long blog. If you read it all the way through, congratulations, you win a free taco! Go get drunk and walk up to your local Taco Bell drive-thru window and claim your prize.

Cash, Charge, or Cerveza?

20 minutes ago today marks the first day in my cashiering history at Taco Bell where we will be offering the convenience of ATM machines at both the drive-thru window and the dining room. 16 hours and 40 minutes from now, I will go to work and eventually ring up an order using an ATM card. Ideally, this will prevent future mishaps from occuring, like:

-The customer comes through the drive-thru, orders $20+ worth of food, comes up to the window, flashes a shiny rectangular card, and gets upset when I tell him/her (usually her, for some reason) that we only accept cash. Apparently, those customers in question, using their brilliant powers of deduction, assume that since a couple other fast food restaurants take ATM cards, that EVERY fast food restaurant must take ATM cards, and therefore we are apparently required by law to take ATM cards or else we are subject to such degrading insults as being "behind the times" and "stupid".

Of course, it's not the customer's fault that they ordered a bunch of food, and that at least half of it is ready by the time they get up to the window, and that they neglected to ask if we took ATM cards before placing their order, and that we end up having to waste a bunch of food because of their assumption. Of course not. Insert eyeball roll here.

Unfortunately, having ATM machines doesn't prevent every customer-related catastrophe from happening, such as:

-Customers forgetting their wallet and having to pull apart their car scrounging for change to buy an 85 cent bean burrito. Not to mention the fact that they are illegally driving without a license. But that's for the courts to decide. And even if they were arrested for driving without a license, they don't have much to worry about. The way our court system works, by the time they actually get sentenced to prison, several decades will have passed and they will probably be too old and senile to remember what they did wrong.

-Customers coming through the drive-thru with an open bottle of beer sitting between their legs (Yes this has happened, and yes this has happened more then once, and no they were not willing to share)

-Customers coming through the drive-thru wanting a refill on their drink that they didn't buy here. Some lady came through once with a type of 32 oz. cruiser cup that we don't sell and said that she had bought it here earlier and asked for a refill. I told her to hold on one second, and I went over to the front of the store, picked up the type of cruiser cup we sell, and went back to the window. I showed her the cup and said, "Here's the thing...we don't sell those kinds of cups here, we sell these kinds of cups, so we can't give you a refill through the drive thru. You'll have to come in if you want a refill." She gave me a blank stare and nervously looked over to the person sitting in the passenger seat, and managed to mumble OK before she sped off. She didn't come in to get a refill.

Anyway, I'm sure ATM machines will be a nice addition to the store. But I'm waiting for the day when we start selling beer at the drive-thru. Just imagine...our sales would soar! Of course, so would some of our drunken customers if they forget to put on their seatbelt.

Me: "Wow, 67.4 feet with a 35.2 foot skid distance. That's a new Taco Bell Alcohol Influenced Crash Record!!! I'm so proud! *sniff*"