A Triple Dose of Taco Bell Stories

Hi, welcome to the Taco Bell Mountain Range!

A customer comes through the drive-thru, and orders:

• Bean Burrito, no sauce, w/ sour cream
• Nachos Bellgrande
• Soft Taco Supreme
• And a Medium Sierra Nevada

Now you too can experience the beautiful scenery and wildlife of the Sierra Nevadas in its new and more convenient liquid form. Mmmmm! I can really taste the Rattlesnake!

For Here or To Go?

Two days ago, at about 11:20 AM, a man came in and placed an order at the walk-up register. He was a little plump around the waist area, and if I were to be so bold as to take a guess, I would wager that this wasn't his first stop into a Taco Bell. He seemed to be a manual laborer (In other words, one step above monkeys on the proverbial evolutionary chain) by the looks of his hands and the condition of his clothes.

I was taking a few drive-thru orders when he was giving his order at walk-up, and when I walked over to where the food was being made to help out, I took a glance at the screen that displays all of the current orders yet to be made. This was his order:

• 14 Combination Burritos
• 14 Spicy Chicken Soft Tacos
• 14 Hard Tacos
• 14 Steak Soft Tacos
• 2 Bean Burrito Especiales, no onions, no red sauce, no jalapeño sauce, no cheese, with sour cream. So in other words, a burrito with beans and sour cream. Doesn't that sound good?

Subtotal: $66.81
Tax: $5.18
Total: $71.99

This order took about 12 minutes to make. While it was being made, the man got a plastic bag, went over to where the hot sauces are kept, and began stuffing the bag full of hot and fire sauce. When he finished, he must have had over 100 packages of sauce in there.

When the order was ready, it filled several bags, so I went back and got a couple of boxes to put it all in so it would be easier for him to carry. He then proceeded to throw the bags of food into the boxes without taking into consideration the ever-important Squish Factor. When he finished, he had one small bag remaining in his hands, containing the two burritos of nausea. He casually mentioned that the food in that bag was for his boss, and that he didn't care about the rest of the food's well-being. What a nice co-worker!

Shut the BEEP up!

At the second window, there is a timer on the wall that tells how long a car has been at the window. Thanks to Claudia, our regional manager, she recently had someone program it so whenever a car has been at the window for more than a minute, a loud, ear-piercing BEEP resonates throughout the store every four seconds. It can literally be heard from anywhere in the store, and if you are right next to it taking orders or collecting money, it is extremely loud and annoying and is probably causing me long term hearing damage and I wouldn't be surprised if it was slowly but surely disrupting my brain waves and causing me to slip into a state of dementia. Plus, it's really hard to take orders when this stupid thing is beeping every four seconds.

Customer: Hi, I'd like a bean burrito with BEEEEEEEEP ...decker taco with extra cheese, BEEEEEEEP ...onions, lettuce, and tomatoes, two soft BEEEEEEEEP ...esadilla, no sauce, and a medium BEEEEEEEEEP.

Me: Anything else?

Customer: BEEEEEEEEEEP.

And believe me, I've tried everything I can to stop the incessant beeping. I've tried hitting it, and I've even tried hitting it harder, but nothing seemed to work.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go buy a can of Sierra Nevada. Or maybe a bottle of Mountain Lion Droppings Dew.

Does Everyone Know What Time It Is?

IT'S SCHOOL TIME!!! That's right, I've been back in school now for 2 weeks, and already I've found 4 things that detract from my learning experience...

1. Seeing as how it is summer, or fall, or fell, or whatever season we're in right now, you would think that OCC would plan ahead and actually have working air conditioning units in all of their poorly ventilated classrooms. Or maybe a fan to circulate the stuffy, musty, suffocating, men's locker room type air. If nothing else, my Political Science teacher could open up one of the two doors in the classroom. But instead, she chooses to keep the doors shut in fear of letting some air in that could potentially be less than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. That's fine though. Sweat baths can be pretty invigorating when you don't know if you're going to make it out of the class before bursting into flames.

2. Also in my Political Science class, possibly due to the extreme heat, there is a clock made of pure evil which I suspect hails from deep within the depths of hell. Class starts at 12:45, but every day I enter the class, the clock always reads 12:10. So the class begins, and every day, at exactly 12:59, Mephistopheles himself enters the clock and makes it click the minutes by, one by one, until it reads the correct time. Cha-CHUNK, Cha-CHUNK, Cha-CHUNK, Cha-CHUNK, Cha-CHUNK, 49 times, until it reaches 12:59. And of course, every time it happens, the whole class has to stop and stare at the clock in amazement, as if they've never seen a demon-possessed clock before.

Then the clock works perfectly fine again until 1:10, at which point it stops until 1:59, when the next demon on the 1 o' clock shift comes on duty. Cha-CHUNK, Cha-CHUNK, Cha-CHUNK, 49 more times. And it does this 3 times throughout the 3 hour class, waking the entire class up from their note-taking induced sleep each time.

3. Yet again, in my Political Science class, we have these extremely small desks to sit in. The actual desk is almost big enough to fit one of my forearms on when it's naptime. And today, I was opening my folder to get out one of my previous pages of notes, and when I opened it on my desk, the left side of it slid off the desk, causing all of my papers that weren't attached to the 3-ring binder to crash on the ground. "Oh, this is really convenient," I was thinking. I can't sleep on the desk, I can't open my folder on the desk, what's the point of having a desk if you can't do such basic classroom tasks with it?

4. Leaving my Political Science classroom, we head over to my Creative Writing classroom. This room is properly ventilated, the AC works, the desks are actually big enough to fit a 3-ring binder, and the clock functions normally. You must be thinking, "Well, this class sounds perfect!!"

WRONG!

Sure, the classROOM is adequate, but the TEACHER of the class is, well, a bit kooky. First of all, let me preface this by saying that I have done some research about her by googling her name online. I found out that she is a "Friend of Barbara Boxer". That alone should give you sufficient reason to question her sanity. On top of that, she has told the class that she believes that all drugs should be legalized, BUT with a label on them detailing all the possible known consequences involved with taking the drugs, as if you can put a label on a joint of pot or a syringe of heroin. She is also an ex-hippie (go figure), is pro-choice (or anti-life, whichever you prefer), is an environmental freak, and has, quite possibly, THE ABSOLUTE MOST ANNOYING LAUGH IN THE WORLD.

The very first class, she starts talking, explaining the class, etc... Eventually, she opens her mouth, and out comes this fiendish, out-of-this-world, pee-your-pants-with-fear laugh that I really cannot do justice by just writing about it. It is so shrill and high-pitched and loud that it is almost scary sometimes. It really has to be heard to understand the significance of it.

There are basically two different versions of her laugh:

1. The long, drawn-out laugh: ahh HAA HA HUH HA HAA haha

2. The short, rapid-fire laugh: AH HAHAHAHA!

And then, when she laughs, her whole body laughs. Her body kind of shimmies all over the place, as if she is going into convulsions. Her head wobbles back and forth, her hair shakes around, her arms go flailing around in the air, and she laughs at anything and everything. She'll be laughing, and the entire class will be stone-faced, looking around at each other nervously, wondering if she is going to morph into some evil space alien and eat them all.

So that's what I've had to put up with so far this semester. I'm just glad my troubles are classroom-based, and not homework-based or read-this-500-page-book-by-Thursday-based like some college students probably experience. Personally, I wouldn't know. My biggest concern is remembering to wear my running shoes to my Creative Writing class in case my teacher manifests into her true form during one of the classes.