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*"

Therapy Anyone?

Two days ago, at work, I'm doing the drive-thru as usual. Up comes a van driven by a mom and occupied by lots of hungry pre-teen boys. At the order box, the mom orders a grande combo (10 items, a combination of soft tacos, hard tacos, and bean burritos), a couple tostadas, and some other stuff. It came out to just under $20.

When she gets up to the window, I ask her if she wants any sauce, and she says she wants a lot of mild sauce. Well, if you read my Taco Bell essay already, you know how I feel about that. But anyway, I gave her like a dozen mild sauces hoping she would be content with it, and of course, she drops the ever-popular line, "Can I have some more sauce?"

I suppose there wasn't anything wrong with it in this case since there was a lot of food ordered. What annoys me is when people come through, order something like 2 tacos, and ask for A TON OF SAUCE!!!!!!!! I DRINK THE STUFF, NO SERIOUSLY "BRO", I PUT IT IN A FRICKIN GLASS AND CHUG IT! SOMETIMES I MAKE SOUP. IT'S REALLY QUITE DELICIOUS. I DON'T ACTUALLY EAT THE TACOS. THEY ARE FOR MY DOG.

I hate it when most people call me bro. Because the majority of the time, they are the "meathead" type of people who would have flunked out of high school if they hadn't cheated on all their homework and tests, who wear their hat sideways because they think it looks cool to have only one sunburned ear, who talk really slowly and with an attitude while slurring half of their words, and who do so many drugs that they could actually substitute their brain for scrambled eggs as a breakfast meal without any noticeable change. And I would rather jump into a swimming pool filled with man-eating monkeys, flesh-eating butterflies, and little hamsters brandishing toothpicks than be related to someone like that.

One time, somebody come through the drive-thru and ordered a taco with no lettuce, and when they got up to the window, I asked if they wanted any sauce, and they said, "No thanks, it's for my dog. And can you make sure they put no lettuce on there? He doesn't like lettuce." Umm, I guess he doesn't like a little something we call DOG FOOD either??!?!

Anyway, to make a long story even longer, do you remember that lady in the van who was asking for the mild sauce? Me neither.

Oh wait, yeah, she said, "Can I get some more mild sauce?" So I was like sure, why not, I don't have any opinions on that subject.

Then the clincher. As her defense for asking for more sauce, she said, "I've got a lot of boys in the car, and they like a lot of sauce...but they're women boys, so they like mild sauce.

...

Do you ever wonder how young pre-teen boys can seem so promising, so full of potential, only to grow up and turn into flaming homosexuals? Well, there's your answer.

I can see the future psychiatrist visits now:

Psychiatrist: Now Timmy, can you try and pinpoint any specific moments in your life where you may have acquired your, shall we say, flamboyant behavior?

Timmy (in a rapid, high-pitched, blonde ditz type voice): Well, my mom was like always getting on my case about using mild sauce like whenever we went to Taco Bell, and like she would say like why don't you like hot sauce Timmy and I would be like oh my god mom I've told you like a million times it burns my tongue and she would say like you're going to turn into a women if you keep eating that mild sauce Timmy and I was like WHATEVER mom.

Psychiatrist: Hmmm, this could account for a lot of things, including why you are wearing pantyhose and a pink skirt.

Timmy: Do you like my skirt? SHUT UP!! I love it too! You wanna go to the movies?

Psychiatrist: Well, technically I'm not supposed to go to any social events with patients. I could be fired and sentenced to practice psychiatry for life in Psychiatrist Prison.

Timmy: Psychiatrist Prison? What's that?

Psychiatrist: The Osbourne's house.


The best part of the whole ordeal aside from the mom's comment was what happened after the mom said that. The boy sitting in the front seat looked over at me and his mouth opened in shock at what his mom said and he had a puzzled expression of fear and embarrassment on his face that was priceless. I could only imagine what was going on inside of that boy's head. It was probably something along the lines of, "Women boy am I? I'll show you mom! As soon as I get home, I'm going to shave my peach fuzz, put on some cologne, and change my name to Chuck Diesel, manliest man ever to...ahh screw it. I wonder if any of mom's pantyhose fits me?"

Married with...Turtles?

Well, I went to visit my grandchildren today.

Yes, you read that right. Grandchildren. I have grandchildren.

Well, not necessarily children by today's definition. More like grandtortoises. I have a pet male Russian Tortoise, Floyd, and we recently put him out to stud with a female Russian Tortoise who is owned by one of the families at our church, the Dullaarts. We let Floyd stay over at their house for about a week hoping that it would give him enough time to do his duty.

The only conceivable problem with this is that the female Russian Tortoise, Ethyl, is about twice as big and twice as fast as Floyd. So you can imagine the frustration this caused Floyd, because Ethyl wasn't too keen on being "studded". Occasionally, Mrs. Dullaart would find Floyd upside down in the yard, presumably flipped over by Ethyl since her shell is taller than his and it makes it difficult for Floyd to "assume the position".

But I guess Floyd was successful at one point or another, because shortly after his visit, Ethyl started laying eggs. And just a couple of days ago, 2 of the eggs hatched. So my parents and I went over to go see them.

Note: We were offered to take one of the babies, but my mom is whole-heartedly against it because she says one tortoise is hard enough to take care of. And she's probably right, but it's too bad, because they are really cool. They are maybe 2 inches in diameter, with little tiny heads, little tiny feet, a little tiny tail, and if they are anything like Floyd, they also will have gargantuan elephant-like turds. We have to be careful walking around the house because we let Floyd roam around wherever he pleases, and he is far from being potty-trained. It's very dangerous to walk around the house without wearing some heavy-duty boots and long pants because if you step in one of Floyd's immense gorilla-sized turds or one of his lakes of pee, you'll be knee-deep in despair.

It was interesting to see the differences in the two turtles. One was considerably more passive and didn't care to move around or explore too much, and the other was a miniature replica of Floyd...running around, exploring, digging, climbing, and being aggressive. And I was holding him, or trying to at least. He would try to crawl from my hand onto my arm, or he would go to the edge of my hand and look around nervously as if to say, "I don't want to go down there..." Then when I set him down on the sofa, he immediately made a beeline for the back of the sofa where the pillows were, and started to climb up them. So here is this tiny tortoise climbing a pillow 50 times larger than him, and he ends up getting about halfway up the pillow before it starts to get too steep to climb, so being the brilliant problem-solver that he is, he burrows into where the two pillows meet and goes to sleep.

Ah, how I envy Russian Tortoises sometimes. Not a care in the world. They can just eat and sleep all day if they want. Now I know when my parents read this they'll be thinking, "How is that any different than what you do everyday?" And they may have a point! But still, being a turtle would be really cool.

But no matter how hard I try, I'll never be as good at being as lazy as Floyd is. Sometimes just looking at him makes me sleepy...all sprawled out, basking in the sun while sitting on the porch in our back yard. And when he yawns (yes, turtles yawn) he looks a lot like Godzilla doing his patented roar.

So hopefully all the other eggs will hatch successfully, as I think there are 8-9 in all. That way, there will be a bunch of little Floyd's running around, climbing things, and making out-of-proportion messes in the worst places. But Floyd is a very unique turtle, and he's given me a lot of great memories, and he fits in just fine with our family. Now if he would just learn to do his business on the ground outside like everybody else, it would be perfect.

Common Sense? What's That?

2 things struck me as humorous at work today.

The first happened when some "Macho Man" with his big Ford F-350 Diesel Truck which happened to be raised up by about 20 feet or so and which I'm sure costs about $400 to refuel and which probably gets about 10 gallons to the mile pulled up to the order box. But it's all worth it because it makes him look cool, right? Even though he probably has to take turns at 1 MPH or less to avoid tipping over and he has to constantly swerve to avoid hitting birds and he needs binoculars just to see down to the street below him and he has to leave his window closed to keep the clouds out.

Anyway, he pulls up to the order box with his big diesel engine roaring to the point where I can barely hear what he is saying. Fortunately, I wasn't taking the order, my manager Miguel was. So throughout the conversation, this meathead is trying to give his order, and whenever Miguel tried to read back the order or ask him if he heard him correctly or whatever, the guy kept saying things like, "What?" "I can't hear you" "I can barely hear you" "Huh?". Finally, he must have put two and two together, because he turned off his engine. Eventually, things were straightened out, and he came up to the window.

When he got to the window, of course his engine is back on, and does he turn it off? Of course not. My favorite part of this whole story was:

As soon as he gets to the window, he looks at me and yells over his engine, "I could barely hear you!" And I smirk, and yell back, "I wonder why?" and point at his engine. It was as if he thought that it was our fault that he couldn't hear what we were saying to him. Even after he left, I still don't think he realized that it was his engine that was making it hard to hear anything. Maybe I shouldn't have been so subtle. Maybe I should have said, "I realize that the fumes coming out of your diesel engine may be giving you permanent brain damage, but I think this concept is simple enough for even you to understand: Your engine is loud. Therefore neither you nor I can hear very well. Solution: Turn the damn thing off!"


This next one just cracks me up. A lady and some other people came up to the order box around 7 pm or so. Now, I don't know who all was in the car because...

They came up to the order box and the driver said the following to the passenger(s):

"What do you want? You don't want anything? Me neither."

And they backed out of the drive thru.

...

Do people not use their brains anymore or what? Gee, lets go to Taco Bell, though I don't know why since I'm not hungry and neither is anyone else in the car, but that's OK, at least it's something to do. I mean how pathetic is that? Are people so lazy today that they see a fast food restaurant during the dinner hours and they immediately start to pull into it without thinking or even asking the other people in the car if they want anything? It's called common sense, and it seems that it's in short supply nowadays. If you are not hungry, and neither is anyone else in your car, then why would you go somewhere that serves food?!?

Maybe someday I'll be cool enough to drive a truck that has its own time zone or go to fast food restaurants and not order anything. Hey, maybe I should write a dieting book. It'll be entitled, "How to Back Your Way Out of a Meal"

And The Score Is...

Me: 2
Scammers: 0

It happened again. For the second time in less than two months, some hopeless low-lifes tried to scam me out of some money while working at Taco Bell. Around 7:30 pm or so tonight, a few black ladies ordered one Meximelt, and pulled up to my window to pay. The driver handed me a $20. Immediately I think, "Now, you're telling me that between you 3 ladies, the smallest bill you have is a $20?" So I was mildly suspicious, but people have paid for smaller priced items with larger bills before with no problems, so I didn't think too much of it. In fact, I think the record for me so far is someone once ordered around $2-3 of food, and paid with a $100 bill.

Anyway, I took the $20 and hit the Amount Tender button to open my drawer. The Meximelt cost $1.17, so I owed her $18.83. But there was one problem. It was particularly busy tonight, and I was running out of $1 bills. At the time, I only had two $1 bills. So I took a $10, a $5, and the two $1's out, trying to decide if I wanted to ask her if she would mind getting a dollar in quarters back or if I should make her wait and get some $1's from my manager.

But I wasn't able to think for very long, because the driver said, "Here honey, here's 20 cents." So now I owed her $19.03, which meant I now needed two dollars more than what I had. But before I am able to do anything, the driver turns to me again and says, "Hey honey, I got a dollar bill here instead." So I immediately think, "YES! You just rescued me from my dilemma!" So I take the dollar, put the $10, $5, and the two $1's that I had previously taken out back into the drawer, and pondered for a second.

To make sure I gave her back the right amount of money, I had to remember now what she had given me. First she gave me the $20, then the 20 cents, then the $1. So all I really owed her was the $20 bill that she gave me originally, plus the 3 cents change, since the Meximelt cost $1.17. So I figured that out, and then this is the important part. I only had one $20 bill in my drawer. The one that she gave me. So I take that $20 bill out, plus 3 cents, and give it to her. I then turn to my drawer for just a couple seconds to tuck all the bills back in. In that time, she and her friends apparently did the ol' switcheroo, because she then said, "Hey honey, you only gave me back a $1 bill."





DING DING DING!!! SCAM DETECTOR ALERT!! SOUND THE ALARM!!!

That was when my brain's Scam Alert and Prevention alarm (or my SAP alarm...used for recognizing saps who try to scam me) activated. At that exact moment, I realized what I was dealing with, and I wasn't about to let them get away with it.

I said, "No, I gave you back a $20."
She said, "No, you gave me a $1."

I then proceeded to take out my drawer and show her where I always put my $20's and to have her see that there was nothing there. I said, "Look, this is where I put my $20 bills. There's nothing there because I gave you back a $20."

She then hesitated for a minute, and said, "Let me talk with your manager." So I said alright, I closed my drawer, walked over to my manager, Thaddus, and laughingly said, "She just tried to scam me," and I told him what happened. So we walked over to the window, only to see that they had driven away. Turns out, after I left to go talk to Thaddus, they had driven up to the 2nd window, taken their Meximelt that they had paid for, and left, because they knew that I was aware of what they were trying to pull and they didn't really want any part of Thaddus...they just used it as an excuse to hightail it out of there.

If I had fallen for the scam, they would have ended up getting $20 out of it. But since I didn't, they ended up paying $1.17 and getting a Meximelt. Fortunately for me, I almost always drop my $20's in a little drop box we have below the register after every order to prevent theft and scams like this from happening. Because I had dropped all of my previous $20's, the only $20 in my drawer was the one that the lady gave me, so I had proof that I had given her back a $20 and not a $1 bill. And when I showed her my empty $20 slot, she knew that I was on to her scheme and she basically gave up the fight and ran with her tail between her legs.

So I'm feelin' great right now knowing that I am undefeated as a cashier against scammers, with a spotless record of 2-0. Bring on the next challenger please, honey.

Babies: They're Smarter Than You Look

Tonight, as I was coming home from church, I had a revelation. Babies are much smarter than we take them to be. I came across this discovery after much scientific and highly complicated research, namely, watching and playing with a baby for about 10 minutes.

This super-baby, as some may call him, is Aaron and Sara's (fellow church-goers and bloggers) baby, Basil. Innocent as he may look, inside his head is a brain that is constantly coming up with new ideas and ways to make himself happy. The number one way he does that is by laughing and smiling. But, he cannot just laugh and smile for no reason at all! He must devise a sinister and devious method of having other people make him laugh.

How does he do this you ask? Simple. He instigates "silly" and "childish" behavior that we "grown-ups" consider "funny" and "cute", and we think it is so humorous that we imitate him...in essence we are tossing dignity aside and acting like babies. And babies think that this is simply hilarious, so they will go out of their way to do silly things which older kids and adults will imitate and thereby make themselves look like fools...and babies love it!

Some of the techniques that Basil used were:

1. Putting his finger/hand in his mouth and moving it up and down, making it so that all of the noise that came out of his mouth sounded like "Aabaabaabaabaagaabaagaabaagaa"

You can just imagine how silly it looks for an adult to try and imitate this. A fellow churchgoer, Yumi, fell for this trick. She saw Basil do this, and she tried it herself...And I just know that Basil would be laughing his head off if he could, while thinking to himself, "Do you know how silly you look?!? Ahahahahaha!!!"

2. Flailing his arms in a maniacal fashion.

This is a rather nasty technique that, when pulled off correctly, makes the victim look like a retard. Unfortunately for me, Basil got me good. He started waving his arms around, and I did the same thing, and I'm sure I looked strikingly like a constipated seagull with a wing infection. I bet Basil will be remembering that one for a while...laughing at me on the inside everytime he sees me. "Hahahaha!!! It's the retarded seagull boy!"

3. Having a blank stare on his face, effectively luring the victim into striking range, and then delivering the finishing blow.

Alas, I fell for this one too. Sara was holding Basil in her arms, and Basil was staring at me with a blank expression on his face. Being a guy, I naturally assumed he was challenging me to a staring contest. I accepted, and tried to intimidate him by moving closer to him to try and make him blink. Being the ingenious mastermind that he is, Basil kept his expressionless face on until I was close enough, at which time, with lightning quick speed, he swung his arm up and whacked me right in the nose. I recoiled backwards, and he flashed me a mischievious smile as if to say, "Gotcha!"


So the next time a baby makes a funny face, or makes a funny noise, or tries to play possum, don't be caught off guard! It's all an elaborate scheme to make you, the grown-up, look silly. They are pleasure seekers, and they get pleasure from making you do ridiculously stupid things. Ingenious, isn't it? Well, I'm done for now. I need to get this wing infection looked at.

Hai, Wellcum Too Tako Bel.

As usual, I'm taking drive thru orders at the window earlier tonight, and some lady comes up to the order box, and says:

"I want 2 bean burritos...bean..." (She really accentuated the word "bean" on the second time)

She then proceeds to spell it out for me...to make sure I don't think she is saying a beef burrito, because bean and beef sound remarkably the same over the intercom...

So here's the whole conversation now that you know what is going on:

"I want 2 bean burritos...bean, B...E...N. Bean burritos. 1 with extra onions."

I wasn't aware that we served "Ben" burritos, but I guess spelling is hard for some people. Especially with the extremely complicated vocabulary which is commonly associated with placing an order at a fast food restaurant. So I cut her some slack. And I made sure she got her two beef burritos, one with no onions.

The Hole Tooth and Nothing But The Tooth

Well, yesterday (Tuesday) I had 3 wisdom teeth extracted for fun. For some reason, I only have 3 wisdom teeth, and not 4. I guess that explained why I be as dum as I be. Now I have 3 gaping holes in my mouth that will stop at nothing to cause me pain and agony. I think the surgeon secretly implanted a special device in my mouth so that my mischievious teeth-less holes can turn on the pain sensors of my brain whenever they want. Anyway, let me tell you about the experience.

My mom and I got to the office around 9 AM so that we would have ample time to fill out the necessary forms and have them ready by 9:30 AM, which was when I was supposed to be there for my consultation and surgery shortly thereafter. It's a good thing we planned ahead and got there early because if we hadn't, we wouldn't have been able to wait around for another 2 hours for the doctor to be ready for me. Whew, lucky us.

Anyway, as I was filling out one of the forms, there was a question about my, and I quote, "Heath history". As I sat there, I wondered if I really wanted to voluntarily put myself under the knife of a doctor who couldn't even spell health correctly. "Oh sure, I'm probably in good hands," I told myself. "Just because he can't spell health doesn't mean he isn't a good docto...AHHHHHHHHH!!!" (runs screaming out of the office)

No, actually I put that little spelling error aside and allowed them to take me in for some X-rays. They put me next to a X-ray machine that looked like something out of Star Trek. I had to bite on some white thing sticking out of this futuristic-looking machine, and watched as the lady administering the X-rays closed all the adjacent doors, windows, shutters, and proceeded to put on a full suit of body armor made entirely out of lead. That made me feel really comfortable, and quite safe knowing I was standing there in what might as well have been my underwear and a bow tie, while everyone else is huddled up behind a bulletproof shelter several hundred feet away, cowering in fear.

As I watched the person press a complicated combination of buttons, these 2 clamps came out of the machine and attached to my head, which I assume were there to keep me from squirming away while the X-rays melted my brain into a soft gelatinous state. Then the machine started, and this telescopic panel started circling around me, buzzing threateningly...and I could have sworn I heard someone inside of it slowly chanting, "All your base are belong to us." After my brain was assimilated, the machine stopped, and the lady came out, took off her body armor, and cautiously came over and took me back to my seat in the waiting room to wait for my consultation.

Finally, my mom and I got to go to a room and see the doctor as he basically told me what he was going to do. He explained it in very simple terms as to not frighten me. He said that it was a very simple procedure, and there was no reason to worry. He then gave me another form to read and sign. It listed all of the things that could possibly go wrong, like swelling, having chips of teeth being left in my mouth, potentially dying by throwing up in my sleep, and loss of scalp and penis. So I signed it, and a little bit later, I was off to the surgery room.

I laid down in this big chair facing a table with a bunch of shiny objects on it covered by a cloth so I couldn't clearly see the instruments of destruction. To my right was an IV pump, and to my left was a blood pressure and pulse machine. The nurse hooked me up to the BP/P machine, and it registered me as having normal blood pressure and pulse. So I sat there for 10-15 minutes, and every 3-4 minutes, the blood pressure cuff did its thing and tightened up to update my BP. Also, I had a little clamp on my index finger that constantly registered my pulse. It was normal for the most part, except when it would get crazy and say my pulse was upwards of 200 beats per minute, when in reality it was beating the same as it was when it registered at 60-70 beats per minute. Also, the "Pulseox" machine (the thing that measures the oxygen in your blood and goes beep...beep...beep and has the constantly varying lines that spike up and down) would sometimes go crazy and have a bunch of really long and erratic lines that were really close together. However, the weird part was when they started disgrouping and reforming as skull and crossbones and my pulse registered as "666". Well, maybe that's the drugs talking.

Finally, the doctor comes in and starts an IV in my right arm. A few seconds later, I feel some sort of liquid splash on my arm, and I'm thinking, "Oh great, they struck an artery, now I've got a geyser for an arm." But I guess it wasn't anything serious because a moment later the doctor says, "OK, here comes the good stuff...you should start feeling a little dizzy and disoriented." So I'm sitting there waiting for it to kick in, and I'm not really feeling anything. I think to myself, "I'm not feeling dizzy or disoriented, I feel just fin..."

Next thing I know, I plop down into a comfy chair outside of the surgery room feeling really groovy. I had wicked double vision, my head was spinning, and I didn't have a care in the world. A nurse passed by me and asked how I was doing, and I gave a drugged out smile and tried to figure out which of the two twin nurses in front of me said that. Finally, my mom comes over and tried to talk to me while I'm still relishing the opportunity to be pain-free and light-headed. I eventually get around to feeling my mouth, and I discover what feels like a deformed piece of gauze sticking out of my mouth. I ask my mom, "Wot iz tis?" and she says, "That's your lip." Then I realize my bottom lip is completely numb, along with my chin, which feels like a puffy sponge. My bottom lip felt like it looked like Mick Jagger's, and my chin stuck out so much it rivaled Jay Leno.

So my mom drives me home, and I have fun watching double the amount of cars drive around us and feeling like my head is about to float away. When we get home, my mom gives me some yogurt to eat, and with my swollen lip and chin, it's a real struggle. I felt like a retard trying to aim the spoon into my mouth without spilling it all over my swollen lip. I'm sure it looked real comical though.

But then the fun ends. Maybe 4 hours later, the numbness wears off, and the pain sets in. I can't even take a sip of water or a tiny spoonful of anything without having excruciating pain expel from the gaping holes in my mouth. So I basically slept for a while, and eventually the pain lessened to the point where I was able to eat and drink a little, though it still hurt a lot, and I couldn't chew without setting off the pain parade. So that was no fun.

And here I am now, 5 PM Wednesday evening. I can eat and drink a little better, though I still can't chew or open my mouth much without it hurting, and talking isn't painless yet either. So all in all, I'm sure the doctor did a great job, but the recovery is the worst part. Hopefully I'll get better soon.

Note: Not everything in this tale was true, and I had to make up a few things here and there, because frankly, the tooth hurts.

Top Six Reasons Why It's Great To Be Out Of School

Finals are over, I sold my books back (for considerably less than what I paid for them mind you), and I'm ready to sit back and relax and enjoy summer. So to start it off, here are my top six reasons why it's great to be out of school for the summer:


6. No more pointless homework about what existential traits some character I don't want to read about shows in some story that doesn't make any sense to me.

5. No more waking up and hurrying to get to class on time only to discover that class has been cancelled and I have to wait for what seems like a few weeks for my next class to begin.

4. No more setting my alarm clock for 8:30 AM and pushing the snooze button 23 times, and then realizing that my class started 15 minutes ago yesterday, and rushing out the door in a half-awake stupor hoping that I remembered to put my pants on.

3. No more driving to and from school, because thanks to the rising cost of gas, that costs me roughly $573.24, each day.

2. No more having to pick off advertisements from my car window for some sleazy club run by people who obviously think that college is actually a place where young adults come to learn how to chug a keg.

1. No more lectures about something. I forget what. I think I fell asleep.

The Prideful Lion and The Poo-Flinging Monkey

This little story made me realize how much I like to write. I wrote this back in my Junior year in high school as an assignment where I had to make up a fable and pick at least 1 of the 7 deadly sins (Pride, Greed, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth) and apply it to a character in the fable. At the end, I had to include a moral to the story summing everything up in a nice little package.

When I finished writing it, I gave it to my parents to read...I'd never seen my Dad or my Mom laugh so hard before. I shared it with a couple friends at school...they thought it was hilarious too. When my teacher read it...she was totally grossed out. I loved the comments she wrote on my paper...

Such as:
What?!
What?!
Gross!
This is really nasty!
...and at the top: Bizarre Story! 20/20.

So I knew I had found something I liked to do. Writing. Heck, how else can I make someone laugh and vomit at the same time? When you find something good, you gotta run with it. So here it is, my first leap into the realm of creative writing, written nearly four years ago.


The Prideful Lion and The Poo-Flinging Monkey

Once upon a time, there was a prideful lion who was the king of the jungle. He would walk around knowing that there was no animal in his jungle that could outrun him. One day, he met a monkey sitting in a tree. Now this monkey was special because he was the king of the monkey farm. More importantly though, he was a very wrathful monkey. When the wrathful monkey laid eyes upon the lion, he immediately reached into his anus and began flinging poo at the lion. Fortunately, the lion was the fastest animal in the jungle, and he easily dodged the poo that was flung by the monkey. Distraught at his failure, the monkey cursed violently because he had always hit his target in the past.

The monkey thought the situation over and decided that he needed to practice his poo-flinging skills. So he swung over to the home of the jungle's only three-toed sloth. It took the sloth four days to get the poo out of his fur after the monkey's visit. Feeling much more confident, the monkey climbed up a tree and feasted on a patch of bananas. After twenty minutes, the monkey had eaten the entire patch of bananas, and he was quite full. The monkey stumbled back over to his tree to sleep it off. When he awoke, he felt quite refreshed and was ready to take on the lion.

Meanwhile, the lion was feeling very good after his evasion of the monkey and his fragrant poo. However, he was feeling a little bit hungry. So he went and found a cheerful family of squirrels, three in all, and brutally mauled and ate them. Pleased with his actions, he made his way back to his cave only to find the monkey waiting for him. They exchanged threatening glances for a few seconds, then suddenly, the monkey reached back, waited, waited, pushed, grunted, pushed, waited, pushed, grunted, and waited, but nothing came out! The lion, watching this, was becoming amused by watching this whole ordeal. He began to walk over to the monkey while licking his chops in anticipation. The monkey was still trying to get something to happen when he remembered that he had eaten all those bananas earlier. He finally realized his situation...he was constipated!

When he looked up and saw the lion approaching, he immediately ran away and up the nearest tree before the lion could catch him. He was halfway up the tree when he realized his mistake in running up the tree...he was trapped! The lion, growing more pleased by the moment, came up to the base of the tree, and growled at the monkey. The monkey, about to give up all hope, suddenly got an idea. He reached into his pocket and grabbed a bottle of ex-lax. He took two pills and waited. After thirty minutes had passed, the monkey reached into his rectal cavity and pushed.

SSSSSSPPPPPPPPLLLLLLLAAAAAAATTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!! The ex-lax worked, but too well. He pooped out enough poo to choke three horses. The monkey now had a handful of poo, and then some. The lion, seeing this new development, started to run away. He had no fear of being hit because he was the fastest animal in the jungle. The monkey threw the poo that was in his hand, scooped up the poo that was lying on the tree and threw it, and picked up some residual poo that was left on the branches and leaves and threw that. Then the monkey jumped down from the tree and ran off in the direction that the lion had run.

He eventually found him, lying on the ground, covered from head to toe in the monkey's poo. The monkey looked at the lion and laughed, saying, "Look who's the prideful one now!" As the monkey was laughing, the lion looked at himself and struggled to get up under the massive weight of the monkey's poo. When he finally made it to his feet, he glared at the still-laughing monkey, and gobbled him up in one swift bite.

THE END.

...or is it???


The Moral of this story is if you are prideful, you will either get poo flung at you, or you will be eaten by a lion. Also, if the monkey had not been wrathful by flinging poo in the first place, the whole situation would never have happened. So in other words, do not be wrathful and do not fling your poo at animals.

You Know You're a Pathetic Loser When...

...You try to scam a Taco Bell Cashier out of $12.

It's about 7 pm, Thursday night, and I'm working the drive-thru window at my Taco Bell. It's fairly busy, several cars already in the lane, and more coming. I have a customer at my window paying for his order, and at the same time, a man in a van pulls up to the order menu, places his order, rolls up his window, and pulls forward so that he is past the speaker and right behind the car at the window that I am giving the change to. He does this before I have a chance to repeat back his order (though I heard his order perfectly clear...1 Fiesta taco salad combo, with Pepsi, and 1 bean burrito kids meal, no red sauce, with a Pepsi).

I repeat back his order anyway just for the sake of saying that I did, even though I know he won't hear me...but I figure he might realize his mistake and roll down his window again so he can hear what I am saying. He doesn't.

So I finish giving the change to the customer at the window, and they pull up to the second window. The van man comes up to my window, and hands me a $20 bill. His order comes out to be $8.27. I ring it up, put the $20 in my drawer, take out $11.73 for his change, and I go to hand it to him, and everything changes...

(Obviously I don't remember the exact words that were said, but they are pretty accurate, give or take a few words)

Loser: "You got Pepsi on both of the bean burrito kids meals, right?"
Me: "Both? Didn't you just order 1 kids meal?"
Loser: "No! I ordered 2 bean burrito kids meals, no sauce, with pepsi."
Me: "Ok...well, I read your order back to you, but...
Loser: (His voice is getting progressively louder this whole time, bordering on shouting) "I ordered 4 combos:" (He holds up four fingers to better illustrate his point) "2 bean burrito kids meals, and 2 fiesta taco salad combos, all four with pepsi."
Me: "You want four combos???"
Loser: "Yes, four."
Me: "Ok..."


At this point, I'm just staring at him disbelievingly because I know he ordered 1 of each. And I was bewildered at his rising temper...I couldn't understand why he was getting so angry...so your order wasn't taken right, it's not the end of the world. There seemed to be something weird going on.

I then try to hand him his change so I can ring up the other 2 combo meals.

Loser: "What are you doing?"
Me: "I'm giving you your change so I can put the other combos on a new order."
Loser: "No! You messed up my order, I want my money back.

I almost laugh at this point because of the absurdity of his request. Basically, because I didn't include 4 combos altogether in his order (and I am 100% sure he only ordered 2 combos...plus he did not even attempt to listen to me repeat his order, so it's not even my fault) and then when he finds out what happened, he doesn't even want his food anymore...he just wants his money back.

So I give him another "are you really that stupid?" look, and tell him to hold on, as I get my manager. I go tell my manager, Thaddus, a brief summary of what happened, and he goes over there and talks to the "customer", while I stand a few feet away parallel to the window where I can see Thaddus talking to the customer, but the customer can't see me.

Thaddus goes up to the window, and says in a questioning tone, "What? You got your order wrong?"

I hear the guy talking to him, but I don't catch many words. When I talked to Thaddus later, he said that the guy basically said that I screwed up his order and that he wanted his money back. Also, I managed to catch one tidbit of their conversation.

I hear Thaddus repeat something back to the customer that I assume the customer had just said to him:
"He was impolite and rude?"

...My jaw drops. I think to myself: I was rude? I WAS RUDE??? What gives him the right to tell my manager a blatant lie like that? I was never rude to him in any way. I gave him a few quizzical looks after some of his inane comments, but nothing more. My voice wasn't bordering on shouting like his was. How the heck was I rude?

Anyway, Thaddus eventually realizes the only thing to do is give him back his money, so he checks with me first to make sure that the guy gave me a $20, and that I still have the change...so that this guy doesn't get away with more than he came in with. So he gives him his $20 back, and he leaves.

Thaddus turns around, and enlightens me about what had just happened. Apparently, he has seen that exact same guy come through the drive-thru before, at another Taco Bell he used to work at. He did the exact same thing there too. He ordered his order wrong on purpose, then he came up to the window, did his little performance while getting angrier and yelling, and said he wanted his money back, only that time, Thaddus had given him his change already. So Thaddus asked him for the change back so he could give him his $20 that he paid with, and the guy refused. So Thaddus said, give me back the change, and I'll give you back your $20. Seeing that his scam didn't work with him, he did what Thaddus asked and drove off.

Thaddus told me that when it happened there, he was thinking...Why is this guy getting so upset? And I laughed and told him I was thinking that too.

Basically, what this guy does is:
He orders some food, doesn't allow the cashier to repeat it back, comes up to the window, complains when the cashier gets his order "wrong", starts shouting and getting angry to try and intimidate the cashier into screwing up and giving not only his money back (the $20), but also the change from the $20, effectively scamming $10+ off of the cashier (and Thaddus explained to me that a lot of times it works because many Taco Bell cashiers are not fluent in English and get confused when people start shouting things at them, so they make mistakes and give too much money back)

The guy never even has the intention of buying food. He is just doing it to steal a few bucks from unsuspecting cashiers. And it obviously works or else he would have stopped a while ago (He did it to Thaddus about 4 months ago, so who knows how long he had been doing it up until then...and how long will he continue to do it?).

So it was just a really eye-opening experience for me. I couldn't believe that this pathetic loser actually makes a living off of scamming Taco Bell restaurants (and probably other fast-food restaurants) out of $12 a pop. Fortunately, I was aware of what I was doing and was smart enough not to be tricked by his scam.

The really weird (and almost creepy) thing about this whole ordeal is:
When Thaddus was closing my drawer, he made a refund on it so that I wouldn't end up being $8.27 short from the food that was "sold" on my register but which was never purchased by this guy. When someone does a refund, the register treats it as a whole new order in that it gives it a new order number, but it takes away the monetary responsibility from my drawer.

When the new receipt was printed out showing that $8.27 was taken off of my drawer sales, I looked at it to make sure everything was right, I signed it, and...the order number caught my eye momentarily. I did a double take, and stared at the number.

It was 666.

I thought to myself, "If that's not a sign of things to come, then I don't know what is."

I showed the receipt to Thaddus, and his eyes widen, and he starts to laugh, saying something along the lines of, "Yeah well, it makes sense...he's going to hell anyways."

Name Four, Fore, For, 4 Things That You...

Yep, when in Rome, do as the French do. Err, something like that. Or how about when you see an interesting idea in someone else's blog, you steal it. Sara stole an idea for a blog topic, then Erica stole it, now it's my turn to be the blogburgler. Except, I am going to add a category of my own at the end...


Name 4 Bad Habits that you have:
1. Playing Diablo 2 too much.
2. Staying up past midnight playing Diablo 2.
3. Waiting to do my homework until the evening/morning before it's due because I was too busy playing Diablo 2.
4. Playing Diablo 2 too much.
5. Being repetitive.
6. Not being able to count.

Name 4 Things that you Wish you had:
1. The ability to fly.
2. A car that doesn't need gasoline to run, but rather is fueled by the dirt, bird excrement, insect guts, tree sap, and parking tickets that fall on it.
3. A portable TV that actually gets a channel other than the Channel 4 Static News. ("All Static, all the Time.")
4. A personal Chef so I never have to spend an agonizing 3 minutes standing over a hot stove meticulously cooking a package of Top Ramen. (A nuclear-powered water boiler would be great too)

Name 4 Scents that you Love:
1. Barbequed Anything.
2. Taco Bell grease.
3. Mountain Air. (As opposed to Urban Filth)
4. New Car Smell.

Name 4 Things that you would Never Wear
1. High Heels.
2. Armpit Hair Extensions.
3. Socks that go higher than my waist.
4. A Piano.

Name your 4 Favorite things to Do:
1. Play Diablo 2 and NBA Courtside 2002.
2. Play Basketball.
3. Watch TV.
4. Write/Read.

Name the Last 4 things you Bought
1. Gas (Because my 2nd wish hasn't come true yet)
2. Colored Pencils (For a homework assignment...You know, those advanced coloring assignments you get throughout college that test your intelligence, study skills, and your ability to connect the dots)
3. A Scantron (For my less advanced college classes which actually grade me by my performance on tests, not by my coloring skills. The nerve of some teachers...)
4. Spent $25 to have some kid in my class do my coloring assignment for me because I just didn't get it.

Name 4 things that you Drink regularly
1. Milk/Juice/V8
2. Water
3. Crystal Geyser Juice Squeeze (Any flavor)
4. Sierra Mist/Root Beer

Name 4 Things you are Thankful for:
1. My parents.
2. My church.
3. My friends.
4. My turtle, Floyd.

Name the Last 4 Things you Did
1. Went to School. (Geography and Speech)
2. Played Diablo 2.
3. Went to Work.
4. Blogged.


Sean's Special Category:

Name 3 Types of People that you Dislike:
1. People who are old enough to know the difference between words like "their, there, they're, were, we're, its, it's, etc..." but they still use them interchangeably whenever they feel like it.

2. "Creepers" - This is my own word for people who are driving and start to come up to a red light, but they stop 3-17 football fields away from the actual signal, and then "creep" up at half the pace of a Norwegian snail until they decide that they are close enough, at which point they stop. However, they are usually still far enough away from the car in front of them that you could fit an entire Olympic-sized swimming pool between them and still have enough room to do a historically accurate reinactment of the Civil War (1847-present).

3. "Ditzes" - This is a word I like to typically use for people who are so absent-minded that they only pay attention to what they are doing and nothing else. A good example of a Ditz is a girl (usually in her late teens to early 40s) who is driving while at the same time is talking on her cell phone, applying makeup, drinking her Crappacino La-Tee-Da, chewing gum, and being totally oblivious to her surroundings and what is going on outside her little bubble (i.e. The Rest of the World).

I could probably think up more than 3, but I try to focus on the more positive things in life. Like inventing my new Super Car fueled entirely by High Octane Crapoline. I'll get right on it. Right after I finish playing Diablo 2.

A Picture Says a Thousand Words (1,586 To Be Exact)

And now, what you've all been waiting for, The Picture Says a Thousand Words Essay!!!! Yes, this is probably one of my favorite essays to date. Unfortunately, I don't have the means to post the picture here so you'll just have to visualize it as you read the essay. Enjoy!


A Picture Says a Thousand Words (1,586 to be exact)


In this photo, I am almost a year old, and I am sitting in my dad’s lap intently staring at something out of the range of the picture. That something happens to be a television. I don’t remember for sure what show we were watching, but if I were to guess, I would say it is Wheel of Fortune because back when I was a little kid, that was my favorite show. My dad and I are sitting on our old couch that we threw out into the city dump a few years ago (By threw out I mean that we paid a relatively obscene amount of money to obtain permission to drive into the back of a dump that almost smelled worse than an average public toilet, and heaved the sofa which weighed close to a metric ton into a pile of who-knows-what). In place of it we now have a very cool dual reclining Lazy-Sean sofa. In the background of the picture lies a vintage-style lamp, my dad’s brown writing desk before it was moved into his room, part of some old yellowed drapes masking the window that leads out to our back yard, dark green carpet that dished out its fair share of rug burns on me over the years before it was replaced with tan carpeting that shows absolutely every single stain ever spilled on it, and an air conditioning unit. I don’t remember the last time I ever saw that stupid eyesore of an air conditioning unit work, if ever. I think that big white pole in the very front of the picture is part of a baby swing that I probably spent hours in doing various things like swinging, burping, eating, getting nauseous, plotting world domination, etc. You know, normal things a baby less than a year old would do.

Getting back to the business at hand, my dad and I were watching Wheel of Fortune. We were practically glued to the screen. If nuclear war started outside, we wouldn’t have noticed it. There was television to watch, who cares what else was happening around us? However, I think that if nothing else, this picture shows just how close my dad and I were as I grew up, and as I continue to grow up. There we were, watching TV as my dad had me in an agonizing Judo Death Grip around my waist so that I didn’t fall or get away before the show was over. Just think about what might have happened if he wasn’t crushing my lungs in a caring and fatherly way; I might have fallen and gotten a rug burn on my head from the carpet. Or I might have crawled away and thrown up in my baby swing. Anyway, it’s a good thing he held on otherwise I might have grown up to be some crazy person that would run around giving myself rug burns and squeezing every baby I saw as hard as I could so that nothing bad could happen to them. I am sure the parents of those children would love me if I did that.

Now, in order that you may get to know me better, I have included, at no extra charge, a resume that I recently wrote depicting the various aspects of my life. Enjoy!

Reagan, Sean (August 16th 1984 to present). Intelligent American superhuman writes: I was born in Newport Beach, California, but have lived my entire life in Huntington Beach in a small apartment building a few minutes away from the beach. My ancestors, Adam and Eve came to this earth via a complex system of God, creation and ribs, and lo and behold, here I am. Ah, those were the days! Back then, people were made with spare ribs. Now they require nine months of struggling, sweating, eating, regurgitating, sleeping, and pushing. And after all that, you don’t even get a complimentary rack of ribs smothered in barbecue sauce to enjoy. (By enjoying I mean eating about 1/3 of the ribs and spilling the rest on your shirt and having to use approximately 190,000 napkins to clean up the mess that you made on the floor, the family dog, the ceiling, anyone within a five-foot radius of you, and of course your freshly washed and bleached white dinner jacket) Anyway, let’s get back to my story.

I was the first and only son born in my family, and I was also the first and only daughter…oh wait, scratch that last part…I was the first and only son born in my family (At least that I know about). When I was three months old, I learned the alphabet. At six months, I was studying law at UCLA (yes, it really is that easy to get into). At eight months, I uttered my first word, “Butt” and I was immediately sent to the Mental Asylum for Troubled Children for the next nine years where I was kept under close surveillance lest I use the word “Butt” again. I never dared utter the word again, because if I did, I would be severely prodded with plastic spoons by my “Personal Incarceration Mood-modifier Person, or my “PIMP”.

After my stay at the crazy house, I was released into society to fend for myself. My first official action as a grown-up ten-year-old was to go crawling on my hands and knees and beg the nice lady at the welfare office for some candy. Ten minutes and fifteen lies later, I was the new recipient of 4 different welfare checks. One of them was for being the widow of a deceased wealthy landowner in the mid 1800’s, one was for being an albino with a limp, one for being a crippled gorilla with a brain hemorrhage, and the last one for being lactose intolerant. The next thing I know, I am living in an upscale Beverly Hills penthouse with six toilets. That was the main selling point.

Me: “So tell me, how much are you asking for this fine upscale Beverly Hills penthouse?”
Real Estate Agent: “50 billion gazillion dollars.”
Me: “Hmm, seems rather expensive don’t you think?”
Real Estate Agent: “Well, it does have six toilets.”
Me: “I’ll take it!”

I stayed at that penthouse for about five years up until the point that all six of the toilets got backed up (Hey, what plumber is going to come fix six toilets?) and the entire block that I lived on became a living replica of the Nile River (there were even river snakes floating on the surface of the water …hey, those aren’t river snakes…ewww). Anyway, after that experience I decided I would step down from “high society”, and at the age of fifteen, I became a writer for a major metropolitan newspaper, and I changed my name to Clark Kent, and…oh wait, I never did that.

All kidding aside, I really did step down from my elevated status as a wealthy young penthouse owner with his very own Television/VCR combo, and got an honest job working at a nearby Taco Bell restaurant. I work there to this day, and I have never once seen or heard a single bell anywhere in the store. They have plenty of tacos though, and I seem to be one of the only white males working there. For the most part, everyone else that works there is Mexican, and the language of choice is Spanish. Unfortunately for me, I do not speak fluent Spanish. However, after observing the way that these people conduct themselves and act around each other, I have concluded that knowing Spanish is a non-essential tool. The only thing you have to be able to do and be able to do well is whistle. That’s it. In fact, many conversations between employees at my work consist of little or no Spanish at all. They just communicate by using a complex system of whistles.

For example:
Employee #1: (whistles at approximately 128 decibels for .87 seconds)
Employee #2: turns around expectantly as if someone called his name (whistles back at employee #1 questioningly)
Employee #1: (whistles at different pitches and tones for almost 3 minutes straight while making gestures and signs with his hands to better convey his point)
Employee #2: listens to employee #1 knowingly and occasionally nods his head and whistles back affirmatively
Employee #1: “Comprendes?” (Loosely translated: Is that a river snake over there?)
Employee #2: “No, yo busco los pantalones.” (Loosely translated: “Yeah, Sean never cleans up after himself.”)

That’s my resume. I hope you learned a lot about me, like the fact that whenever I am given a writing assignment, I try my hardest to make it entertaining for the reader and for myself. Of course this is assuming that my audience has a sense of humor and is not a bunch of crippled gorillas with brain hemorrhages. Also the fact that I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for my parents, and especially my dad for constantly keeping me on my toes to ensure that I don’t get on the receiving end of another one of those Judo Death Grips and suffer a collapsed lung or something. If that happened, at least I would have plenty of time to watch Wheel of Fortune in my hospital bed, assuming that no one finds out about my welfare scam, in which case I would most likely be sent back to the Mental Asylum for Troubled Children where they don’t even have six toilets in the whole place!

A Life-Changing Experience...

It's nearly 3 AM in the morning. By the time I finish writing this, it will probably be past 4 AM. I just feel like I have to write this down to help take the weight off. If you're reading this expecting something funny, scroll down to another one of my blogs as this is coming straight from the heart.

I just finished having a 2+ hour talk with an online friend I first met probably a year or so ago on battle.net playing Diablo 2. He had quit for about 3-4 months, and he had just come back for the first time tonight. I saw him on and started casually talking about stuff...where he's been, if any of his characters had expired, etc...

Eventually, he revealed why he had been absent from Diablo 2 for so long. Apparently, his wife has been cheating on him recently and they are considering a divorce, which is heartbreaking because they have a young child named Dylan who is too young to understand any of this now but who may end up growing up with only one loving parent. Because of this, he feels isolated and alone and depressed about life in general.

Without going into too many details as I don't want to expose too much of what he told me to the general public, I want to give some background as to the situation. Dave (the friend I was talking to) is 20 years old right now and married to Lynae, who is 19. They got married about a year ago or so due to the fact that Lynae was pregnant with their child, Dylan.

Long story short: Lynae recently cheated on Dave with his best friend, Jared. Several months after it happened, Lynae told Dave about it and since then it has literally torn Dave apart to the point where he feels he is at rock-bottom and has nowhere to turn. He told me he has always had low self-esteem and was never very social, and that the only 2 people that he really opened up to were Lynae and Jared. So now that they have betrayed him, he feels that he cannot trust either of them or anyone else and he is now very dejected. He said several times during our conversation that he hates his life, and that he hates himself.

Personally, I have no experience with serious relationships like this, but I felt like I was Dave's last beacon of hope, and that I had to do something to get him out of this self-detrimental state he was in. So I listened to him pour his heart out about every little detail of what happened, and I did my best to encourage him and tell him that he couldn't dwell on this forever...that he had to continue on with his life and stop living in the past and to try to do what is right for his son Dylan. I'm not going to cover every detail of what he said and how I responded to it since I don't remember everything and plus it would just be too long.

One thing Dave has going for him is that he is religious and that he truly believes that God will be there for him when he needs him. I continually tried to encourage him to think of this experience as a test of will...that he needs to be willing to accept the fact that he made a mistake marrying Lynae at such an early age when she obviously does not love him completely, and move on without being so hard on himself. Fortunately, he has his ideals in the right place now. He wants to do what's best for his son and he wants to stay in his church and remain faithful. It's just that he has absolutely no self-esteem right now because of what his wife and best friend did to him so it's extremely difficult for him to do anything productive with his life right now.

So I felt that it was my responsibility to be Dave's support even though he didn't want to keep me up so late since he knew I had school tomorrow. But I insisted on hearing his story in its entirety and trying my best to make helpful and positive comments. I was really surprised at some of the insightful things I said throughout the conversation...I didn't even know I had it in me as I've never talked to anyone about anything like this before. As I reflect on some key parts of the conversation where I felt I was making an impact on his point of view, I think I really did make a difference in his life for the better.

He was very self-detrimental throughout the conversation even when I tried to accentuate a strong point of his personality or when I tried to put a positive note on the negative feelings he was expressing. He kept saying that no one would want to marry a 20 year old divorced father of one, and I kept telling him that it didn't matter what had happened in the past, but that he would find a woman who loves him for who he is...and not for who he was. And after about 2 hours of talking and encouraging and helping, I could tell I was really starting to get through to him. And that made it all worth while. I could tell everything that I said eventually clicked. I could tell that every positive thing I helped him realize about himself was starting to sink in...that he really wasn't alone in the world and that he really did have hope after all had seemed so grim.

It was a very powerful feeling for me to realize that I may have helped Dave get back on the right track of life. As the conversation started to end, he thanked me several times for everything that I said and that because of what I had told him, he felt he was able to restart his journey of living life again, after everything he held so dear to himself was torn away. He acknowledged that it was going to be a long and hard process to start anew after losing almost everything that was important to him. But at the end, he told me that he realized that he still has God to turn to, and that he always will have him throughout his life. He told me that I was a great friend and that he was very appreciative of what I had done for him.

And this whole experience was so new to me that I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, so I had to put it down in writing. I can't think of a better way to start Great Lent than helping a casual acquaintance from a video game literally turn his life around by simply saying some kind and positive words in order to start him back on the path of life. As I look at the clock right now, it reads 4:21 AM. I'll have to get up and go to school in 4 hours. But what's a little lost sleep compared to changing someone's life? It's an amazing feeling.

Where's My Burrito?!?!?

The time has come for me to post one of my favorite essays. It was originally written during my freshman year in college in English 100 as an assigned essay. The topic, though I don't remember it exactly, was something along the lines of choosing a cultural establishment and write about how it has shaped the culture surrounding it. Naturally, since I work at Taco Bell, I wrote about that. This version has a few updates in it from the previous essay, but nothing major.

Unfortunately, this blog site doesn't seem to be able to support Word smilies as in the original essay I had a running joke involving all different kinds of smilies and other Word graphics. But I'll just have to leave most of them out this time since they end up looking like little boxes. Hopefully this essay will teach you something about the life of a drive-thru cashier...


Where's My Burrito?!?!?

When I think about fast food, the first three things that pop into my head are speed, accuracy, and cost. However, I have found that my views differ from other people’s views. Amazing isn’t it? I think so too. For instance, the average American ordering at a fast food drive-thru restaurant is thinking the following three things: “I wonder if the person taking my order will be able to speak English?”, “Gee, I sure hope my brand new Ford Aircraft Carrier SUV will be able to fit in the drive-thru”, and above all, “I sure hope my brand new Ford Aircraft Carrier SUV will be able to make it through the drive-thru before it runs out of gas.” Fast food restaurants have a reputation for being a quick and cost-effective way to eat. Because of this, they have also made our culture one that is very fast-paced and that demands more out of every minute. People want their food and they want it fast. On the other hand, fast food restaurants have also made our society become lazier and lazier. If your average Fatty McLardbelly suddenly feels hungry because it’s been eight minutes since he last ate, he can just waddle over to the nearest fast food restaurant, toss five bucks in the general direction of the nearest cashier, and eat until he collapses due to massive heart failure. No longer do people have to stand over a hot stove to cook their meals. They can pay someone else to do it for them! This sort of here-is-some-money-give-me-food-now mentality has injected itself into the brain of Modern America, and seduced people into thinking that going through the drive-thru should be a quick and effortless thing, and if it ever takes longer than a couple minutes, they are oftentimes deeply distressed and angered. This whole Drive-Thru Mentality has taken America by the throat (or in this case, the stomach) and made our culture an advocate of sloth, gluttony, and indifference.

Of all the fast food restaurants I could talk about, I chose the one that I know the most about, and that is Taco Bell. The reason I know so much about “The Bell” is because I work there as a cashier. My store is located at Beach and Garfield in Huntington Beach. The exterior is pretty simple. There are large patches of well-kept green grass with the occasional palm tree planted in the middle. The building is painted tan and there are numerous windows with promotional posters hung on them. Behind the building are the drive-thru lane and the order box. The drive-thru lane curves around the left side of the restaurant and passes two windows. The first window is where I usually work and is where the customer pays, and the second is where the customer gets the food. It is the largest Taco Bell that I know of, inside and out. However, the drive-thru lane is poorly thought out. Hanging over the drive-thru lane are a bunch of pilings that form some sort of semblance of a roof. But when it rains, they offer about the same protection as a wilted diaper. On a rainy Saturday a few months ago, a customer came through the drive-thru, stopped at the order box, and the first thing out of her mouth was something to the effect of, “I’ve got leather seats, so I’m gonna roll my window up.” However, she said it so fast and incoherent that I couldn’t understand a word of it at the time. So there she sits for about two minutes with the windows rolled up, trying to decide what to get. Basically, anything over forty-five seconds is too long to be sitting at the order box, and since one of the main things Taco Bell stresses is Speed of Service, by this time my manager was foaming at the mouth with rage. When she actually ordered, she yelled (probably because her window was only rolled down a quarter of an inch to keep the rain out) out something that, to me, sounded vaguely like a wounded cow calling to its mother. If I understood her correctly, she said, “IwantANumberFiveNoTomatoesPepsiTwoBurritoSupremeNumberSevenWithSierra
MistNoIceAndThreeWiltedDiapersToDryMyLeatherSeatsWithBecauseI’maLittlePansy
ThatIsAfraidOfRuiningMyPreciousLexusThatIBoughtBecauseIcan’tAffordToPayTheGas
PricesOfTheBrandNewFordAircraftCarrier SUV. Moo.” Then when she got up to the window, she was snottier than Mucus Man™ in a pollinating field during allergy season.

I have worked at this Taco Bell for about a year and a half now, and during that time, I have seen many different people from many different backgrounds with many different life stories. I have experienced many different attitudes and customs that this culture shares. I find it amazing sometimes how different the people are that come through the drive-thru. Basically, I have sorted out the people that come to Taco Bell into three groups: 1.) The Nice-People-That-Smile-At-You 2.)The People-That-You-Don’t-Hate-But-Who-You-Wouldn’t-Necessarily-Want-To-Befriend, and 3.)The People-That-You-Would-Like-To-Strike-Repeatedly-With-A-Hot-Tire-Iron. The nice people that come through the drive-thru make my job so much easier. They are jubilant when you correctly take their order, they smile when they come up to the window, their voice has a friendly tone to it, and they depart by saying, “Thanks, have a nice day” or “Here, have some free money.” The second group of people are the kind of people who will tell me their order, pay, get their food, and leave. No friendliness is expressed by them in the least bit. Sometimes they won’t even say anything. They will just yell their order at the box, zoom up to the window, hand me a wad of crumpled bills and/or about five pounds of change that they found under their seat which is encrusted with at least three of the following: gum, candy, rat poison, insect larvae, battery acid, blood, sweat, tears, dinosaur feces, or lollypops. Then they leave without saying “goodbye” or “have a nice day” or “gee your hair smells delicious.” They just accelerate towards the second window as fast as they can as if there were a group of car-to-car salesmen chasing them. Last and certainly least, there is the third and most despised group of people. The lady in the Lexus that I mentioned earlier would fall into this category. Other fine examples would be the kind of people that demand that I give them “lots” of hot sauce. I ask them, “Would you like any hot or mild sauce?”. They reply by saying, “What? Wait, let me turn my music volume down from “Mach 10” to “Ear-Piercing”.” I then repeat myself, and they say that they "want a lot of hot sauce." So I get a little bag that I give every customer that contains their napkins, receipt, and a complimentary “1025 hours free” AOL CD, and into that bag I insert enough hot or mild sauce to feed eighteen hungry children in Africa. I then proceed to hand them the bag, at which point they exclaim, “Hey bro, can I get some more sauce?” This prompts me to look at them in a malevolent manner and begrudgingly take out my tire iron and…WHAM!!!!

In all honesty, I really enjoy working at Taco Bell because it really gives me a perspective about our culture and people’s attitudes in general. Personally, I don’t mind working at a restaurant that is very high in grease output and comparatively low in nutrition input. In fact, if there ever was a high demand for grease, Taco Bell could become a major world power. If I were you, I’d put my money in Taco Bell stock. I know I will. Just think, soon I will be the proud new owner of a brand new Ford Aircraft Carrier SUV that I can use to drive my lazy self to the nearest drive-thru restaurant and order some wilted diapers to clean my leather seats with. I’ll be sure to bring along my tire iron in self-defense.

Mucus Man

Disclaimer: The following short story contains graphic depictions of nasal excrement. Read with caution...and preferably without a full stomach.

I wrote this short story back in my senior year of high school. The assignment was pretty much to create a hero with his own unique background and code of conduct. So naturally, Mucus Man was born. (And I got a 49/50 on this assignment)


Mucus Man


He's faster than a speeding snot rocket! He's MUCUS MAN!!!!!!

On a breezy spring day, three years ago, The Gigantic Nose Man was taking a walk on a trail with many colorful and pollinating flowers. Unfortunately for him, his sinuses were acting up, and his gigantic nose was flowing freely. He was doing all right until he inhaled a large amount of pollen from a flower he was passing, and he let out a disgusting, slimy, dirty sneeze. That was how Mucus Man was born.

At first, The Gigantic Nose Man was utterly appalled that such an abomination came out of his nose, but after a while, he finally accepted the fact that he did create him, and that he should care for Mucus Man. Of course, the obvious setback of having a...um...thing made completely out of snot, is that everything he touches gets snotty too. The couch, the silverware, the family dog, The Gigantic Nose Man's toothbrush, the television remote, the Kleenex box, etc... The list really can go on and on. Of course, as expected, The Gigantic Nose Man was not pleased after finding snot on his toothbrush, especially since he found out after he brushed his teeth.

Because of this, Mucus Man did not have many friends or possessions. The only thing The Gigantic Nose Man gave Mucus Man was a black bandanna to clean up all the snot with. However, Mucus Man was not very keen on cleaning up his snot. He felt that by generously applying snot everywhere he could, it was his way of "marking his territory". So like any other rebellious, booger-based teen, he cut holes in the bandanna, and wore it like a mask, so he would not draw as much attention in a crowd because he was cleverly disguised. However, most people notice a four-foot tall booger complete with arms and legs walking down the street, mask or no mask.

Eventually, Mucus Man decided that there was nothing to do with his life except become a superhero, a role model for all those boys (and uncivilized girls) who pick their noses on a regular basis. So he went to the local, friendly, family-oriented tattoo parlor, and got a big "M" tattooed on his belly. Your guess is as good as mine as to how it is possible to tattoo a large booger, but that is what happened. Then he went down to apply for a job as a superhero. After taking the necessary eye exams, he became a superhero. Now he goes around making appearances at birthday parties and on the Jay Leno show, ("Wow, you're a giant booger!" - Jay) and proudly spreading his green joy (which is now illegal in most states) everywhere he goes.

The End.


Code Of Conduct

To try and ban Kleenex.
To gladly spread green joy throughout the land.
To boldly go where no snot has gone before.