A Letter to "People" Concerning Decisions

Dear confused, sleepy, nervous, prosimian, space-wasting jackasses,

I want you to ask yourself a question. And, don't just take it for granted. I want you to really search your soul, you're very being, for the truth. For what you think is your one true answer.

Are you ready? Ok, good, because here it comes.

What do you want to eat?

Did that question catch you off guard a little bit? Weren't expecting something quite like that to be the question I wanted you to ask yourself? Well, it fucking should be! Because we're in a fucking burrito place and you're first in MOTHER FUCKING LINE!

What did you think was going to happen once you got to that sad-faced minimum wage teenager with surgical gloves on inside out? Did you think he [i]wasn't[/i] going to ask what you wanted to eat? Just like you thought I [i]wasn't[/i] going to get so pissed I wanted to punch you in the neck while you just stand there like fucking moron?

Don't look at me!

Don't you fucking look at me, Hoss. You look at that goddamned menu! It's go time! It's time to be a big boy and tell the nice man what you want for snackies. Instead you're standing there frozen in fear. Like your back in that harsh spotlight at the '82 regionals all over again, forgetting the words to Over The Rainbow right before tinkling your panties in front of everybody. Just pick something!

Look, this is a fast food restaurant, OK? Let me give you a bit of advice. Odds are any place where you order your food [i]before[/i] you sit down isn't going to have too much variation on the menu. So just close your eyes, raise your arm, point at anything and say, "that one." You know, like a pressured witness at a police line-up.

OK. Hard part is over.

What are you doing? Pay the lady. Why did you just put your credit card back in your wallet? You want to pay with cash? What the fuck does it matter? It's 7 dollars, just give it to her!

Ok, that didn't work. It didn't work because you only have 4 dollars. That means that as far as your cash goes, you can't afford to eat here. Give her your credit card! What are you doing? Why are you looking in your wallet again? I can see from here there is no more money in there! It's not going to suddenly appear! Just give her your goddamned cred …don't count your change!

Son of a bitch, Ernest, if you don't pay that lady for your food right now and let me get out of here I swear to god I'm going to slam your head against the counter until your dead. Then, me and the other guy you've been holding up for the past half hour are going to walk you around, Weekend at Bernie's style. All making you wave at ladies and getting into crazy adventures. The only difference being, that instead of trying to fool everyone in town that you're alive, we'll probably just leave you face down in that dumpster behind Courtyard Coffee.

All fantasizing aside, it really seizes the gears in my clockwork brain to see a grown person staring slack jawed and rubber necked up at a glowing menu, like it's a UFO in the back forty, not able to decide if they want a hamburger, or a hamburger. I mean, really, how worse is your life going to be if you mess this one up, Chief? Do you think the ten minutes it takes you to wolf down that half ounce of beef and 3 pounds of grease are even going to register in 2 hours? You know, besides the painful explosive diarrhea?

And while we're on that subject, let's be honest, there's nothing on the menu that's going to change the consequences of this meal, as it is the establishment itself that promotes the full scale evacuation of your internal organs. So just by walking in here you've signed the contract absolving the restaurant of any and all accidental anal demolition for the next 12 hours.

What I'm getting at is this. No matter what you pick from this menu, you're going to need at least five dollars, it's going to be ready in about 10 minutes, and you're going to need a can to shit in later at work in case you can't get out of your cubicle fast enough.

Maybe you already have a can to shit in. I don't know. But you just don't strike me as a prepared individual so I went ahead and threw it in there.

All I ask is that when you walk up to that counter and it's time for you to place your order, just place it. Decide first, then order. Decide first, then order.

Try not to be such a fucking loser all the time. Try not to be such a fucking loser all the time.

At the rate you're going, it's going to be tomorrow before I'm able to piss and moan about how this place got my fucking order wrong while some crack head trucker tries to kill me on the way home.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von RichthGODAMNIT STOP ASKING FOR HASBROWNS, IT'S 6 IN THE EVENING!

JESUS CHRIST!

A Letter to an Apparel Distributor Concerning Durability

Dear Old Navy,

Er, you dumb, fat, chimp-like, uh. I don't know. Crack-head, idiot.

Anyway.

I recently bought two pairs of pants from one of your local stores here in town. I chose brown and browner trousers to replace my cargo pants that got a good healthy dose of rust from the last load in our aging washing machine. The pants purchase was a two fold act of acquiring attire that wasn't stained and trying once again to buy clothes that actually fit me. I tend to buy clothes under the pretense that I am super-gigantic and end up with legs that appear to just stop at the ground with no discernable taper or knee, like my freakishly long thighs are waiting for my real legs to attach to form some sort of Voltron robot/pro basketball player.

All was well as far as selecting and sampling your apparel in the store, so a purchase was made along with some shirts to commemorate the first time I had gone out exclusively to buy clothes for myself in about two years. Up until about 3 days ago I was pretty satisfied with my decision. Then I had a malfunction.

I say malfunction, but it was really the inevitable thread failure due to poor seam design by some overly ambitious clothing engineer. You see, these pants have a couple of superfluous pockets, as is the signature affliction of all Old Navy brand clothing, and usually I welcome the new and interesting operation of finding just what will and wont fit in my new cloth receptacles. But, my fun was cut short when your three-times-too-long change pocket, which is located inside my front right pocket, had a low level fashion hull breach and left half of said pouch free to flap around inside my pocket.

Oh dear, this won't do.

Let me give you a little background about me and clothing. Actually, cloth in general. You see, cloth has to lay flat against things. It can be curved and turned and folded as long as it isn't wrinkled against the surface it inhabits, wrinkled meaning that the fabric has unintentionally folded over on top of my skin.

Wrinkling or unintentional seaming is not to be taken lightly. Joe Haldeman even made wrinkles a cause of death in his book [b]The Forever War[/b]. So, to avoid being crushed by inertial pressure in my sleep, my towels are hung flat or laid on counter tops, bedding is properly laid out and stacked on the bed before I lay down to sleep, and pants pockets are stretched out to fall exactly as intended.

When your foolishly arrogant change pocket unraveled when I tried taking money out of it, imagine the same kind of reaction that Winnie the Pooh had when he tore the seam in his butt. Except, in place of the gentle, "Oh bother," out of a cute little bear, imagine a more appropriate, "Mother Fucker!" bursting out of a sleep deprived troll in the middle of Data Processing.

It would be an understatement to say that this ruined my day. These are damaged pants. I think the only thing that would take my mind off of them is if the damage had come from a bullet flying into my hip. Even then I wouldn't be surprised if I would be peeling the oxygen mask off of my face as I was lifted into the ambulance pleading, "no, no save them. New pants."

And do you know why I can't stand having slightly damaged clothing? It's because it means that I have to try and fix them.

Growing up with a father that could be gone for 6 months at a time means I know how to sew. With no one around to question my burgeoning manhood I didn't think twice about spending my young evenings cross-stitching with my mom while we watched Murphy Brown. I once even made a passable batman with no template to follow, but, as I got older I realized that I couldn't work cross-stitching into being "cool" along with all my smoking and listening to the Doors.

So, the dilemma arises that I know enough about sewing to repair my clothing, but am so out of practice that everything I mend is like some sort of fabricated Rorschach test. It's like a witch cursed Woody Allen to become a spider by night and half-ass together all of my trousers and polo shirts. To look at my handy work you would ask me if one of the elf cobblers was fired and had to get work in jeans and khakis to feed his family in today's inflating fantasy elf market.

Well, it was either that or the cookie tree but they're always striking over health insurance. Magical elf fathers need more stability than that.

I know that it is only a matter of days, perhaps hours, before I sit at my kitchen table with a tiny clear box of needles and thread and start the confusing task of repairing a pocket located inside of another pocket. I will have big plans for exactly how to make my stitches small and professional; confident it will look like it was sewn that way on purpose.

But, undoubtedly, I will end up making a couple of big, different colored "X's" which will effectively seal the breach, but, ascetically, make my right hip look cartoonishly deceased. That's if I'm lucky. In all honesty I'll probably spend most of the night delicately re-opening the pocket I've just sewn completely shut.

All of this adds up to make me thoroughly disgusted with the "sewmanship" work on my pants. My wife tells me that these things happen. I wear pants everyday and am rough on my clothes so I should expect rips and tears and unravelings. That's fair enough, but after only two or three weeks? Come on, I work tech support, I'm not [i]that[/i] hard on my clothes on a day to day basis. If I'm doing home repairs or yard work I wear jeans, and [i]they[/i] don't rip. Why can't your pants hold up to office work? What demographic were you going for when you stress tested these garments? Paraplegic? Coma patient? Burial clothes?

I'm not asking that they withstand an explosion but they should be able to withstand a dollar seventy-five in change. Most of that was quarters. You have to understand that some of your customers are going to be paranoid and neurotic; that a small failure in one quadrant of my attire means to me that another is not far behind. So, I'm not only worried about the pockets, but now I'm questioning every seamed surface there is.

How long before I bend too hard to sit at a restaurant and tear the inseam right up the middle? My exposed scrotum hitting the cold pleather of the booth seat at the Macaroni Grill sending me reflexively jumping into our table. The impact would send our pitcher of iced tea hurtling towards my wife who would instinctively duck, letting the heavy glass container strike the back of the head of the man in the booth next to us. The impact would send his head down toward his plate with enough velocity to completely impale the tines of his fork deep into his face, pinning the crab stuffed mushroom he was trying to enjoy between the table and his fucking forehead.

Is that what you want? You want that man's blood on your hands? I didn't think so!

So let's make a deal Old Navy. You want me to get my Fash' On? Why don't you get your Quality Merchandise On first, you fucking dingleberries.

Sincerely,

Chiggie Von Richthofen

Dreading the day he kills someone with his bare testicles

A Letter to Fast Food Window Attendants Concerning Service

Dear vacuum filled, customer ignoring, vocational rejects,

Hi.

I'm fine, thank you.

No, I don't want a chicken poppler, thanks. I would like a chicken Caesar salad with a …

What? No. Chicken Sal-- SALAD! CHICKEN CEASAR SALAD!

With a coke.

No, a coke! A coca-cola, you – yes!

What? What do you mean what kind of drink would I like? A coke you goddamned idiot!

Ok, you know what? No more stupid questions from you. My turn to talk.

You know what pisses me off? You make me jump through all these hoops when we both know that after I'm done trying to speak English to you, you're just going to give me whatever the hell you happen to find laying around anyway.

I mean seriously. It's like you all aren't even humans. You're some race of sub-sapien troglodytes that have been trained to parrot human speech phonetically to fool me into thinking that you have heard and understood my food order.

Like some sort of "invasion of the body snatchers" scene you've descended onto our blue planet completely undetected, but, instead of world domination, you've been sent here to give me curly fries. Curly fries; every damn time, in every damn Arby's, in every damn parish and county from here to Memphis.

I don't want curly fries, you fucking imposters, because curly fries are just regular French fries that were supposed to be delicious and satisfying but somewhere along the way from their harvest to this window they got fucked up so bad that their very existence is a blatant insult to my face.

Think of them as a dramatic, potato, reenactment of your own life.

You know, actually, I want to think you are a failed alien invasion because I don't want to admit to myself that humanity is capable of the lows exhibited in select drive thru windows everyday across America. That idea chills my blood, so, I sit in my care and I think of all the things you might be other than a complete waste of air and water.

Maybe you're some sort of government program to discourage our country from consuming so much fast food. Or, maybe you're some sort of malfunctioning holographic A.I. Maybe you're a spy who has just murdered the real window person and has to wing it on what little English the KGB taught you to keep from blowing your cover.

"Hi."

"Hallo."

"Sooooo, you got my food?"

"Hallo. Walcome to Amareecan place of foods."

"Hey, they must be training you guys. You're much better than last week."

"Da. Are you likingk, sauces?"

"Yeah, sure. Why not?"

You get the idea, and really, I don't care what the reason is. I just want there to be some reason other than someone being that bad at their job.

I mean, I go up to the window and it's the same damn routine every time.

What is this, a duffle bag? Why is this bag big enough for me to use as a fucking Barney Rubble costume? I'm just getting one hamburger. Is this where all the big bags have gone when I actually do get a lot of food? Because it seems like when I actually get enough food for two people you just duct tape a plastic bag around the pile and dump the whole package in my lap like a kilo of blow.

And, why is there more coke on the outside of my drinks than in them? Are you stupid or are you trying to send me a message? Look, if you don't like my face, just go in the back and piss in my drink like a normal person. Don't hand me this Dr. Pepper bukkake nightmare with a big smile on your face sputtering, "here's your ant bait sir, please pull forward and we'll bring your food out to you."

No! I will not pull forward! Why don't you pull forward, so you can go fuck yourself!

Other drive-thru services have figured this out. It's only the fast food that is lagging behind. The rest have got it under control. They never give me someone else's booze at the liquor store drive-thru. I don't ever get half a shirt from the dry cleaners. And, it's not like I drive away from the pharmacy and ever find a handful of loose vicodin at the bottom of the bag.

Believe me, I check, every time.

And, I know that you all are paid less than the money it takes for a bus ticket home but there comes a point where the abuse and neglect just pushes me right into "I don't give half a rat shit" territory. It gets to the point where I'm sure that even with your paltry wages it would be more cost effective for the store to just install a machine at the window that, when detecting a customer has pulled up, just sprays mace right in their damn eyes and then plays a recording of laughter. At least then I'd know what kind of shit I was about to get myself into every time I had the munchies for some nuggets.

At the end of the day all I can do is thank God that you people haven't wandered into any other aspect of the food industry.

I swear if one of you ever found work at a local Pizza Hut, you'd spend all of your time delivering a turd in a shoe box to the wrong house a week late.

At least then I'd start getting my cold turds for free.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
I -aid c—ke –ou f—k—ng id—t!