It had to be around 6am, I was in McDonald's... No, it must have been later, I'd already had my breakfast gone for a walk and come back. I'd been awake all night and all I wanted was a warm cup of tea. I'd waited hours for the shops to open and sell me one.
She was a foreigner, either Russian or Chezh, but I wasn't going to hold that against her. She seemed overly rude, but perhaps that was just a custom of her people. There were a total of three people in the store, multi-tasking must not be one of her specialties because she could serve the other two at the same time and yet felt the need to ignore me. I waited patiently. When it got to my turn I placed my order, she replied, 'What chin?' Now this was obviously not the response I was expecting, so I made her repeat herself, yes I'd heard it right. I didn't try to understand, I just said English breakfast. She entered the details in her little register and said $2.95, I handed her $4 and she put a dollar change on the counter. I picked it up and I looked for my five cents, not there. I asked, 'where is my 5 cents?' She looked at me blankly and in a gruff voice said, 'no change.' We were in a McDonald's Cafe, there were other registers.
Now surely she could have said beforehand, 'I don't have the five cents,' or how about, 'Do you happen to have the five cents on you I'm all out.' The right thing to do would be to give me ten cents instead, but no, she tried to pocket my five cents like a thief. Now money has very little value to me and I wouldn't have cared letting her keep it except that she expected to keep it.
I looked at her with what I like to imagine is a look of give me my money or I'll cut your head off and shit down your neck expression, and said, 'I want my five cents.' She did not loose her charming personality, but she did ask me to sit down and drink my tea and she would bring it out to me. I expected her to slam it on the table, but I guess she valued her job too much to make such a public scene.
With some things in life, it really is only about principle.
As it happens she was from Brazil(not relevent really, but true.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Oh, I posted a really good comment yesterday and it's gone.. whoosh.
Oh, Shadow, see why I avoid the human race all together as far as I can help it? Most of them don't have a sense of principal and 99% are just plain ignorant!
Post a Comment