With
Everything
I always admired the way my dad handled situations. It would form what I thought a man was: a person who handled whatever was thrown his way. I’m not talking about tough guys who involve themselves in fights or the complete idiots that try to stop a crime in progress. No, I’m talking about stuff that actually happens, stuff you really have to deal with. One time, through insensitive taunting, I made my ex-girlfriend cry on the phone. Minutes later, my dad unsuspectingly answered the phone to a screaming man, the girl’s father, berating him for raising such a prick of a son. Much earlier, when I was in grammar school, my dad got called in to school to have a private chat with Mrs. Klawitter, the principal, and had to reassure her I was not another “Columbine kid” after a teacher found some drawings I did that depicted gun-wielding teenagers running amuck.
These were big moments, things that were my fault and inescapable for him. But, he stared down who he had to and dealt with it.
“I’m sorry he said those things to your daughter, I’ll be sure to talk to him about it.”
“Mrs. Klawitter, I can definitely tell you he’s just a normal kid. A little imaginative at times, but normal.”
Once the relief of having put the situation behind us set in, he’d lean back in his arm chair and beg:
“Okay, Mark, please don’t ever do something like this again.”
Obviously those were uncomfortable things to deal with, but I soon realized my dad didn’t hate all confrontations. As long as the argument was over something procedural or relating to company policy, my dad loved blasting away at the stupidity of customer service people, clerks, or tellers. The argument was never over much, maybe a wrong order or a fee he wanted waived, but he attacked these debates more avidly than he had defended the unlikelihood that I was a spree killer.
Once, my dad picked up Mexican food from Pepe’s for dinner. He plopped it on the kitchen table to signify: Dinner is served. As me, my brother, and sister tore into the giant bag, wet with spilled grease, the tacos were divvied up and my mom was given her customary taco salad. My dad had still not taken his seat, instead hovering like a mother eagle assuring her little eaglets are fed before feeding herself. But once the tacos were provisioned, all that remained among the ruins of the tattered bag were packets of hot sauce and a small stack of napkins that hadn’t escaped the grease either. My dad always got a torta: it’s like a Mexican sandwich with taco filling; but the torta was nowhere to be found. Surely, my dad hadn’t forgotten to order for himself. His face contorted in an angry scowl:
“Those Mother Fuckers!”
My mom would rub the sides of her head, trying to quell the soon to come headache. My dad rifled through the drawer where we kept the take out menus until he found Pepe’s. He ran to the phone and stayed in the other room the entire call. I’m not sure if he wanted privacy to be as crazy as he wanted, or maybe didn’t want to bother us while we ate, but neither would have mattered; there was nowhere in the house, save possibly on the roof during a thunderstorm, that one couldn’t hear his rant with crystal clarity:
“Now you look here.
I got up at
While we never heard the other side of the conversation, I’m sure it was just small apologetic nonsense to placate my dad. However, it didn’t matter what the first person said, as it was usually just some kid who answers the phones, and while my dad took the time to explain the entirety of his day to the person, he had no intention of arguing with them. It was a key point of control for my dad to always demand to talk to someone else, even when the original person could have taken care of the mistake easily. Managers, supervisors, bosses: these were the real target. Understandably, once on the phone, these people were even more inclined to placate him and make it right, but before they could get a word in:
“Now you look here.
I got up at
When it came time for the demands, my dad never dreamed big enough. I always figured after such a commotion that we should be guaranteed some stock in the company or at least a platter named after our family, but my dad only wanted what he ordered. Even when they offered more, he only wanted what he ordered, as if extra was an affront to his righteous customer crusade. Sometimes, the restaurant would drive the missing food out to our house, even when they didn’t do deliveries. But, other times, there would just be a credit for next time with an extra discount thrown in.
While it was entertaining on the phone, him yelling at a faceless stranger, it was uncomfortable in person. No kid wants to be the offspring of publicly ranting lunatic. It's a brutally shameful feeling when your actually out in public with him, right next to him, when he decides it’s time to lay down the law.
When I was ten, I wanted to take my change jar to the bank. I had picked up dirty coins all summer at the park my friends and I played baseball at. I wanted that filthy metal turned into fresh paper. My dad was proud of me taking some initiative and gladly drove me. I dumped my collection into the coin machine and it whirred to life. Once my jar was empty, I watched the digital counter with anxiety. How high could it get? I turned to my dad and said, “How much is the mortgage on the house, because I might be able to help you pay it off.”
The counter stopped at a disappointing $26.34. My dad took me to the counter where the teller was. I handed over the receipt with my total and busied myself thinking of what I should buy with the money. Maybe a CD, I thought.
The teller then started laying out the fresh bills on the counter: a beautiful twenty dollar bill and three crisp singles. A few coins were spread out and the teller smiled, “Have a nice day young man.”
Nice day? Not on my dad’s watch.
“What the hell is this? The receipt said twenty-six dollars.”
“Well, sir, that doesn’t include the service fee.”
“Service fee? What service fee? For what?”
“To change coins into bills the bank charges a fee.”
The gears had already started turning in my dad’s face as he readied himself for battle.
“Look, my son collected this money himself, worked hard all summer to get it. I’m not going to let you just arbitrarily take three dollars away.”
“Bank policy is to charge a fee for all coin exchanges.”
“My policy is that if he brings in twenty-six dollars, that’s what he’s leaving with.”
“Sir, if you’d like to look at our chart here…”
The teller started pushing a little sign towards my dad; a sign with interest rates for savings accounts, service fees, and down at the bottom, a percentage fee for coin exchange. My dad’s hand, almost instinctively, moved towards the sign as well, meeting it in the middle of the counter, and pushing it back towards the teller.
“Do you want to take a look at my chart?”
With this line, the debate was over. The teller was more than eager to bring over the manager once my dad had, of course, requested him. The bank manager calmly explained the fee again:
“Unless you deposit the amount into an account, we charge a fee to count and exchange coins. But, sir, I’d be more than happy to waive that fee for you today.”
“Wait, so if I deposit the total into an account, there’s no fee?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Well then what’s to stop me from depositing it and withdrawing it right away?”
The bank manager looked a little confused, not at noticing their system had a flaw, but at my dad going to such lengths for three measly dollars worth of change.
“You’re right, sir, you certainly could do that.”
And even though the manager assured my dad he didn’t have to bother, that I could just have the three dollars without any paperwork, my dad insisted on filling out a deposit slip, getting a confirmation of the new balance, and then filling out a withdrawal slip. I had spent over an hour at the bank. I was unsure of what we’d accomplished, but my dad shot out of there with the adrenaline of hitting a trifecta at the track.
“Did you hear those idiots in there? What kind of scam do they think they’re running? Charging money to turn change into bills…what a joke. Wait ‘til I tell your mother about this one.”
As I grew older, I realized that this was the point of it all: my dad was a story teller. I knew this anyway, but never connected his constant complaining about the service industry to his lifelong persistence in telling the same stories over and over. I guess, in some ways, he wanted strange things to happen to him so he could tell the story later on. This isn’t that unusual, as anyone can think back to a time something happened to them and their first thought was not dealing with the situation, but rather:
“Wait until I tell them about this…”
I wouldn’t say I’m a nicer person than my father, or more prone to avoid confrontation, but I’ve never been so vocally critical of anyone. My sister, however, took up my dad’s mantle as resident complainer. As a little girl, she, of her own accord, wrote a letter to Jays Potato Chips, demanding to know why there was so much space left in their bags. She felt cheated by the pocket of air that represented a lack of chips. In the letter, she drew a picture of the bag, complete with the Jays logo and arrows pointing at where the chips rose to, less than half way up the bag. Later on, we would all be sure to keep it to ourselves if dining with her and our order came back wrong. If we didn’t, she would complain on our behalf, ignoring our flustered, embarrassed faces. She would sit in triumph at having secured the rightful order, but it would be us who had to eat our meal fearful of spit-filled retaliation.
My dad and sister were cut from the same cloth; some sort of consumerism Robin Hoods, gallivanting about in their constant efforts to demand satisfaction and punish mistakes.
Though, as the years went on, my dad softened up a little. He doesn’t take service fees or extra pickles, when he had asked for no pickles, as seriously any more. He still loves to tell the stories of old, as evidence of his days spent in the trenches battling customer service reps, and he is always game to call companies to demand replacement parts or waived fees for you if you don’t have the time or persistence; but some of the bite has been taken from his bark.
His most recent story had to do with a McDonalds, which most can identify as perhaps the least successful business on earth when it comes to filling orders correctly. Then again, paying minimum wage to grammar school drop outs isn’t the way to boost customer satisfaction. I’ve heard stories of a dead mouse found in french fries and a quarter-pounder that was delivered as just a bun. (Though that might have been a case of the worker taking the order too well, as a "quarter-pounder, plain with mustard", is what had been ordered.)
My dad was a plain eater, which was one of the reasons his orders constantly came back wrong. He never ordered anything, “with everything”, or “whatever it comes with.” While most customers gave long lists of things they wanted on their burger or sub, my dad had an even longer list of things he didn’t want anywhere near his meal.
To make matters even more difficult, he also liked Big Macs. Big Macs had a jingle unto themselves about the plethora of ingredients held within. My dad liked almost nothing about it, except the two beef patties and the extra bun slice in the middle.
“It’s better than having to eat two separate hamburgers. It’s quicker.”
So, every time he ordered at the drive thru:
“Okay, here’s what I want. I want a Big Mac. No pickles. No onions. No sauce. No cheese. And I want to add mustard.”
One of the most ornate and complicated fast food meals had devolved into a burger with mustard and lettuce; nothing worth writing a song about.
His orders never changed and I’m sure on the day in question he ordered the Big Mac just like he always had. He probably screamed into the speaker, with long full stops after each nixed ingredient, as if the drive-thru attendant was writing his order down.
“Drive around to window two, please.”
I still wonder what goes through my dad’s head right before he gets his food. As he maneuvers his car around the narrow corner of the drive thru, continuing past window one (which, regardless of the restaurant, never seems to be in operation), what does he expect of his order? Does he want something to go wrong, just to tell that story? Does he have any pre-planned material in case he gets the opportunity? Will he be disappointed if the Big Mac comes back just how he ordered it? Or, if it does, will he throw it in the garbage; content to circle around the parking lot, ordering again and again until they get it wrong?
The McDonalds worker gave my dad his change and the bag with his food.
“Have a nice day, sir.”
Immediately, like a young child tearing open a present on Christmas day, my dad starts digging through the bag. He pulls out the plastic container with his Big Mac. It pops open and my dad can smell the mistake. The top bun is lifted to reveal piles of onions and pickles and cheese. A thick coat of sauce covers the bun and drips heavy into the container. My dad stares down at it. Then up at the drive-thru worker.
“This isn’t what I ordered. I ordered it with none of this crap.”
The worker remains stoic.
“Yeah, but sir, it’s better this way.”
According to my dad, he closed the container and drove off, content to scrape away as much of the gunk as he could and salvage the meal. He says he can't explain why he didn’t argue with the guy or demand another burger. But, I suspect, the reason his order came back wrong was just too good; for once, he had nothing to say.
I don’t eat fast food much. Like I said, you pretty much get what you pay for. Poor service and unhealthy food are just about the only way a restaurant can have something as ridiculous as a dollar meal menu. But, the other day, I was in a hurry and needed something to eat in the car. Those golden arches can bee seen from a mile away. There were no cars in line for the drive-thru, so I had to make a quick decision.
“Just a second please.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
My eyes scanned over the lit up, oversized menu. McDonalds served all types of stuff nowadays. There were salads and chicken sandwiches and fish filets. I always thought of McDonalds like a compromised surrender; it’ll only cost a few bucks and it’ll be quick, but you better believe it’s gonna be greasy and bad for you. I never imagined I could get something moderately healthy there.
“I’ll have a Big Mac and a side of fries.”
Personally, I don’t want McDonalds to change. I want it to remain my last resort: a place with processed gunk that has flavor and will block up your bowels for days.
“What do you want on that?”
“Everything.”
It’s easier to just get everything, it really is. I didn’t have to check my sandwich to see if it was right. I knew it’d be a ball of ingredients sloppily thrown together. Speeding down the street to catch a light, I violently grab the Big Mac, and amidst dripping sauces and falling pickles, I take a big angry bite. I think about my dad, pushing that bank teller’s sign away and then him staring blankly down at his Big Mac, full of sauce and onions, dumfounded they could have gotten it so wrong.
If you wanted it, the world is full of things to complain about, things much more important than food or bank fees. I think my dad just wants the world to run the right way. He knows as well as anyone all the things that can’t be controlled; you might as well make sure you get what you order. We don’t all order the same things, but we should get what we want.
I take another bite of the Big Mac and find myself
agreeing with the drive-thru worker who had silenced my dad; it really
was
better this way, with everything on it, but that doesn’t mean it
has to be that
way.