Hi y'all,

How did I make this story even better? I pictured Paul Harvey doing it.

(ok, ok, ok --- from yesterday's Onion...)

Fast-Food Purchase Seething With Unspoken Class Conflict

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA--Resentment, anger, and pity were among the emotions mutually felt by Burger King employee Duane Hesketh and customer Robert Lalley during a class-conflict-laden transaction Tuesday.

According to sources, at 4:22 p.m. PST, the upper-middle-class Lalley approached the working-class Hesketh's register at the Beach Boulevard Burger King to order a meal. The two men instantly became locked in an icy showdown of mutual loathing and disrespect, each resenting the other and everything he represents. For the next seven minutes, the age-old conflict between the haves and have-nots was played out in a passive-aggressive verbal exchange that betrayed no trace of the roiling vortex of bitter hatred that lay just beneath the surface.

"May I help you?" Hesketh asked the golf-loving, SUV-driving financial planner standing before him. Without making eye contact with the mulleted cashier, Lalley replied, "Whopper Jr., large fries, and a large Diet Coke."

Hesketh, who as Lalley ordered was "thinking about how maybe I should get my G.E.D.," stared blankly at the cash register, stunning the customer with his inability to carry out the most basic instructions. As an irritated Lalley repeated his order, Hesketh made an effort to suppress his anger over being forced by economic circumstance into a life of blue-collar servility and mindless, soul-sapping repetition. He expressed this resentment by acting as if he'd failed to hear Lalley's order, asking three times, "Did you say fries with that?"

The conflict deepened when Hesketh rang up the order incorrectly.

"Eighteen dollars? That can't be right," said Lalley, his weak-chinned face, conservative haircut, and business-casual attire repulsing Hesketh. The cashier's mind then wandered to the upcoming getting-high-after-work-in-the-parking-lot-with-Shawn-and-Joe ritual that constitutes one of the few moments of pleasure in his largely intolerable life.

"Huh?" said Hesketh, putting Lalley's middle-class Baby Boomer liberalism to the test by forcing him to realize that he deeply despises the blundering ineptitude of the uneducated.

"Christ, I've seen trained chimps respond to verbal cues better than you," the stone-faced Lalley did not say aloud. "If you were one-tenth as good at your job as you are at slouching around in baggy pants, you'd probably own the whole fucking Burger King corporation by now," he opted not to add, instead toying anxiously with his Citizen watch.

Hesketh then told Lalley that his order would have to be voided and rung up again.

"Maybe you should ask someone to help you," said Lalley, struggling to resist the overwhelming urge to grab his social inferior by the collar and smash his vacant head into the cash register until one or the other cracked open.

Eager to antagonize the despised customer, Hesketh continued to putter, spending two minutes fumbling with the "void" process before mumbling to Lalley that he would not be able to refund the money until the manager opened the register.

"I'm sort of in a hurry," said Lalley, welling with a mixture of rage and pity for the acne-riddled wage slave on the poor side of the counter.

When the error was finally corrected, Hesketh began to gather Lalley's food items as slowly as possible. The food-gathering process was further stalled when, waiting for the fryer timer to run down, Hesketh received a cell-phone call from his ex-girlfriend. During the 90-second conversation, Lalley said he heard the words "Camaro," "the baby," "have to be in court that day," and "the other baby."

"What kind of inbred dolt wears $180 shoes to a job where he walks around in grease all day?" Lalley asked himself while watching the futureless 23-year-old stand by an empty metal rack, waiting for the Whopper Jr. to arrive from the grill area. "Especially when he barely makes minimum wage."

At no point during the seven-minute transaction did Hesketh pick up a burger and grind it into Lalley's face. Nor did he drop his pants and wipe his ass with his cap, or give in to his intense desire to set the kitchen on fire. Lalley showed equal restraint in resisting the urge to scream or repeatedly snap his fingers in front of Hesketh's uncomprehending, mouth-breathing face while yelling "Hel-lo? Hel-lo?" in a comic exaggeration of a developmentally disabled person's voice.

Despite driving both participants into near-apoplectic rage, the exchange ended without incident.

"[Lalley] finally got his food," said Huntington Beach resident Janis Monroe, who was waiting in line behind Lalley. "Then he huffed and walked out. Actually, he did say, 'Thanks,' but he was being sarcastic."

After finally getting his food, Lalley retreated to the Burger King parking lot, where he joylessly consumed the Whopper Jr. in his Ford Explorer rather than dine in the restaurant and spend another second in the presence of the doomed souls inside. Hesketh, meanwhile, retreated to the walk-in cooler, where he smoked a cigarette and pilfered cheese slices in a vain attempt to restore some of the dignity of which he is regularly stripped.

"This sort of situation is unavoidable when you have such a disparity in earning potential," said Dr. Art Hermann, author of Consumer And Consumed: Class Conflict In Our Market-Driven Postindustrial Society.

According to Hermann, such inter-class run-ins occur roughly 600 million times a day in the U.S.

"And a large portion of those 600 million incidents," Hermann said, "will be at the hand of Phillip, the arm-dragging troglodyte who bags my groceries down at the Safeway."

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), August 02, 2001

Answers

Jesus. This story hits too close to home.

Although in my reality I wasn't allowed to work the register...Wonder whatever happened to Shawn and Joe?

[Nice to see ya, Eve.]

-- Rich (living_in_interesting_times@hotmail.com), August 02, 2001.

Hey, Rich -- :)

And it's even worse when you order fries and they're staring (open mouthed with a little drool starting to collect in a corner) at a friggin' PICTURE of fries on the button and STILL can't figure it out...

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), August 02, 2001.

But you know that Hasketh spit in yuppie-Lalley's coke. OTOH, anyone who wears a mullet deserves their fate.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), August 02, 2001.

Will this lead to "fast food rage"? More than just the clash of the classes, I think it's about people just being angry all the time. Employees in the service industry don't believe in service anymore. (Yeah, I know I'm making sweeping generalizations.) I don't know how rudeness became acceptable (road rage goes beyond rude) but we're reaping the rewards for it. Just a different slant on it.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), August 03, 2001.

Maria, talk about rude (from the customer end, anyway) -- I swear this one's for real; it's old, but I'll try to look up the story somehow. Anyway, a guy once went into a McDonald's, held a gun to the cashier's face, screamed that he wanted a burger "RIGHT NOW", got it immediately from a very nervous cashier, PAID for it and left!

Good thing he didn't want anything too complicated -- like a happy meal.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), August 03, 2001.

Hi, all.

One of my favorite movies is "Falling Down" starring Michael Douglas, Barbara Hershey, and Robert Duvall. There is a scene where Douglas, near the breaking point already, enters a burger joint and has to pull a machine gun to get his order. It's a classic.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), August 03, 2001.

I know the story referenced here was supposed to be humorous, but it hits home. I've always held that the greatest danger to our society isn't war or crime, it's class-consciousness.

To me, it seems that since about 1950, maybe before, class warfare has been promoted in America. I don't believe this to be a war in the conventional sense, and no conspiracy is needed, just plain greed and lust for power.

The advertising companies were among the first to exploit the fairly recent sciences of psychology and mass media appeal (reference Marshall MacLuhan/Vance Packard). They realized through research that if they targeted their advertising to specific groups, they could increase sales. That targeting didn't merely involve promoting the product, but also promoting animage of those who purchased the product. Although such a method seems benign enough, taken to its ultimate conclusion it would have a shattering effect upon a population who would ultimately be utterly Balkanized by such treatment.

It wasn't long after the ad companies started using this research to sell soap and cars, that political entities began using the same methods to "sell" candidates and ideologies. This created chasms between the electorate where before there had been only the minutest of cracks. For the political establishment this polarization had a wonderful side benefit, in that populations that are divided are much easier to rule. They were putting into practice what Hitler's propaganda minister, Goebbels, had stated years earlier: "Don't tell people what to do; tell them who they are and they will eat out of your hand". Nazism was "sold", and very effectively I might add, to the German people by this method.

The effect that this targeted marketing, both commercial and political, has had on the country has been very damaging. Many people will strive very hard to maintain the image that they have of themselves, even if that image is a false one. That the image is one contrived by those who would use it for gain does not enter into the matter for the individual.

I believe that almost every form of civil unrest, class warfare and to an extent, racial strife in America in the last half-century can be laid at the door of the puppet masters who pigeonhole various segments of the population, and essentially brainwash them into believing that they are who they are told to be.

I may be wrong-headed about all this, and maybe I'm making too much of it, but it seems to me to be a large factor in why there is such division in this country.

-- zipperpull (*@*.*), August 03, 2001.

zipperpull, I agree with you.

-- Cherri (jessam6@home.com), August 03, 2001.

Lalley's mistake was ordering three items. That's too many for a clerk to remember. He should have just ordered the Coke and burger. Then Hesketh could have asked him if he wanted to add fries and a dessert. Employees get recognized when they can increase an order.

-- John Littmann (johntl@mtn.org), August 04, 2001.

I just remembered that great reataurant scene with Jack Nicholson in "Five Easy Pieces". I've rented the film just for that scene.

-- John Littmann (johntl@mtn.org), August 04, 2001.

***And it's even worse when you order fries and they're staring (open mouthed with a little drool starting to collect in a corner) at a friggin' PICTURE of fries on the button and STILL can't figure it out...***

Eve, I'm surprised this came from you. Try walking a mile in their shoes, if you dare. And let's just add to the generalization and stereotype that already repulsively exists, shall we {major eye roll}

*** Lalley's mistake was ordering three items. That's too many for a clerk to remember. He should have just ordered the Coke and burger***

John, what you don't seem to realize is that many of those "stupid clerks behind the counter" are often sleep deprived students who are working sometimes several jobs to pay their way through college and toward their degrees...because perhaps they didn't happen to be born into well-to-do families. Your condescending comment shows just how completely ignorant and oblivious you are.

Tolerance and respect for everyone should be taught in the home from an early age. How sad that it isn't.

-- (cin@cin.cin), August 04, 2001.

PS...I did try to ignore this thread...really I did =)

-- (cin@cin.cin), August 04, 2001.

Go get 'em tiger!

-- It's a beautiful thing (hee@hee.hee), August 04, 2001.

There is nothing wrong with being a "hamburger flipper". Generally it's not a career position. Typically it's a starter-job for young people and/or for immigrants or an ender-job for old people. It's not a class thing. You will never build a worker's revolution on that notion.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), August 04, 2001.

I agree with Cin on this one.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), August 04, 2001.

What irks me is how people can act shocked as hell when their rudeness is returned back to them. Kinda scary looking into a mirror sometimes, huh?

-- oh no you got me going LOL (cin@cin.cin), August 04, 2001.

cin and all, I'm sorry -- I really didn't mean anything derogatory towards fast food workers in general by my comment and article. Most of them are wonderful workers and should be very much appreciated.

My comment was only directed towards those few who are undertrained, don't know what they're doing and really have no business being behind the counter until they can at least handle orders with SOME competency.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), August 07, 2001.

zipperpull,

Nice post. My take, though, is that ever since communistic ideas had proven their bankruptcy in spades (through the almost worldwide collapse of communism), the left has substituted race and gender for class, continuing its tribalistic premises in its war on Western civilization.

It's a long, complex story, but Hitler got his ideas from Plato, then Kant, then Hegel and a host of minor characters; less Nietzsche than one might think. See "The Ominous Parallels" by Leonard Peikoff, recommended by the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

And we went from fast food to Hitler and Nietzsche already! Oy, vey! (wide-eyed, open mouthed, palm on cheek)

(Btw, you don't do an "Oy, vey" with both palms on both cheeks -- unless you're part of a Munch painting or the "Home Alone" kid -- THEN I guess it's ok)

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), August 07, 2001.

Eve: I think a major part of the problem is that people are pressed for time. You probably have a set time for lunch and quickly drive/walk to a fast-food place. You EXPECT instant service because you NEED instant service or you'll be late returning to work.

I have a lot more time than money, but I DO tend to visit at least one local store every day. I know all the clerks by name and they know ME by name. We exchange pleasantries each day and take a few minutes to just discuss inanities. If any of them see me at the end of a long line they call to me and open another. I don't think we realize what ICONS these people become in our lives until one day we notice that one of them is no longer there. He/she either moved on and got a better job somewhere else, or [gasp] he/she died.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), August 07, 2001.

Anita, your point about being pressed for time is very well taken -- the logical extension being that the more pressured we are the more "incompetent" we could perceive someone to be. So there's definitely a psychological element. Hmmmm...NOW I wonder to what extent this psychological element has gotten hold of me.

I've never been hot on fast food anyway, so I don't have this gotta- lunch-fast pressure -- I don't eliminate fast food entirely, but I'm VERY big on cereal and fruit, which I usually bring to the office -- many times I eat small servings here and there during the day, with no formal lunch. "Noshing" as we say in yiddish.

Well...plus once in a while I add some stuff from my Y2K stash. Yeah.......including my seemingly inexhaustible supply of cans of.....of......of.........ohgawd, I still can't bring myself to "say" it, but to give you a hint, there's a Monty Python skit on it. And it ain't the cheese one.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), August 07, 2001.

They have Spam Lite now, so you don't need to feel guilty anymore.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), August 07, 2001.

FYI...

It is NOT your servers responsibility to get you fed and to the airport in enough time to catch your flight

Try getting up and/or leaving earlier

-- (guess@who.), August 07, 2001.