Sonic and Sadism
Working a menial job is a philosophical experience the likes of which few other jobs afford. As I believe every American should spend a week in jail, I also believe every American – from every walk of life – should work a job at a restaurant, preferably a franchise like McDonalds or Sonic. When people eat fast-food, you see them as they really are. They drop all pretentions because they believe they are amongst inferiors, forgetting the cardinal rule of true Aristocratic virtue that you behave even more mannerly among inferiors than among equals. But, so it goes.
You don’t have to be a forensic psychologist or political philosopher to devolve, rapidly, from an idealistic altruist to the most depraved misanthrope when you see the great masses of America with their pants down on a daily basis. You see some truly sadistic shit. So, I’m going to write a few essays about my experience as an insanely over-qualified fast-food cook. Like Ben Affleck on Dogma, I’m releasing years of pent-up aggression against base stupidity and selfishness.
Anyway.
There’s always some ass-hat who wants his food fresh. Usually, almost always – actually – they come through the drive-through and will not, on the pain of death, pull over to a parking spot while you cook their processed horse-shit right there on the grill for their discriminating pallet to enjoy the way it fucking should be, as God intended fast-food to be always and forever straight off the grill. This makes all the other customers, who couldn’t care less when their food was cooked as long as it’s somewhere between not-rotten and reasonably warm, wait for the ten odd minutes while our foody’s Double Super Sonic Bacon Cheeseburger is cooked on the grill, his fatty fries dropped ab initio in fresh goddamned grease, his milkshake made from the best pure breast-milk of the most virginal angels. Why this fop isn’t eating at a five-star restaurant where he could sit and enjoy a live band and have a drink of whiskey while a professional staff of trained chefs make his meal, well—nothing beats a Sonic burger made under these ruthless conditions.
Because, you see my lovelies, it isn’t the actual food he enjoys, but the pleasure of inflicting inconvenience on as many people as he can, from the cars behind him, to the staff, to the pitiable people in his car with him. The taste of a piping hot Sonic burger isn’t what incites him; it’s the taste of power, which the business style of fast-food restaurants affords, of him becoming a micro-tyrant in this one little sphere, where he – as the entitled customer – can for one brief moment enjoy the power of a king. So make no mistake: the people who behave this way don’t do so because they demand high-quality fast-food, which only an idiot would, but the much more refined taste of pain, which is clinical sadism.
And do you still wonder why people won’t wear masks?
There’s also the customers who live in an alternate reality where, by sheer bitchy force of will, try to alter an unfixable situation. I’ve seen customers come back, to the one Sonic I worked at, no less than five times within a twenty-four hour period for hot-wings we were waiting on a truck to deliver. That’s some straight-up physical dependency on some goddamned Sonic hot-wings.
I’ve seen mothers come in and order chicken nuggets, then when told we were out, demand the car-hop come out to their car and tell their little baby-batter brats that they won’t be getting chicken nuggets today as a reward for making straight As on their Kindergarten report guards. “You ain’t getting chicken nuggets bitch. Life sucks. Best you learn it now.” I’ve seen people peel out and crash into things when they learn we didn’t have cheese sticks. I’ve seen people threatened with legal action over not being able to produce, with spontaneous generation, some item on the menu the litigious customer could easily get at another Sonic a few miles away.
In perhaps the most debased display of human behavior I’ve ever witnessed, there was one time when a fuse on the dressing station blew out and caused a lot of toxic smoke to envelop the kitchen. It wasn’t that bad, but one of the managers had a bad reaction and passed out on the floor. We called 9-11, of course, and an ambulance came. So, here you have the entire team, all outside and looking worried as shit, while a team of paramedics put our manager on a stretcher, with an oxygen mask over her face, lights flashing on the ambulance, and here comes up this woman, no fucks given, to ask quite sincerely “Are ya’ll still open?”
Naturally, anyone with a functioning brain would pull up and see the ambulance and crises situation and think, “Well, shit’s going down here. Might as well go to McDonald’s.” A McDonalds, I shit you not, less than a hundred feet away. But no. You can’t chock an act like this up to pure stupidity. Even pure dumbness has it’s limits. What this person was really saying, and quite unashamedly too, was “Hey – so, I know like someone might be dying, but I’d really like a double-cheeseburger right now and if it’s not too much of a bother…”
But that’s just the tip of the ice berg.
It should, however, come as no surprise why I haven’t been exactly shocked at how people have handled the pandemic.
It’s just more of the same.
Spengler -- was right.
We're all going to die.
Working a menial job is a philosophical experience the likes of which few other jobs afford. As I believe every American should spend a week in jail, I also believe every American – from every walk of life – should work a job at a restaurant, preferably a franchise like McDonalds or Sonic. When people eat fast-food, you see them as they really are. They drop all pretentions because they believe they are amongst inferiors, forgetting the cardinal rule of true Aristocratic virtue that you behave even more mannerly among inferiors than among equals. But, so it goes.
You don’t have to be a forensic psychologist or political philosopher to devolve, rapidly, from an idealistic altruist to the most depraved misanthrope when you see the great masses of America with their pants down on a daily basis. You see some truly sadistic shit. So, I’m going to write a few essays about my experience as an insanely over-qualified fast-food cook. Like Ben Affleck on Dogma, I’m releasing years of pent-up aggression against base stupidity and selfishness.
Anyway.
There’s always some ass-hat who wants his food fresh. Usually, almost always – actually – they come through the drive-through and will not, on the pain of death, pull over to a parking spot while you cook their processed horse-shit right there on the grill for their discriminating pallet to enjoy the way it fucking should be, as God intended fast-food to be always and forever straight off the grill. This makes all the other customers, who couldn’t care less when their food was cooked as long as it’s somewhere between not-rotten and reasonably warm, wait for the ten odd minutes while our foody’s Double Super Sonic Bacon Cheeseburger is cooked on the grill, his fatty fries dropped ab initio in fresh goddamned grease, his milkshake made from the best pure breast-milk of the most virginal angels. Why this fop isn’t eating at a five-star restaurant where he could sit and enjoy a live band and have a drink of whiskey while a professional staff of trained chefs make his meal, well—nothing beats a Sonic burger made under these ruthless conditions.
Because, you see my lovelies, it isn’t the actual food he enjoys, but the pleasure of inflicting inconvenience on as many people as he can, from the cars behind him, to the staff, to the pitiable people in his car with him. The taste of a piping hot Sonic burger isn’t what incites him; it’s the taste of power, which the business style of fast-food restaurants affords, of him becoming a micro-tyrant in this one little sphere, where he – as the entitled customer – can for one brief moment enjoy the power of a king. So make no mistake: the people who behave this way don’t do so because they demand high-quality fast-food, which only an idiot would, but the much more refined taste of pain, which is clinical sadism.
And do you still wonder why people won’t wear masks?
There’s also the customers who live in an alternate reality where, by sheer bitchy force of will, try to alter an unfixable situation. I’ve seen customers come back, to the one Sonic I worked at, no less than five times within a twenty-four hour period for hot-wings we were waiting on a truck to deliver. That’s some straight-up physical dependency on some goddamned Sonic hot-wings.
I’ve seen mothers come in and order chicken nuggets, then when told we were out, demand the car-hop come out to their car and tell their little baby-batter brats that they won’t be getting chicken nuggets today as a reward for making straight As on their Kindergarten report guards. “You ain’t getting chicken nuggets bitch. Life sucks. Best you learn it now.” I’ve seen people peel out and crash into things when they learn we didn’t have cheese sticks. I’ve seen people threatened with legal action over not being able to produce, with spontaneous generation, some item on the menu the litigious customer could easily get at another Sonic a few miles away.
In perhaps the most debased display of human behavior I’ve ever witnessed, there was one time when a fuse on the dressing station blew out and caused a lot of toxic smoke to envelop the kitchen. It wasn’t that bad, but one of the managers had a bad reaction and passed out on the floor. We called 9-11, of course, and an ambulance came. So, here you have the entire team, all outside and looking worried as shit, while a team of paramedics put our manager on a stretcher, with an oxygen mask over her face, lights flashing on the ambulance, and here comes up this woman, no fucks given, to ask quite sincerely “Are ya’ll still open?”
Naturally, anyone with a functioning brain would pull up and see the ambulance and crises situation and think, “Well, shit’s going down here. Might as well go to McDonald’s.” A McDonalds, I shit you not, less than a hundred feet away. But no. You can’t chock an act like this up to pure stupidity. Even pure dumbness has it’s limits. What this person was really saying, and quite unashamedly too, was “Hey – so, I know like someone might be dying, but I’d really like a double-cheeseburger right now and if it’s not too much of a bother…”
But that’s just the tip of the ice berg.
It should, however, come as no surprise why I haven’t been exactly shocked at how people have handled the pandemic.
It’s just more of the same.
Spengler -- was right.
We're all going to die.