8.06.2009

Brunch

I hate mornings. Always have. In a perfect world, I would wake around noon and go to sleep around 2:00 a.m. Unfortunately, I live in the real world, and on days that I work I have to be there at 7:00 a.m. And I am the late person. Uh, huh. Some other poor sucker actually has to come in at four-thirty IN THE MORNING, and we are there for thirteen hour shifts. It is not ideal, but I get four days off a week, so it's tolerable. Of course, on those four days that I am off, I sleep in. 

Which brings me to this morning. Once in a very long while, when the stars align just right, there is something that gets me out of bed before ten-thirty on a day off, but is not something that is so early that I am flying like a bat out of hell to get to it on time. What is significant about ten-thirty? That's the time that McDonald's stops serving breakfast. So on a lucky morning like this one, I make an extra-special effort to leave my house at about 10:27 to get to my friendly neighborhood McDonald's just in time for a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. This morning, I was feeling particularly generous and offered to get my mom something. When I got to the drive-thru and saw the breakfast menu I was elated that I'd made it on time. This is what I ordered: 

A #3 with Sprite for me (bacon, egg and cheese biscuit)
And a #12 with Diet Coke for mom (bacon, egg and cheese bagel) 

I should have known that something was wrong when the voice on the other end asked me if I wanted barbeque sauce with that. I did pause and carefully reassess what I was ordering for my mom since it wasn't my usual. I declined the BBQ. This is what the voice thought I ordered: 

A #3 with Sprite (which AT LUNCH is a quarter pounder with cheese)
And a #12 with Diet Coke (which at lunch is chicken McNuggets, hence the BBQ) 

When I realized this, between paying for and receiving my food, I brought it to the attention of the extremely intelligent-looking girl at the window. A manager came over and interrupted, saying that my order wasn't ready. I started over trying to explain to her what I thought happened. She was unnecessarily rude, and I felt myself starting to morph into phase two of my confrontation self. Phase one is extremely friendly and understanding. Phase two is when I hit assertiveness. Three gets downright bitchy and haughty. I don't know what happens in phase four. I am usually to lazy to pursue something that hard. I explained to her that I wanted to not only make sure that I got the breakfast that I ordered, but that I paid the correct amount. She told me to pull ahead, and they would take care of it. This is what I left with 25 minutes later: 

A Sprite
Two Diet Cokes
A bacon, egg and cheese biscuit
A bacon, egg and cheese bagel
A steak breakfast burrito 
Two hash browns 
An order of fries

My mom and I tried to think of someone we could invite over for an impromptu breakfast date, but we just ended up saving the Coke for later, splitting the fries and sampling the breakfast burrito, but throwing most of it away. I am waiting to see my card statement before I decide if this story has a happy-ending. I might have paid $22 for my breakfast, I might have paid $10. I might have even got the whole thing for free. The suspense is killing me.