It’s no small surprise that I eat a lot of fast food.  I wake up at 5AM, start working and pretty well don’t quit until some time in the evening.  McDonald’s for breakfast, maybe Wendy’s for lunch and anywhere for dinner.  But in all of that, I don’t get napkins unless I ask for them, the usual reply being a sulky, eye-rolling, “Here!”  Most of the time, I don’t notice until I’m already back on the Interstate.

     It’s seriously impossible to eat a Wendy’s triple with cheese without napkins, unless you’re one of those weirdos who enjoys being covered in grease.  It takes at least four napkins.  McChicken?  One napkin.  Double Whopper?  Two napkins.  Arby’s Beef & Cheddar?  One.  Add barbecue and Horsey Sauce?  Three.
     But do they put any in the damn bag?  Not in 2007.

     It changed fast, too.  Right on up to New Years Eve, there was no shortage of Napkins.  I’d have thirty or forty in every bag.  But sharply on January first, that sort of excess stopped.

     The Napkin Shortage has been stressful not only for food-covered consumers, but for the drive-up workers themselves.  One incident of a worker’s traumatic stress, at Wendy’s on Emory Road, particularly stands out.
     “Can I get some napkins, please?” I asked.
     The girl rolled her eyes, huffed and slammed the window shut.
     Eventually the Manager came to the window.  “Is there a problem with your order, sir?”
     “I’d just like some napkins, please.”
     “Can you please pull up, sir?”
     “Why?  I’d just like some napkins, please.”
     “Ok, well, if you’ll pull up, someone will bring you some.”
     Pull up … For napkins?
     It apparently took several minutes to locate a napkin.  When the girl finally came out — nearly ten minutes later — she brought one napkin.
     “Uhhhh, sorry, but I need at least two, please,” I said.
     She huffed, rolled her eyes, and stormed back inside, never to return.

     The most common Moonbat Conspiracy Theory dictates that this Napkin shortage was caused due to McDonald’s bringing back the McRib, causing a tenfold increase in the use of fast food napkins.  They claim that this move was a way to crush the competition by consuming all of the napkins meant for use at other fast food chains, so that McDonald’s would be the only place to have any.  However, this Theory is easily discredited due to the facts that other fast food chains have different colored napkins, and McDonald’s themselves are affected by this blight as well.
     Other conspiracies abound, some more radical than others.  Typically, President George W. Bush gets blamed for this shortage by liberals.  The Knights of Ku Klux Klan blame illegal immigrants.  And, of course, the Neo-Nazi Skinheads blame the Jews.

     As consumers, however, the best thing that we can do is remain vigilant in the face of this adversity, and hope that shortage will end soon.

     You can drink at every place in Knoxville.

     But no matter where I’ve been — what country, even — there’s not a single person who can say, “Hey, that guy only had four drinks, and he is smashed!”

     It’s not an alcohol tolerance thing, mind you, but a great human truth: some people can drink, and some people cannot.  I don’t have a spelling or grammer checker on this blog, for instance, and I screp up a lot.

     *snicker*

     (If you saw that, good on ya, mate!)

     My reasoning is, every time bartender hands me a drink, I pull a coin outta my left pocket.  I know damn well I need to watch how many, and I’m not stupid.  I’d like to get home — without killing anyone.

     Tonight’s poison: One Milk Stout (which was blah) and three Bombay Sapphire and Tonics.  I like those.  Knoxville didn’t even have Bombay Sapphire before I came back home.  I’m a damn trend-starter.

     It all comes down to this …

     I’m ready to go home.  I don’t want any more.  I’ve had 3.3333333(inf) drinks.  Yes, Two Bombay & Tonics and one Milk Stout (of a brand I’m not sure of, because it was suggested).  Cool.

     It was Happy Hour, meaning $1 off Mixed and Beer before I got there.  I drank a gin & tonic and a Milk Stout before happy hour, and a couple of Bombay & tonics after.
     However …
     I dropped my drink beside someone I trust, and walked to seat next to her, and started talking to some guy … Next thing I know, my drink is gone (that’s where the two-thirds of a drink came in).

     I told the bartender, “Dude, my drink’s gone.”
     “How much did you have?”
     “Like, two thirds … I wasn’t finished, but I need to go, anyway.”

     He walks away.  Starts talking to another bartender.

     She asks, “How much was in there?”
     “About two thirds, but I need to leave anyway.”

     She pours the glass damn near full of Bombay Sapphire, and tops it off with tonic.  I don’t want that.  I just wanna go home.
     And she brings me a $30 check.

     “Hey… this isn’t right… and I don’t want this…”
     “Why not?”
     “I only had four drinks, and the last one got taken.”
     He quickly disappears, talks to the female bartender again, and I get a check for $24.  And a new drink.

     Next thing I know, I’m into an argument with a regular/employee, who’s the reason we went to the damn place anyway….

     “I didn’t ask for another drink,” I said.
     “Yes, you did!  I work here —– You’re being a dickhead!” he says.

     Sorry, but no.

     I can be called an asshole all day.

     But the first time a bar employee/bouncer/karaoke DJ calls me “dickhead” when I’ve done nothing to instigate it, it’s time to find another bar.

     I was being nice.

     And … Hey … Turns out …

     The guy calling me a dickhead?  Never told anyone he works there.  He’s said he does Karaoke a couple nights a week.  But, hey … this was a Wednesday night.  So it’s economic thing, is it?

     Thanks, asshole.

     (Oh, and Bartender who had his power usurped?  Got a $5 tip.  Wasn’t his fault.  A mistake he could handle, and didn’t have a problem with me.)

     Pirate Word For Healing —-

     NEXT!

     Tonight, as usual, I tried to have a good night, hanging out with the Pirate Chicks.  I like them.  And, overall, they give me great insight.

     But…

     Our place-of-choice was, as usual, sub-optimal.  This required me to go to the bar on many occasions to get our drinks, because the service was, typically, sub-optimal.

     And what should happen, just before I left, if one of the servers didn’t come and sit down at our table, telling us all her hopes and dreams, about how she’s going to be a clothing designer?  She’s so much better than “this place?”  How she’s going to move away from Knoxville, and get a “real life?”

     And when I offer her a bit of advice, she says: “I’m not gonna sit around here talking to some f&*#ing bald guy!”

     Let’s see …

     Waitress?

     Old enough to be her father?

     Experience, maybe?

     Already been to the countries she dreams of visiting?

     Know more people than she ever will, most probably?

     No.  Doesn’t matter to her.

     *shrug*

     Long story short, bouncer, bartender, and both of them told me I didn’t do anything wrong.

     “She’s drunk, dude, and being a bitch.  Sorry, man.”

     “I am so sorry, and I don’t know what happened, but you’ve always been sweet to me.  And you’ve — Oh, Thanks!”

     *shrug*

     It’s all about Customer Service, to a very large degree.  Don’t insult your customers.  And if you do, apologize.

     And if you’re a drunken idiot, at least have the couth to say, “I’m drunk.  Bye.”

     Wish I could drink while I worked … *rolls eyes*

     I’ve had this HP Pavilion 513W sitting here for a while now, but when the guy first asked me about it, it would lock up when it attempted to load the AGP driver — even in safe mode.
     Now, I don’t make it a habit of working on Home machines for obvious reasons, but I know him, and was pretty sure of what was going on with it.  Told him I could take a look at it, but in the meantime, he wanted to see what HP said.  Apparently, he and his father decided to do a system restore, erasing all of his data.  Still, each time it got to Disc 6, the system would stop writing to its 80GB Hard Drive and halt.  Given all that, I was reasonably sure the restore CD’s were scratch just bad enough to quit working.

     After finally locating an HP Operating System disc and trying that, I realized the machine would never boot into XP.  I changed the hard drive to no avail.  I changed the memory, power supply, and even the CPU, and it still kept happening.

     Today, just for a test, I unplugged the Combo CD-RW/DVD that came with that particular Pavilion.  To my amazement, the system booted right up, no problem.
     Confused, I plugged up a Sony DRU-14A DVD-RW and the original 80GB drive, and XP Home is installed just perfectly (on a drive which previously complained intermittently).

     Eventually, everthing was right.

     Or so I thought…

     The next hurdle was Windows Activation.  After a half hour on the phone with Microsoft Customer Service, they gave me a key required to activate Windows XP, and everything was good.

     This is why I don’t work on Home machines … Strange things happen with Home computers that never happen on Business machines.

     I wonder what’s gonna happen when he upgrades to Windows Vista next month?