Dear Sir, Madam, or Other Designation Decided Upon by the Time You Receive This,
On May 16th, 2019 at approximately 4:24 PM, I found myself in the drive-thru line at McDonald’s in Oconomowoc, WI. I had just ordered a Big Mac, medium fries, and a medium iced mocha with non-fat milk. After hearing the total from the clerk who told me to go to the second window, I assembled my payment. Finding exact change, I was simply ecstatic to get rid of a mound of coins. I felt so fortunate, so lucky. Birds were singing, children were laughing. I couldn’t wait to see the look on the clerk’s face!
When I pulled up to the window, I thrust my hand filled with various nickels and dimes into the opening. However, instead of taking my pile of currency, the clerk said, “Everything was taken care of, sir.” As I’m accustomed to these transactions simply involving money being taken from my fingers, my arm just hung in mid-air as I said, “What?”
“Oh, the customer ahead of you took care of your bill.”
“What?!”
“They paid for your order, sir. Isn’t that nice?”
“But…uh…why?”
“I don’t know why, they just did. Your order will be right up.”
As I realized what was going on, I suddenly had the only appropriate reaction I could have: sheer anger. How dare you, you mystery “do-gooder”! You thought that you were being a wonderful charitable soul and yet I’m the dumbfounded schmuck left sitting there with a mittful of change.
You think it was easy to count out that change? Do you? That I was able to do so while dealing with the guy behind me riding my bumper as if I somehow controlled the flow of the drive-thru lane is a miracle in and of itself! And to have exact change to boot? You understand how rare that is, right? The odds that the precise combination of denominations would just be sitting there are astronomical. But did I get to take advantage of this cosmic opportunity? Nope.
Somehow I still had to grab my beverage and my food bag with a change-laden hand. I wasn’t planning on holding any change, you dickweed! Now I have to magically come up with the dexterity to dump the coins into my pocket while behind the driver’s seat and grab my food and drink? As I attempted to maneuver with this array of coinage, sure enough it happened. I dropped two of the quarters between the seat and the door, hearing a sickening metallic clunk on the way down. Well, I’ll never see those again. They’re gone. Lost in the black hole under the seat. Sure, some car wash guy or random mechanic will make out like a bandit discovering that buried treasure one day. But not me.
Of course, being the giving happy-go-lightly vacant soul that you are, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t just simply use that fistful of dollars to pay for the order of the guy behind me. Like I have any idea what he ordered! He might be getting food for his entire construction crew or his makeshift jug band and my comparatively paltry amount of drachmas certainly wouldn’t have made enough of a dent in that bill. Besides, why should I pass along the continued bad will you’ve sown like an evil Johnny Appleseed? It was a selfless act on my part to let your reign of insensitivity end with me!
You might also ask why I didn’t just give that change to the Ronald McDonald House. Because this McD’s only has the donation box at the first window, which I was asked to pass, remember? Yeah, so stick it, Captain Benevolent. Did you want me to go back into the drive-thru and attempt to dump my money into the box without causing inconvenience to others, all the while unsafely driving with a handful of coins? Yeah, you probably would love that. Look, that iced mocha ain’t gonna stay iced forever. I don’t have that kind of time. Besides, how dare you try to shame me!
Come to think of it, was there something with my appearance that made you think that I couldn’t afford the meal I selected? So I don’t shave for three days and automatically I’m a pitiable street wino that can even rub two quarters together to make fifty cents? Apparently you’re right, because my two quarters ended up lost underneath my seat, you stupid prick!
Plus this was a chance for me to get rid of some of this hefty change in an effort to increase my car’s gas mileage and decrease my carbon footprint at the same time. But now the coins never left, making my car heavier than I planned, which caused me to burn more fuel. “Pay it forward”? Huh, more like “Pay for it later by propagating a Greenhouse Gas Hell of a Planet to live on”! You jagoffs are always living in the short term, never seeing the big picture.
It is apparent that the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. I can only hope there’s a tollway, because I probably will have exact change for the booth, you bastard.