There I was, and suddenly there I went, leaving the apartment and locking the door, still uncomfortably ahead of schedule. My body was going on ahead without me, without any plan to fill this useless chunk. Really it was only like 20 minutes, but with enough pluck and persistence one could change the course of history in that span of time. But it was Whatever A.M. and I didn't have the energy for either of those properties; I barely had a grasp of what I'd do once I made it to the car. Suppose I could make the journey and sit in the parking lot and dick around on my phone like a piece of shit until my shift began. That seemed likely.
And when I started my car, there it was: gas was a little low. Go get some now because I'm not gonna wanna do it after work, and that will certainly fill my excess time like a liquid in its container. Of course when I pull into the station every pump is unoccupied and my automated transaction is free of complication - the entire event takes 70 seconds. So I go inside, where the people meet; surely there's plenty to browse in there, let's see what Slim Jims are up to. I know the next zany Coke flavor is on the horizon. What brand of dishwater is Mountain Dew shilling this season? Reese's may have lumps of who-knows-what mixed into their peanut paste.
Inside this cramped space it's like a kid's birthday party at an arcade in Las Vegas on a Friday night: the lights and colors and sounds were both a sharp contrast to the anemic palette of outside and to my only-recently revived senses. There's a Dunkin' Donuts counter inside and all the hubbub that comes with that, plus all the subhuman lottery mutants and local derelicts looking to get warm, but also an array of Karens and Joe Sixpacks anxious to get their brand of fix to face another weekday.
It was beautiful and exciting - not in any ironic sense, I'm just generally attracted to any hive of human behavior that's rooted in routine or celebration. You're seeing these people do what they always do and you get to watch them respond, perhaps subtly or even habitually, to what is probably one of the high points of their day. I've been unemployed several times throughout my life and I found myself envying those who were lucky enough to slave to the grind, and I always hang onto that gratitude. This is the workforce, this is the economy, this is America, this is humanity. Without a drop of cynicism I'm both comforted and exhilarated to be part of this chaotic ritual - everyone going about their specific business, and I'm there too. Not like on any metropolitan scale; the intimacy of a small city crowd offers a more calming and uplifting sense of community - you might see someone you know, you could become a regular, but you're all part of the same ant colony with a larger probability of camaraderie.
I left with my gas and nothing else, leaving the citizens to their iced coffees and egg sandwiches. I coasted through the flurries down the road to my job -- all was quiet and dim again, I was jealous of everyone and their morning treats; I really don't do breakfast, but I could've done well with a coffee. Damn. I was physically there in the building, acting as a voyeur, too analytical to take part in the dance. And I still had time! What the fuck! What a missed opportunity that would haunt me until my death. Was this to be my major accomplishment: a lifelong regret? That'll certainly take up some goddamn time - going through the rest of my days remembering the time I almost had fun. And then it hit me like two all beef patties: I was 500 yards away from McDonald's. Of course they have coffee; fucking McCafé right? I mean it was less about the beverage and more about the social inclusiveness; it was more about the adventure in an otherwise mundane rut of an existence. Not to devalue my life entirely or what I have, but a midweek workday can make you question the existence of an apathetic universe, and to exercise Free Will in even the most teeny-weeny way is enough to prompt a worthy anecdote recounting every excruciating detail. And the details will become increasingly excruciating.
I pulled into a parking spot. I don't do Drive-Thru, for the same reason I don't like talking on the phone: I can't present myself accurately without the use of my face or hands, I don't know the appropriate volume at which to speak, I freeze up and forget that I was ever even hungry in the first place. It's a mode of stage fright that really doesn't affect me any other time and I'm pleased I have this second option. It also feels grotesquely lazy to just sit in my car and say "gimme" - I even have guilt ordering in restaurants. But it's fine, I typically enjoy going inside - not a much as I used to; now it's just a morbid curiosity to assess the deterioration of any and all pleasing aesthetic. It'd been a long time since I'd been in this cultural institution but I felt well prepared for the embarrassing dumbness I was about to embark.
It still smells the same. They all smell the same, that's one thing they've kept as long as I've been alive; always a stronger hint of coffee in the mornings, but always that base potpourri of an indeterminate sweetness and saltiness. The McDonald's smell. There were no patrons which was remarkable, and there were no visible employees which was decidedly unremarkable. I could hear them all in the back calling out monotone matter-of-fact statements, mixed with various beeping sounds and machines all whirring at a different pitch. And that's when I saw them, and I knew: these 8-foot-tall touchscreen monoliths were there to take my order. Fine. What started as a desperate attempt to kill some time, and had then turned into a joyous yearning to celebrate the simple morning customs of a working man, had now become David and Goliath. The OK Corral. Revenge of the Sith. Me and McDonald's were gonna go at it hammer and tongs.
It would be easy and kinda cute to analogize myself with the apes in 2001 but that's not how I approached it at all. These things are programmed for the burger-eating public - ergonomic difficulty was not the issue. Nor was it the "impersonal" implications that people pretend to complain about - I don't particularly crave interactions with fast food employees, no one does. But I hate them because they're not fun. They're not a clown who symbolizes fundraising support for sick children. They're not a masked thief who covets your Quarter Pounder. They're not a Happy Meal. And they infuriatingly function better than the ice cream machines. A wall of luminescent online shopping was not the pot of gold I was hoping for at the end of this beige rainbow. But I went ahead and began to build my own breakfast one tap at a time, like a flat, dull wack-a-mole game: McCafé Coffees -> Premium Roast Coffee -> Decaf -> Small -> Cream, Sugar -> No. And I was also thinkin' a hash brown, make it all worth the effort; a McDonald's hash brown is one of the most seductive, invigorating elements of being alive on this planet at this time and they don't get nearly enough airplay. Not that I was hungry in the slightest but this was a rare opportunity in my own narrative and also added some texture to this chapter. I inserted my debit card and typed my PIN. My electronic payment for my electronic breakfast had been approved. Now what.
I turned my attention back toward the counter, and there he was: a big, brutish old man with a visor and headset, standing behind the register, fixing to say something to me. He looked like a "Bernie" or a "Carmine" - I would've cast Danny Aiello in the movie version of this. He was here on some sorta Work Release Program I'm sure. Finally he found his words, "I hope you didn't order a soda cuz we don't have any. Just the Hi-C." I told him "No I didn't" which seemed to befuddle him, so after a beat he awkwardly regressed back into the maze of machinery. This was my first big interaction of the day and it fit right into the ambiguous mood that had been accumulating.
So alone I waited in their vague indeterminate waiting corner for my decidedly simple order to travel through the troposphere like Mike Teavee in Willy Wonka and eventually materialize onto the counter. I'd put my faith in these towering Orwellian smartphones that would make my food; time was running out at this point and suddenly this playful dabbling had turned into a suspenseful undertaking. I spent maybe a minute looking around at this property that was once labeled a "PlayPlace" and the sense I got wasn't "fancy" or "contemporary" but sort of cold and dirty with an amateurish attempt at accents of grassroots domesticity. It looked like a family-owned diner struggling to look proper; a pathetic coffeeshop that needed my business but had no experience. The smell said "ba da ba ba ba" but the mood was surprisingly "Eggs and Sausage (in a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)."
My coffee and hash brown arrived promptly and I brought them to my car. Inherently I knew that there would be some cautious waiting period before I could consume either of these comestibles - unless I wanted a cauterized numbness on my tongue for the rest of the day. But I was down to the wire now and I'd earned my bounty tenfold upon my odyssey of gas and breakfast.
To the touch the hash brown wasn't threatening at all; a test bite turned into a greasy, lusty consumption with no scalding steam to slow me down. No I wasn't hungry, but once that crunchy/mushy potato pancake is in your mouth, all is forgiven. I didn't care that it really wasn't all that warm, it just let me eat it faster. And like with any to go coffee I discard the baby sip cover, mostly to let the fire go out faster.
I blew on the black liquid and cautiously brought it to my lips; following suit, it was room temperature - had that room been 60°F. So here it was, my Depression Era breakfast served in the style of the time, under oppressive gray skies in a cold automobile. And as I sipped my tepid mud, the mood that had been marinating in my mind for the past 10 minutes suddenly and sharply came into focus: the candy-colored carnival of movie promotions and McNuggets was long dead (that's well established and our respect has been paid in full), but the ugly and embarrassing transformation that's been metastasizing throughout the corporation for decades isn't entirely what I (or they) thought it was.
Yes their ad campaigns feel like Zoloft commercials. Yes their architecture looks like a dialysis center. Yes their interior decor looks like a federal incarceration facility. The whimsy has wilted and withered and Mac Tonight has ascended to the celestial sphere. We know the kid stuff is gone, that song has been sung to death, but this faux upscale makeover that I've been mocking lo these many years has mutated and degenerated into something interesting - at least it had here on this morning. What I experienced was not the service of a multibillion dollar conglomerate, but rather the burnt toast and rotten eggs of a dimestore diner. Maybe it was the snow or the solitude of the looming gloominess of the 9 to 5 ahead of me, but maybe this was the new Micky D, the McCafé - one step up from a dive bar where nobody knows your name, a snackbar in a department store, a glorified bus stop vending machine. Punch the number, get your stale sandwich. They were never fancy, and that's the joke - they're still not, it's still the same garbage but with none of the stuff that used to make it appealing. As children we were given a packet of ketchup and a Batman toy and the TV constantly reminded us that it was always out there, waiting. As adults we get our depression meals from an indifferent touchscreen sent to us from the cold, now-uninhabited McWorld. Hey, it could happen. It did happen.
- Paul
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