I stumbled into a scene at a McDonald’s restaurant yesterday that reminded me of this bizarre Ralph Steadman illustration from Hunter S. Thompson’s epic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
As I walked to the counter to place my order, I noticed a young woman in McDonald’s uniform loading numbered balls into a tumbler for bingo. Then I scanned the restaurant and saw it was mostly full of senior citizen types – considerably older than I – who had bingo cards before them. Checking my watch, I saw it was a few minutes before 2 p.m. and surmised that bingo starts there at 2 o’clock.
The crowd quieted after the first couple of numbers were called in a slurred accent that at first baffled my Yankee ears. I then became aware of another young woman in McDonald’s garb pushing a big plastic trash container on four castered wheels across the tile floor going the length of the restaurant and making no effort at all to minimize the horrendous racket she was generating. She made at least three such trips across the restaurant, making it difficult – if not impossible – to hear the numbers being called.
And then there was the loud-mouthed fat guy in his 60s who either had a hearing problem or was just an obnoxious moron – I couldn’t tell which – who seemed to be doing his best to drown out the number caller.
According to a report last summer by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Arkansas ranked 10th in the nation in obesity with 28.6 percent of the population being seriously overweight. And, as you might suppose, that percentage was even higher at McDonald’s. Throw in some startlingly ugly faces and you have a truly bizarre, chaotic scene.
Serves me right for thinking I could enjoy a quiet lunch at McDonald’s.
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