Place: Hardee's
Lunch: 1/3 lb Thickburger (no tomato), "Red Burrito" taco salad
Oh look! Hardee's has a new logo. THAT'LL solve all their problems...
The help here is overwhelmed. They can't keep up with the orders. They're reviewing and double-reviewing everything to make sure they're putting the right stuff on the right trays. They're confused. And there's probably four sets of customers in the whole place. Maybe three at the drive-thru...two of which haven't ordered. I count five working staffers, but two of them are on break.
Almost everybody who goes through the drive-thru while I'm there wants the same thing...the 2 for $3 quarter pound cheeseburger special advertised on big posters in the windows. They all get the same response from the help..."We're out of those." Some of them just leave, some of them order something else. And some who order drive off after waiting at the window for what I'm sure seemed like an eternity.
I suppose I could wonder aloud why a chain is offering a quarter-pound cheeseburger special when they don't offer quarter-pound burgers on the regular menu in the first place, but I won't.
When the food DID arrive, it was the correct order. The burger was hot and delicious. The taco salad could use some improvement. The taco meat was stale and dry. It was still pretty good, I guess. And the front line girls are SUPER nice and very apologetic to everybody about the wait. Most of the customers are visibly, if not verbally, annoyed. Except me. I have nothing going on today. I can take a nap. Do you have any pillows? Of course, not silly. You don't even have any quarter-pound burger patties.
You expect thunderstorms in the Midwest, but you expect them in the summer. At 11:30pm on January 1, we had a thunderstorm that rumbled for more than a half hour. Thunder, lightning, and rain. The first thunderstorm of 2006 happened on New Year's Day.
This is going to be one strange year.
