The Old Man and the Sea Salt

An epic struggle to get lunch

When the windows are open and the breeze is just right, the aroma of cooked meat and French fries wafts into my house. And if you’re quiet enough on a still evening, you just might hear a garbled voice croak something like, “That’ll be $15.23. Please drive around.”

You see, there’s a Wendy’s bordering my backyard. We’re separated only by back-to-back privacy fences.

I don’t eat there frequently, but about once a quarter the temptation overrides my better judgment and I stroll around the block to purchase a bag of grease and regret. If you haven’t been in a while, you should know that they’ve significantly upped their fries game.

One of the things I love about this particular Wendy’s is that when you walk out with your food, you feel like you’ve really accomplished something. It’s always a challenge.

This is by far the worst fast-food crew I’ve ever seen. They have a great time chatting among themselves back by the deep fryer, but get annoyed if you want to, say, place an order. If they shot an episode of Undercover Boss there, the CEO of Wendy’s would burn it to the ground and stick a red wig on a pike in the ashes as a warning to the other franchises.

To be fair, the people who work there are also hobbled by a remarkable lack of training.

Several years ago, Wendy’s came out with an app that let you pay with your phone. I set up an account and added some money to it. The next time I was there, I tried to pay and was greeted by a trio of blank stares. No one behind the counter even knew that Wendy’s had an app, let alone how it worked. Strange, but no big deal. I paid cash.

A few months later, I went back. At the sight of my phone they gave me the same confused looks. On the counter below them was an ad for the Wendy’s app.

It was over a year before I ventured in there again. Confident that this wrinkle was ironed out by now, I raised my phone to pay. The cashier looked at me as if I’d tried to barter for my burger with a handful of buttons.

I’ve come to terms with Wendy’s limitations. I can expect only so much from the old girl, and that’s okay. Just leave those fries the way they are and we’re cool.

But it’s because of my complicated history that I could empathize with another dissatisfied customer with whom I recently crossed paths.

Dining out

I work from home and always walk my dog, Brady, around lunchtime. Last week, on a perfect fall day, we were around the corner from my house when an older man approached from the opposite direction, carrying a familiar bag.

He said hello, so I said hello back, which was the tripwire that set off the explosion that followed.

“They closed the dining room!” he shouted.

“What?”

“Wendy’s! They closed the dining room!”

I had trouble reconciling that statement with the bag in his hand.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They told me I couldn’t order anything!”

“That’s crazy. Why?”

“Because nobody wants to work anymore!”

Oh, boy. A statement like that is what I call a precursor: the setup to a rant that’s likely to involve a lot of cursing.

“Teenagers are too goddamn lazy. I’ve been working since I was 14. I’m 80 now,” he said.

“Me too,” I said.

I am not, in fact, 80. I meant the 14 part. But that wasn’t even accurate; I got my first job when I was 15. This guy was so fired up I think I instinctively felt it would be in my best interest to relate to him on some level.

“Nowadays you can’t get anybody to work,” he said.

It’s debatable whether he would have appreciated the irony, but he was delaying me from getting back to work.

I might have just excused myself but the Wendy’s bag in his hand was still nagging at me. And it wasn’t a standard one; it was a handled shopping bag. Had he forced the crew at gunpoint to stuff it with burgers and Frostys?

He took a few steps in the direction he’d been heading, but turned back around when he realized there was more critical information he needed to tell me.

“Both of my sons started working when they were young teens too,” he said. “And I’ll tell you something else: nobody spanks their kids anymore.”

Wait, what? I swear Wendy’s pigtails on the bag swung back and forth from the whiplash.

“Kids need to be spanked sometimes. It teaches them,” he said.

“I…okay,” I said. Nailed it.

“I spanked my kids,” he said. “They turned out fine. They both make over $200,000 a year. One manages an Apple Store and the other’s a chemist.”

Now, I have no idea if these salaries are accurate, but I was impressed by the ease with which he slipped a brag about his kids into the middle of a tirade to a stranger. I hope they take him out for Father’s Day. Anywhere but you-know-where.

“I was spanked too,” I said. We were really starting to open up to each other.

Then it dawned on me that I was behaving like I was in a conversation, when what I was really in was an audience. I could have told him I was spanked with a spatula by Dave Thomas himself and it wouldn’t have registered.

“They closed the damn dining room. At lunchtime! Can you believe that?” he said.

We were moving on from corporal punishment just as quickly as we’d arrived.

“I raised such hell they let me walk through the drive-through!”

Aha!

I pictured him at what was probably the restaurant’s busiest time of day, inching his way up to the window amidst all the cars, fuming.

“Oh wow,” I said. “Well, I’m glad you got your food.”

My curiosity satisfied, I tried to think of a way to end this when he again started to turn away, then almost immediately turned back.

Before he could speak, I pointed to his bag and said, “Did you get fries? They have great fries.”

“You’re damn right I got fries. They got better fries than McDonald’s.”

“I agree,” I said. “It’s the sea salt.”

He stared at me like I’d just tried to pay him with an app.

“They added sea salt to them a few years ago,” I said. “They’re way better than they used to be.”

“I know that,” he said. “I’d fight anybody for these fries.”

“Sounds like you already did.”

He nodded and smiled almost imperceptibly.

“Well, I don’t want your food to get cold, so I’ll let you go,” I said.

He was already walking away before I finished my sentence, his lunch swinging with every step.