SEE PART 1-
After taking a second to soak in the previous event, and dry my tears for a second time, I proceeded to look at the presentation of my meal. There was a burrito, and home fries. The burrito had been plopped down at one end of the plate and the home fries resembled the swept up crud that falls onto the kitchen floor during food preparation. I decided to give my meal the benefit of the doubt, so I grabbed my fingerprint covered fork and took a bite of the fries. As a Friendly Toast tradition, the home fries, surely spawned from over-baked potatoes, had a taste similar to charred cardboard with an extra dollop of lard. Choking down my first bite, I glanced over at my friends gourmet grilled cheese. It was at that moment I realized I too, should have taken the more conservative approach to the dietary delights. I looked back at the disaster on my plate and realized I had one last chance at salvation: my burrito. As I skeptically picked up, I closed my eyes to say a Hail Mary or two, and took a large bite. As an expression of utter disgust consumed my face, my waiter appeared into the picture and again glared. Distraught by the tastes that had overtaken my pallet, I broke eye-contact and looked down, crest fallen.
Having finished my Red Bull about five minutes after receiving it (due to its dwarf size) and draining my glass of water after eating the cardboard concoction, my friend spoke up and questioned "Jeez, do we not get refills of water here?" At that very moment, a giant man wearing a non-descript pastel green t-shirt, sweating profusely, reached over her and slammed a new glass of water down in front of me. Because we were focused on the aftermath of this event, it was only at the last moment that we saw the giant stomping out of the restaurant. Because he left, and didn't appear again for the rest of our dinner, we had to conclude that he was not an employee, and was merely a kind Samaritan doing his good deed of the day.
Feeling bad that the quality of our food was vastly different, my friend decided to use resources available at our table to make mine more palatable. She reached across me, taking the maple syrup in hand, and proceeded to douse my burrito with the sticky liquid. Initially, my reaction to this was annoyance (I didn't understand her intent) but then it hit me: This might have been the key all along for making the burrito edible. As I picked up the wrap for the second time, this time I smiled, knowing we had found resolve.
Although the momentary sense of elation was a breath of fresh air, the second the burrito touched my lips, I knew our plan was flawed. Again horror spread across my face, this time because I was unsure as to whether or not I was going to vomit. Slowly I chewed, staring straight into my friends eyes, to stay focused on the task at hand: To finish that wretched bite. At this point in time, our waiter had seemingly disappeared, perhaps to fetch another out of stock beverage for someone else, and all we wanted to do was vacate the premises. I had progressively built up and internalized a sense of absolute anger, so when he finally came around the corner, I lunged my body at him, as if to say "Let's throw down". His habitual expression of insanity resulted in me quickly retracting my offer to fight, to which I believe he appreciated, because the next thing that happened was out of the ordinary. He smiled, and said "Take your time" as he handed me the bill. I instantly knew why he was smiling, because we were hit with yet another task to overcome. The bill was written in some outlandish form of Pig-Latin, and we were fairly certain there were derogatory terms scribbled all over the place. Also, as I flipped it over and looked at the total, I got the sense there were multiple figures we had to choose from. "Clearly written", was 24, 35, and 43. Naturally my gut instinct was to go ahead with the lesser of the figures, but I gathered he was planning on charging my debit card whatever he wanted. When he returned about fifteen minutes later with my card (After an extensive online shopping spree, I'm sure), he gave me my receipt and did not say a word before he turned his back to me and faded away into the kitchen.
We sat in silence for a moment or two, before I signed the bill (With a generous 20% tip regardless of the circumstances, I might add), and we ran out of the building. If I were to ever return there, I would do a few things differently. Firstly, I would bring my own silverware, napkins, drinks, and food, and secondly I would be in a comatose state unable to make the rational decision to stay far, far, away from the not so friendly, Friendly Toast. read more