By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--January 8, 2024

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This all began about three weeks ago. I’m not a “fast food” customer all that often, maybe once a week or a little less. Of course, it isn’t really fast food anymore, either. Still, I like to go there on a whim or as a little treat now and then. I usually go inside because I can check what I get before going back to the car.

I go to the counter in the oddly remodeled building. The order area is disorienting now, not familiar, not logical somehow. The lighting doesn’t seem quite right.

I go to the small, very low counter. Some one comes from around the corner to help the person who is ahead of me, but he is told they want him to order at the kiosk.

So I take the hint and I go to the kiosk for the first time. I want an egg biscuit, an item I have ordered face-to-face many times all across the country, that is always a bit unusual and requires clarification to get it right. I look on the kiosk at the breakfast menu. It isn’t there. I look further. No where to be seen. I say half out loud, ‘well, this is just bee-ess.” A 20-something employee walking in at that moment doesn’t look my way, but laughs at me, then disappears behind the counter. Nobody offers to help. I give up at the kiosk and walk over to the odd counter. I wait maybe 20 seconds (it seems longer) before someone comes around, again from out of sight, and looks at me. She doesn’t ask if it’s in-store or carry out. She makes that decision. I volunteer that I’d like an egg biscuit.

“Anything else,” she says in a monotone, and with just a hint of attitude. Yes, I say, and an egg mcmuffin. I get the total, again in a monotone. I slide in the card, and in about four seconds, I’ve paid and put the card away. She disappears. About 15 seconds later she reappears, bag in hand. She hands it to me, saying nothing. “You’re welcome,” I say to her back as she disappears again. I leave. There is no one else in the seating area. Outside, there is a small but steady line of cars in the drive-through. I brush it off as a ‘kids today’ moment, forgetting about the expectation that I start at the kiosk.

Then just last week I’m running behind schedule on a trip into town. Just in time, there’s a Mickey D’s. It’s past my lunch time and I like my routine, so I pull in, this time to go through the drive-through. That’s right, not the ‘drive-thru,’ but the drive-through. I don’t have to wait long before pulling up too far to put in an order because the speaker is behind me to the left now, the order board ahead. I’m in a Honda sedan, so I’m looking up at the board. The first thing I hear is “Will you be using the app today?” I’m a foot too far forward and it’s a speaker, and I wasn’t ready for the........

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