Rant #3,087: I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down

Remember in yesterday’s Rant when I told you the following:

“But there’s always tomorrow …

And that’s precisely what I am afraid of.”

Well, tomorrow came, and I got socked again … but a bit differently when compared with my taxes and my car.

This time, my car is once again involved, but it all leads up to nothing more than a nuisance, with not one cent coming out of my wallet.

Kia Motors has instituted a recall of its cars from about 2010 to 2015 due to a problem with these cars’ security systems, and since my car is a 2014 Kia Optima, I am in that group.

Evidently, from what I read, Kia models from those years are easier to steal than most other cars are, to the point that some car insurance providers will not insure them anymore.

Anyway, Kia has proposed an upgrade to these cars’ computer systems as a way to solve this problem, and I received the recall notice in the mail yesterday.

I already made the appointment, and yes, it is for 7:39 a.m. on this coming Monday, which fouls up a lot of things, including the writing of this column … which I am going to have to skip for the third Monday in a row.

It also compounds my day, because my mother has a doctor’s appointment later in the day, so I will basically be running from the Kia dealer to the doctor’s appointment.

I don’t like bringing my car to the dealer for anything, because it takes about twice the time to fix something there as it does in a local car place.

But with this being a recall, I really don’t have a choice with where I have to bring the car.

And I have bad feelings about this dealer because of how they “fixed” my problem when I had my original door jamb problem a year ago.

They told me that they couldn’t do anything there, the door would have to be taken off, etc. … and when I brought the car to a local body shop and the problem was fixed in about five minutes, the mechanic rolled his eyes when I told him what Kia told me.

This is the same dealer that I have brought three cars from in the past, so I felt that they did not go the “extra mile” for me in that situation … but I really don’t have a choice this time around.

Hopefully, I will get out of there in less than two hours, and I can be on my way to the doctor’s appointment and whatever else confronts me on that day.

And again, I make the following comment:

“But there’s always tomorrow …

And that’s precisely what I am afraid of.”

I seem to be in that “can’t win” mode, where no matter what I do, it somehow comes out wrong.

One good thing is that my son is OK after his dental surgery, and with the precautions he is taking, it will be little more than an afterthought that he even had this procedure done as the week unfolds.

He pulled through fine, and my wife and couldn’t be happier.

So at least that went well … everything else in my life seems to be topsy-turvy at the moment.

And again, I keep on telling myself …

“But there’s always tomorrow … “

Unfortunately, I then think the following:

And that’s precisely what I am afraid of.”

Why is this happening the way it is?

I have no idea, but I need a break here and there … and I do mean a break, not new brakes like I had the other day, but a real break.

One can only hope … .

Rant #3,086: Always Tomorrow

Like last week with my taxes, this time around, I got hit again with an exorbitant fee that happily, I can pay, but unhappily, takes a huge bite out of my bank book.

I went for my yearly car inspection yesterday morning, and boy, did it hurt!

On top of the inspection, I needed one of my car’s rear brake lights replaced, and more costly than that was that the car needed front brakes, too.

Pair all of that up with the registration fee and an oil change that I also needed, and the total bill came out to more than $600.

It is an almost nine-year-old car, so there really is nothing you can do about it but again, pay the piper and get the heck out of there in one piece.

So I did just that, paid the bill and got the heck out of there.

As I was driving home, for the first time in a long time, I was actually thinking about applying for the service station credit card that was being offered.

I do not have any credit cards … we had some financial nonsense a few years back, and my wife and I simply got rid of all of our credit cards.

We have debit cards, but that is about it.

If I had the store credit card, I could have paid for today’s work with that card and then paid it off each month at a rate of my discretion, so it might have been easier to handle it financially doing it piece by piece rather than in one fell swoop.

And strictly because it is a store credit card, I would never be tempted to charge anything else on the card, because this particular card is simply geared to service station purchases and nothing else, so I would not add charges to the card anywhere but this service station.

Honestly, I am still thinking about it, but for today at least, what is done is done, and I really can’t look back.

Happily, I have been prudent with my money, and back-to-back taxes and auto bills won’t kill me altogether, but boy, is it still difficult!

And what makes things even worse is that we are a grand total of six days into the month, and I won’t get paid again until at least April 1, so I will just have to manage with what I have for the time being.

Yes, it is called “April Fools’ Day” for a reason, and this year, it is on a Saturday, so it will make things a little bit more difficult for me.

But what can I do about it?

Nothing, that’s what.

You just have to pay the piper, and then move on.

Here are the lyrics to the classic song “Money (That’s What I Want)” by Barrett Strong, and yes, those lyrics are ringing so true for me early in March … my ears are ringing as I think about it.

“The best things in life are free
But you can keep them for the birds and bees
Now give me money
That's what I want
That's what I want, yeah
That's what I want

Your lovin' gives me a thrill
But you're lovin' don't pay my bills
Now give me money
That's what I want
That's what I want, yeah
That's what I want

Money don't get everything it's true
What it don't get, I can't use
Now give me money
That's what I want
That's what I want, yeah
That's what I want

Well now give me money
Money
Wow, yeah, I want to be free
Oh I want money
That's what I want
That's what I want, well
Now give me money”

Yup, fits me to a “T” today.

But there’s always tomorrow …

And that’s precisely what I am afraid of.

Rant #3,085: Black and White

I am sure that you heard that New York legislator George Santos is now, finally, under a House Ethics Committee probe into his background, the lies he told to the public to get elected, and most importantly, how he has handled his finances.

They will eventually get him on the finance side oft things—how he got his money and how he distributed it—and within time, he will be forced to resign.

If there is any other verdict, it will demonstrate that the House of Representatives cannot police its own—Santos or anyone else, Republican, Democrat and Independent—and it will send out a horrid message to a public that is already enraged about its politicians and the bypasses they receive for ridiculous behavior.

We have learned through this case that you can lie all you want to the public about just about anything, but when the lies also include how you handle campaign money, you are entering into another area altogether.

I told you this weeks ago, and I also told you that Santos will come out of this pretty well in due time.

I guarantee that a little while after he resigns, one of the news networks will pick him up as a commentator, he will be offered millions to write a book about his experiences, and that book will become a best seller, leading to a movie about his life.

You couldn’t make up a work of fiction about someone who did what he did, and anyway, this case proves the axiom “truth is stranger than fiction” without a shadow of a doubt.

Now that I handled all of that in the first part of today’s Rant, I am going to talk about a subject that only came into my brain after I wrote yesterday’s entry, about the changing of words in classic novels, and how some people are so thin-skinned today about just about everything.

I am going to take you back to the year 1968, one of the worst years in our country’s history, when two of our leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, were both assassinated at the height of their powers.

I was just 11 years old during this year, too young to fully grasp what was going on but old enough to know that there actually was something going on in my world.

I was in fifth grade, going into sixth grade, during that year, when my family and I lived in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, New York, a still relatively new mixed-race neighborhood smack dab in the middle of Jamaica, one of the oldest and most established black neighborhoods in the nation.

At 11 years of age, you are kind of in the middle—you have one foot still in childhood, and the other foot is inching up to your teenage years.

I vividly remember that year for all of its craziness, and I also remember that year for one song in particular as part of this discussion we are having.

James Brown was a fixture on radio during those years, with hit after hit after hit coming out and his music being played incessantly on the airwaves on both traditionally black stations and white AM radio.

He was thought to be a leader of black Americans, with his success that stemmed from his music … and it just so happened that during those years, he did not live too far away from where Rochdale Village was.

In the fall of 1968, just in time for schools to open and me, personally, moving up a grade in school, Brown came out with the anthem “Say It Loud-I’m Black and I’m Proud,” which ended up reaching the Top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Chart soon after it debuted.

Without going that deep into the lyrics, the song was what we would call “black empowerment” today, urging black youth of that time period to be proud of who they were and to never look back.

Here are some of those lyrics:

“Look a’ here, some people say we got a lot of malice
Some say it's a lotta nerve
I say we won't quit moving
Till we get what we deserve
We've been booked and we've been scorned
We've been treated bad, talked about
As just as sure as you're born
But just as sure as it take
Two eyes to make a pair, huh
Brother, we can't quit until we get our share
Say it loud,
I'm black and I'm proud”

Brown lived nearby, and his promoters passed out big buttons for the black kids to our community to wear, and many wore these buttons, proclaiming “Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud.”

These buttons were distributed to the kids who lived outside the development and who went to the same schools we did; I honestly do not remember any of the black kids who lived in the development wearing these buttons.

Anyway, the kids who had them wore them to school, and oftentimes when us white kids would walk by them with their buttons hanging from their shirts and their jackets, we would get punched for having the “nerve” of being there and walking past them with their buttons proudly dangling from their clothing.

It wasn’t all the kids with the buttons who did this, but we knew to avoid those kids who took those buttons as a reason to punch us.

I am sure that this was absolutely not the intention of Brown when he composed the song, but that is what happened during those days at P.S. 30.

At the time, answer songs were very popular. These songs pretty much were what they were advertised to be, that being knockoffs of the original song, but from a different viewpoint.

So you had answer songs to Roger Miller—“King of the Road” became “Queen of the House”—and there were answer songs to whole load of popular songs done by the likes of Gary Lewis and the Playboys to the Monkees.

So yes, there was an answer song to “Say It Loud-I’m Black and I’m Proud, and if this song was released today, people would get hysterical.

The song was called “I’m White-I’m Alright” by Vic Waters and the Entertainers, a nondescript all white 10-member show band based in Tampa Bay, Florida, that caused not a big noise, but a whimper, with this answer song to Brown’s big hit.

The song never charted, pretty much came and went without much fanfare, although it has emerged on a number of blue-eyed soul compilations in recent years.

Again, without going into the lyrics that deeply, you have not lived until you hear the lead singer emote the following:

““I’m light, white and out of sight.
I ain’t tan but I can jam.”

Unlike what we would think in today’s world, this answer song had nothing to do with white empowerment, with white supremacy, with whites being better than blacks.

It was simply an answer song that actually honored the original with its lyrics, basically stating that “white boys can sing funky” too.

So the band might have been a bit tone deaf to what Brown was stating in his song, but they meant no harm, and their heart was in the right place in sort of a funny, strange and funky way.

You can find this song and of course, Brown’s song on YouTube.

Give them each a listen, and you will firmly see that we aren’t in 1968 anymore, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Once again, I have a very early appointment of Monday, so the next time I will speak to you is on Tuesday.

Have a great weekend, and please think of my son, who has his dental surgery tomorrow.

Nothing else matters to my family and I but the success of this surgery, so let’s all keep our fingers crossed that everything is copacetic and that the outcome is a good one.

I will tell you all about it on Tuesday.

Rant #3,084: Words

Two recent announcements by book publishers have really irked me, and they should get your dander up too.

The publishers of Ian Fleming’s series of James Bond novels and the publisher of the works of Roald Dahl have each announced separately that these classic books, such as “Casino Royale” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” are going to be edited and rewritten to accommodate current times.

Certain language and imagery will be removed from these classic novels, and what is taken out will often be replaced with more current “culturally appropriate” language and imagery.

In past times, various public and private groups—and even some parents—have demanded that certain books be removed from school and public libraries because of their supposed vulgarities, including “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Native Son,” and “Manchild in the Promised Land,” and even when these groups have succeeded in getting these works removed, publishers of these works of art have stood behind these authors and novels, and the bans have been ineffective and short-lived.

Well, apparently not in this current case—the publishers themselves are “cleaning up” these works on their own accord.

This is is just so wrong, but that is what you get when “cancel culture” and the “woke” part of our civilization gets their way.

Take James Bond, for instance.

Look, even in the earlier films of the character, like “Dr. No,” what you got on the screen—where most people know the character best—was a cleaned-up version of how Fleming originally wrote of Bond.

Bond was merciless, looked down at everyone in his path and treated them as such, and treated women as simply things to deposit his seed into and little else.

He was brash, used guttural language and words we won’t repeat here, and really was nothing more than a “legal” mercenary, as he killed people under the aegis of the British government.

The books portrayed the Bond character more accurately than the movies ever could, and seeing the movies only gave one a sense of the character; to get the real feel of who Bond was, you had to read the actual Fleming novels.

With the current decision to clean these novels up for this current generation who squeals at any blemish—no matter big or small—made by earlier generations, publishers themselves are becoming censors—quite different from “editing”—and that is not a job that they should partake in, no natter what pressures they are getting from this “weak” … err … “woke” generation to do just that.

This is a generation that is just so thin skinned about everything, but as an editor/writer, I believe in changing these books, which have been around for generations, you are losing the glimpse that these book provide of a different time and place, a look back that we can all learn from.

And the thing that I don’t get is that this generation is so thin-sinned and gets upset at everything that is not their way, yet they, themselves, do not seem to get too upset at the music they listen to, which is full of filthy language, misogynistic themes, and is often racist in scope.

Why is that? Why go after earlier generations when your own “art” is so repulsive?

The publishers claim that the original books, as they were written, will still be available, so what is the point of having a cleaned-up version and an original version on the same bookshelf?

Who would want to read a cut version of a classic novel when you can read the real thing?

I simply don’t get this whole controversy, and with the publishers actually the ones changing the words of writers who are no longer with us to defend their craft, it makes for something of a travesty, almost akin to the Nazi book burnings of 80 or more years ago.

And that the publishers are the willing participants … they are supposed to be wordsmiths, not butchers of the words that these great writers put on paper for all of us to see.

This is really scary, because once you get James Bond whittled down to nothing, you will see many other books and series of books likewise “cleansed,” and that is not a good thing for our culture and our world.

You might be able to think you can change history, but as long as one unexpurgated book of a cleansed series exists, you will never extinguish the fire, or the imagination, of the authors that wrote down those words in the first place.

Rant #3,083: Signed, Sealed, Delivered

My family’s taxes …

Let me talk about them first, to get that out of the way, and then, I promise you, I will talk about something that is much better and much more positive than paying the government—state and federal—money via the taxman.

If you remember in yesterday’s Rant, I spoke about the crazy and busy days I have had leading up to our visit to the taxman, and things continued in a downward spiral for myself and my wife when we found out how much we had to pay the piper.

Our son made out fine, which we pretty much expected.

He is getting back money from both the federal and state government, which is a far cry form last year, when he initially got little back from either.

In fact, I think he owed the state a little bit … but it was all rectified later in the year, when the tax laws were updated and he received money back—two checks if I remember correctly—to atone for the updates of the various tax codes related to people in his situation.

So we are happy that our son did well this year. He works hard, does not make much money, and should not be paying exorbitant tax rates.

Now for my wife and myself …

We also don’t make too much money, in particular because we are both retired … err … semi-retired.

Not only do we get Social Security—which is taxed, if you didn’t already know that—but we both have small jobs where we do make a miniscule income.

And that is taxed too.

We don’t have many write-offs—I do have a few business expenses that I can write off, related to supplies that I need to replenish that relate to my editor/writer’s job—but we don’t own anything—like a house—and quite frankly, we are prime candidates to be taxed, even though we make a smidgen of what we made when we were working full time.

So we got zonked again, not as bad as last year, but bad enough.

My wife was all upset, and I was too, but I explained to her that I am through being that upset about the whole thing … if people like us are taxed the way we are, then yes, the laws are unfair, but go fight city hall.

It ain’t worth it.

Just pay the piper and move on.

The most heinous thing is that Social Security is taxed—monthly and yearly—so senior citizens have to pay tax on money that at least in our case, we desperately need.

It is unfair, but nothing is going to be done about it—40 years ago, then Senator Joe Biden was a major proponent for, and pushed for, Social Security to be taxed, and it has been for the past 40 years or so, which somehow gets lost in all his bravado about how his administration helps senior citizens.

My wife and I are considered “middle class,” and if you are in that group, you have to pay a ridiculous amount of taxes, because the “lower class” and “poor” do not pay their share and the rich … don’t get me started.

So when “migrants” from outside the country come here, and New York City and State brag that they are being accommodated by receiving “South American meals,” you just know who is paying for that.

And it isn’t Michael Bloomberg or other wealthy New York Staters.

So rather than get all upset about what we have to pay each and every; year, just do it and move on.

And that is what we did.

Now for some better news … but the better news is mixed with a bit of trepidation.

Our son has an abnormality that he inherited through me, which I inherited through my maternal grandmother.

It is related to tic de la roux syndrome, a malady which impacts the face and jaw and teeth, related to facial movement.

My grandmother suffered through this greatly, with her entire face hurting her for days at a time.

Filtered down to myself and my son, it prevents us from fully opening our mouths, which for me, has been no big deal—as a teenager, I remember my jaw popping when I tried to open my mouth wide, and dentists always implored me to open my mouth wide when they were/are working on me—but for my son, it has become a bit of a big deal, as he has it a bit worse than I do.

Since like me he cannot open his mouth fully, dentists have a very hard time in treating his teeth, and in turn, he also has a tough time with brushing and keeping his teeth fit and clean.

So since his problem is way worse then mine, he has had two adult teeth removed, because they are too far gone for dentists to work on, and he must get another one removed, and this will happen on Saturday morning.

He came out of the other two dental surgeries very well—the last being in 2020-- and we expect him to come out of this one with flying colors.

A minor aside to all of this is that since the work is being done on Saturday, he will miss his bowling league that day.

But his league allows those bowlers who know they will miss a day to make up the games on their own time, and my son did just that yesterday.

After work, I took him to the bowling alley, and he bowled two games to make up for the two that he will miss on Saturday.

His team is in second place, just a few points out of first, and doing this shows full allegiance to his team and to his teammates.

Well, even though my son was probably tired from work, he bowled the two games … and I mean, he really bowled the two games.

I have said this numerous times but I am going to say it again: disabled people are not to be thrown into the garbage pail like my son and so many others have been, even by members of the medical establishment; they can do incredible things if given the chance to do so.

I still remember that one doctor—recommended by the school district, of all people—who, after about a five-minute session with him, declared our son was ready for the scrap heap at five years of age. She deemed that he would go nowhere in life, and that we should be prepared for the worst.

Well, that only made my wife and I—and our son—prepared for the best, and he has never disappointed us.

He has worked since he was 15 years of age and currently holds a job, and demonstrated why you should never fully believe what even a supposedly educated doctor tells you about anything.

Want further proof of that?

Our son—who again, this idiot of a doctor said would be little more than a vegetable in life--made up those two games yesterday by bowling his heart out.

The first game, he bowled a 170, including four strikes in a row during the middle of the game.

The second game, our son continued to defy his couch potato prognosis by bowling a 216, his high game ever, a game in which he threw three strikes in a row during the middle of the game.

So I am sure his 386 total pins for the two games—over his average 272 in two games in the league—will help his team on to victory on Saturday, and maybe even help vault them into first place.

I cannot relate my family’s tax experience to my son’s bowling experience in any way other than the way I just did.

My wife and I know that he will get through this latest surgery in great shape, and he will continue to astound us by beating the odds posted for him by a doctor who should have had her license suspended with her completely errant appraisal of him.

I guess to sum everything up, when you put your mind to something, you can do it and come out OK, whether it is paying exorbitant taxes, bowling the game of your life, or getting through dental surgery.

Let’s leave it at that.

Rant #3,082: Some Guys Have All the Luck

Well, here I am, I am back at my usual perch, and I am a bit brow-beaten, but otherwise, my usual critical thinking, old fogey self.

Yesterday was a difficult day, and a long one for me, but before I get to that, the craziness actually started on Saturday … and yes, it had to do with another fast-food experience.

As you know, I go out on the weekend to bring in food for my family, and I did just that this past Saturday and Sunday.

Really nothing out of the ordinary happened during Sunday’s food outing, but it sure did on Saturday.

As part of my food travels that day, I went to Boston Market. My wife likes their chicken, and they have recently reinstituted turkey offerings, so I have what to eat there too.

So I go into my local Boston Market, there are two people in front of me, so I wait patiently until they can take my order.

The two people ahead of me ordered ribs and turkey and non-chicken items, which did not prepare me for what was about to happen.

It was finally my turn, and I said the usual for my wife’s order: “Half chicken white meal to go.”

The server’s response was this: “We have no chicken.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said, but then I looked at the spits that they have at the back of the counter, and lo and behold, there was nothing on them.

Boston Market not having chicken is like McDonald’s not having hamburgers, Arby’s not having roast beef, and a Chinese take-out not having egg rolls, and this was on a Saturday night yet, a busy night for the chain.

And there were no signs up about this, no warnings, nothing out there to alert customers.

I called my wife, ordered turkey for both of us, and then as I was paying, another younger guy came in, and when he heard they had no chicken, I thought he was going to literally explode into nothingness right before me, as his reaction was such that it was almost like he was having a root canal right then and there without the use of anesthesia.

I paid, went to the soda machine to get a Coke, and lo and behold, not only did they not have chicken in this restaurant, but they didn’t have Coke either.

That completed my food journey for the evening with a loud thump!

I did contact the company about this, and here is the empty response that I received:

“Greetings Larry

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We  would like to apologize to you for your most recent visit at your local Boston Market. We take great pride in providing our guests with the best experience possible. It was very disappointing to hear this was not the case during your visit.

Unfortunately, our suppliers and our distribution center is experiencing shortages that is affecting many business nationwide.  This is leading to menu shortages as well as late deliveries from our distribution center which is beyond our control.  While we understand how frustrating it may be for our guests, it is equally frustrating for us as well.

We hope you’ll visit us again, and give us another opportunity to show that we’re committed to providing you with an extraordinary experience.

 Boston Market Corporation”

Yup … I will have a better chance at getting a chicken meal there if I go out and shoot the bird myself.

Then yesterday was tax day, piled onto everything else I had to do that day, including taking my mother to the doctor and getting a small problem with my car fixed.

The small problem actually started on Sunday morning. I went to the supermarket to pick up a few things for my mother, and once again—and for the first time in many months—I noticed that my front driver door was closed, but on the dashboard, it was saying that the door was open, which is a little problem that becomes a big one when you can’t use some of the inside security features of the car with the door “open”—and with inspection right around the corner.

So I panicked, went to a couple of auto body places on Sunday morning, but even those that were listed as being open actually weren’t, so I had to wait until Monday to take care of this.

I made an appointment at Firestone, in the meantime, where an attendant in the store told me that “they couldn’t do the work” on Sunday because they were backed up, but could do it on Monday, and a woman on the phone gladly made me an appointment for Monday morning at 7 a.m.

I went to Firestone yesterday morning, and the attendant told me, in no uncertain terms, they did not fix door jamb problems. I asked him why two people told me that they did, and he did everything but literally pick me up and throw me out of the store.

What was I to do?

I went to the auto body place that fixed this problem all those months ago, waited an hour until they opened, and when they opened, I told them my problem … and they remembered me, and fixed the problem, and did it at no charge!

I gave the guy who worked on it a tip, and I was off to the races.

And then we had our taxes to do … .

Rant #3 081: I Know Where It's At

Perseverance and panache, that is all it takes.

Confronted with complete ineptitude, I kept my resolve, stayed on my course, and I got things done.

Yes, my battle with local fast food franchises and their lack of care at the drive-through window continues.

Last Saturday, I did what I always do on the weekend, which means that I go out to bring in food for my family and for my mother, and I also do this on Sunday.

I do it to give a break to my wife, who cooks our family food during the week (not for my mother, but it also gives my mother a break, giving her something else to eat than the usual stuff she eats).

But on this particular Saturday—one of many weekend days and other days that this has happened to me—not everything went smoothly at the drive-through window when I went to get us something to eat …

And it is an occurrence that has definitely increased exponentially since the coming of the pandemic.

I have personally found that the lack of a strong work ethic during this period has grown to epidemic proportions, whether at the drive-though window or in government offices.

My experience is that on more than one occasion, I have not received the food I have ordered through the drive-through area of just about all the fast food outlets that we use—Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell and to a much lesser extent, McDonald’s.

I have also had some other problems with the drive-through process; as you know, a few weeks back, one of the workers accidentally dumped three big cups of soda in my car while trying to hand me an already broken drink caddy through the window.

But let’s bring this all up to date …

I went to Wendy’s. made my order, picked it up at the drive-through window, and sped home with what I thought was my full meal—

And I got home to find that we did not get what my son wanted, which was a 10-piece nuggets meal.

I had a sneaking suspicion that the order was going to be messed up, because the girl that I gave it to seemed preoccupied when I told her the order, giggling and laughing and talking to her fellow co-workers when I relayed the order to her.

When I got to the window to pay and pick up the order, she—and I noticed that she had a big earring in her nose, and I mean the biggest earring in someone’s nose that I have ever seen--was still seemingly pre-occupied, initially fouling up my drink order, and after I asked her, “Is everything in there?” meaning in the bag that she handed me through the window, she insisted that it was.

I called up the establishment, got who I thought was the manager on the phone, told her the problem—mentioning the girl with the huge earring in her nose--and she said that she would write my name in her “book” and that, at my urging, I would get my full order replicated—my son’s missing order and everything else I ordered—when I came back to the restaurant during the week.

I was agitated, because as I said, this has happened many times during the past couple of years or so, including at this place, but at least I would receive my order again at another time.

Yesterday turned out to be a busy day for myself and my family, so I figured it would be the perfect day to pick up the order.

I did my food shopping, and on the way home, I stopped off at the Wendy’s to pick up the order—with my receipt in my hand.

I got there, told them through the drive-through why I was there, and the woman taking the message seemed to be completely befuddled as she told me to drive up to the window.

Here is how the conversation went as I arrived at the window:

She: “Look, I am the manager here, and I don’t have any recollection of you supposedly getting your entire meal redone.”

Me: “I spoke to a woman who told me she was the manager, and she said that I could have the entire meal over again, because this has happened here several times to me in the past.”

She: I AM THE MANAGER HERE, NOT HER (Editor’s Note: She did raise her voice, not screaming, but to a visibly annoyed level), and I was not told that you should get the entire meal once again.”

Me: Look, this was our agreement, because it has happened several times at this location.”

She: BUT I AM THE MANAGER, and this was never communicated to me by the other person, who is actually the assistant manager.”

Me: It doesn’t matter, This was agreed upon between the two of us.”

She: “But—“

Me: “Look, if you won’t give me the entire meal again, then I am just going to have to report you.”

She: “But—“

Me: “I am just going to have to report you. Simple as that.”

Saying that got the manager into motion, and I got my full order and drove away content … and yes, when I got home, it actually was the full order.

I have found that telling a fast food restaurant that “I am going to have to report you” is akin to the days of yore was fighting one thing or another due to my rights as a parent being violated with school districts who did not want to deal with me as a custodial parent of my daughter without physical custody, or even more recently when I was fighting government bureaucracy, and you tell whoever you are on the phone with—

“I will get a lawyer and sue you.”

They don’t want to hear it, the fast food place doesn’t want to hear that they will be reported, and everything pretty much turns out hunky dory when you are pretty much forced to utter those respective magic words.

And it worked again yesterday.

I have become so used to not venturing inside fast food restaurants since the days of the pandemic, and whether I do go inside, or make my order on the outside, I am still paying the same U.S. greenbacks for my order to be fulfilled to the letter.

So, if I am missing an entire portion of what I ordered—and paid for—because the workers are having a jolly old time while at work, they won’t do it at my expense, period.

And if this type of incompetency happens to you, take a page from my book … it is a small victory, for sure, but you pay for something, you should get what you paid for.

Looking ahead to next week, I have an extremely busy day on Monday—it is “tax day” for my family, among the many things I have to do that day--so I will have to skip the Monday Rant.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Tuesday.

And don’t forget to always stand up for your rights, whether the situation is a small one or a large one.