THE OLD MAN
OF THE MOUNTAIN

Fast food, convenience stores...

fast? convenient?... where do I start?

First of all, these apparently have evolved into the employers-of-last-resort in our society. Common to employees of both fast food joints and convenience stores is the utter lack of any arithmetical sense. Howie Carr, a radio talk show host on WRKO in Boston even more cynical than The Old Man, delights - whenever a caller admits that he works at a Pizza Hut or a 7-11 - in testing him thusly, thereby replicating an experience everyone of us has probably had at one time or another: OK, how much is a Whopper and fries? Many fail even this first phase of the test, but - suppose they come up with the right price, say $2.84. He goes on: All right, so if I give you a ten dollar bill and nine cents. How much change do you give me back?

Rarely does the customer service specialist at any of these institutions have any idea how to figure this out. The last time this happened to me was at the nearby Cumberland Farms store. They have the best price on 1% milk, so that is where I go for that. At this particular time it was $1.89 per gallon. I plunked my gallon down on the counter in front of a lad with a shaved head, pierced nostril and baggy pants barely clinging to his hips. Next to the milk I placed two dollar bills and a dime and four pennies, the coins specifically retrieved from the change tray in my truck for the express purpose of generating a quarter in change, handy for paying the toll on one of my infrequent trips south where we country folk are inconvenienced by things such as traffic and toll booths.

In his haste the young cashier overlooked the coins and punched $2.00 into his computerized cash register as the amount tendered by the customer. The machine rang up that I was entitled to 11¢ change. Only when he was about to hand me the dime and penny called for by the digital display, did he notice the dime and four pennies still sitting upon his counter. Befuddlement wrote itself across his face, then he queried: “Did you leave these here?” I nodded that indeed I had. “What do you want me to do with them?” I troubled to explain that if he were to combine them with the change in his hand, then he could give me the desired quarter.

He was completely confused by this turn of events, but eventually took my word for it. I harbor no illusion that he comprehended what I was talking about.

Several weeks later I was picking up another gallon of milk when I was served by the same young man. No, I was not surprised to see him sporting a new name tag which indicated that he had somehow distinguished himself and earned a promotion to become an assistant manager.

My first job ever was at a McDonald’s. Admittedly this was simpler work back then, mainly owing to a very limited menu. I have always had an aptitude for math, and found it easy to commit the relevant times tables to the RAM in my head, and so could cough up accurate totals, even of complicated orders including applicable sales tax, in an instant. I was challenged by disbelieving customers more than once who insisted that I recalculate their order by hand, confident that I was some sort of burger-flipping con-man who was making up the amount of their bill.

I am sure that, in these days of more extensive menus and promotional specials introduced for limited times, my facility would have been slowed. But today of course no fast food cashier is expected to know or calculate anything. At a Burger King a while back I noticed a picture of the meal I wanted except I wanted a different drink. I inquired of the young woman whose sole purpose was to take orders and collect money from customers, What would it cost if I got a no.-whatever but substituted a milk shake for the soft drink? I wanted to make a cost comparison with another possible selection.

She shrugged that she had no idea. This apparently ended the inquiry as far as she was concerned.

Not satisfied that my question ranked up there with some of the profound mysteries of the universe that, I concede, will never be answered while I am confined to the time-space that we all currently share, I pursued the matter: Well, were I to order that, how would you know what to charge me? I asked. She replied matter-of-factly, I would punch it in.

Punching it in, you see, means locating the button bearing the appropriate symbol or picture and letting the computer figure it out.

Once I watched a very haggard trainee at one of these shops searching frantically for the double-cheeseburger-button. The stress of these positions on these fragile young minds must be tremendous.

When I reflect that the future of our society, even our planet will gradually be turned over to these barely ept people, I have to reassure myself that somewhere each of them is counter-balanced by a brilliant young mind full of energy. But then hopelessness weighs in again, as I realize he or she is designing a computer lighted up with burger buttons.

Many customers of these places are apparently not much brighter than the people who work there. More than once I have gone screeching into a drive-up, in dire need of a Coke with ice. I don’t know why, but - in spite of my parsimonious ways - and even though I know these fast food joints make an outrageous markup on soft drinks - occasionally, especially if I am on the road, I have to have a fountain-generated Coke with ice.

Anyway, many times I have gone screeching into the drive-up expecting a swift fulfillment of the simplest of orders so that I can be back on the road in a flash, Coke in hand, only to find a vehicle (don’t ask me why, but it usually seems to be a mini-van) parked in the drive-up lane, its occupants studying the menu. I can tell that they have been there a while.

What can be that challenging about a fast-food menu? Have you never been to a McDonald’s before? Did you arrive expecting to be surprised? I wonder what they have today? Or does the dazzling array of culinary delights boggle the mind? So many choices! So little time! What shall I do?

Well, my first suggestion is to get the hell out of the way and let someone who knows what he is doing order and be on his way. But generally these people sense my arrival and then creep forward to order. (I will let someone else rant about the quality of the audio systems these mega-corporations have deployed around the world.) Apparently the wonder of the experience continues, as the time consumed in the ordering process suggests to me that there are probably lengthy discussions of each entree. Tell me, how are the Chicken McNuggets today? Is the special sauce for the Big Macs fresh? How was the Captain’s catch today for the Filet-O-Fish sandwich?

There is nothing fast about fast food. And have you noticed, it isn’t even very cheap anymore. Just what is it that commends it to us?

The convenience stores of course generally have only one cash register, usually manned by a person such as I have described above. At our local Cumberland Farms store, like a million other similar outlets, this is the same register where they sell the lottery tickets.

How many times have you been in line, simply wanting to pay for the gas you just pumped for yourself or pay for that gallon of milk or six-pack or whatever item you just picked up, and had to wait there while someone, often a much older person, applies his or her special theory that will outwit probability and enrich him or herself at the expense of the lottery game?

While everyone else is waiting, this person is redeeming scratch-and-win tickets by the bale, and engaging in some sort of elaborate scheme, applying his or her secret formula to snare these riches: let me have three Instant Win Home Run tickets, and four Wishing Wells, and two of those Jumping Jamboree tickets, and half a dozen Wild West Winners Circles. And then give me a Power Ball ticket with my special numbers.

God help them if they miss a drawing and their numbers win the week they don’t buy a ticket. They would have to commit suicide. It would be the only honorable thing to do.

It would be unfair to leave this page only having skewered those who populate the fast-food and convenience store industries. Many of you reading these pages may in fact work in the so-called financial services industry, and for this you may earn some pretty decent money.

I have known some of your customers who have been turned down in their effort to refinance their mortgage in the very same week that the credit card arm of the very same mega-bank has sent them a “pre-approved” home equity line in a mass mailing; credit applications being judged according to underwriters’ formulae, rather than borrowers being judged as people worthy of the promises they make.

How many credit cards do you really think we all need? I keep a wood stove burning in my kitchen for much of the winter, and it is all I can do to kindle enough fires to consume all the pre-approved credit card offers I receive. With summer coming on, I am concerned.

The answer of course is that it is all in the numbers. Like direct mailers or e-spammers, the bank throws out so many gazillion pieces of this junk mail, knowing that some percentage will turn into customers and that such-and-such a percentage of them will default but that these poor customers will be paid for by the business from the good ones. It has all been figured out in terms of probabilities and deemed to be worthwhile.

But, if we wonder where the fast is in fast-food, and what is convenient about a convenience store, I ask you where is the service in the financial services industry? Unfortunately, the same logic applies to all of these industries. Perhaps there is an 81% chance that you will get an edible meal at your fast-food shop of choice, and only a 23% probability that you will be overcharged, and a 39% likelihood that you will spend longer doing this than you would have any sound reason to suspect. But you go ahead and give it a shot. And Wendy’s and KFC, Fleet and MBNA know that a certain amount will flow ineluctably to the bottom line.

It is all probabilities, the Heisenberg Principle gone macro.

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