Had a late dinner at Shakey’s with nyx tonight and noticed some funny things about the place. None of them were interesting enough by themselves to warrant an article, but put em together and whatta ya got? This shit right here, that’s what.
Now Shakey’s has been around for ages in the Philippines, and they haven’t really made any waves with me regarding their service. That is to say, their waiters are basically the same morons waiting tables in pretty much any restaurant in this godforsaken country. These retards aren’t born; they’re grown, by golly.
Recently, whoever makes the big bucks over in Shakey’s HQ decided that their waiters needed tweaking. Obviously, growing brains where there isn’t space for a pack of rubbers wasn’t going to help them any, so they decided to teach them to talk fast instead. I suppose they figured, if they talk fast enough, no one will notice there’s nothing happening between their ears.
So for awhile, this scheme worked. Whenever I went to Shakey’s I’d be greeted by “Goodmorningsirsmokingornonsmoking?” and “TablefortwononsmokingThiswaypleasesir.” Kinda like C3P0 except with an Ilocano accent. It was amusing at first, but after I noticed I started eating faster too as a result, it started getting annoying.
When we returned there this evening, one of the first things we noticed was the noticeably slower talk speed on our waiter. It still all sounded like he was reading from an invisible cue card, but it was almost … normal, now.
One exchange in particular stood out for me:
NYX: … and one solo cheeseburger pizza.
WAITER: Maam would you like that thin or thick crust?
NYX: Uhm, thin.
WAITER: (brief pause) I’m sorry Maam, but we dont offer cheeseburger pizza with thin crust.
LUIS: Right, so why the hell were you even asking, fuckwad?
I made up that last part. Nyx was pinching me before I even got a word out, but that was what I wanted to say anyway. On hindsight, I guess it’s better that I kept quiet because the milkshakes in that place are such that a disgruntled waiter could dip his penis into it any number of times and a customer would never know the difference. Brr.
To make up for his Utter Stupidity, our food arrived after only about 4 or 5 minutes. I wasn’t even finished making fun of him yet.
Now the cheeseburger pizza nyx ordered was an interesting piece of culinary architecture. It had the expected mozzarella cheese and beef bits of course, but on top of that, it had green leafies and copious amounts of an orange substance. I may just be old-fashioned but I’m always a bit perturbed when pizza parlors take the concept of “cheeseburger” too far and start adding ingredients that normally aren’t supposed to appear on a pizza. Upon closer inspection, the mayonnaise-like substance turned out to Jollibee burger sauce. For the unfamiliar, Jollibee burger sauce is our Favorite Fast Food’s attempt at coming up with an interesting new condiment, which is basically just equal amounts of ketchup and mayonnaise. The result is this sickly fleshy-orangy muck that they lather on to their cheapest burgers and serve to the uninformed masses, for a measly ~16 bucks.
Anyway, this self-same sauce found its way on to our Shakey’s cheeseburger pizza. I suppose this is a testament to how much Jollibee has enfused itself into our culture, given that even our concept of a burger has changed to match Jollibee’s. The pizza was average, in case anyone is wondering.
On our way out, we both paid visits to our respective comfort rooms and I was a bit surprised to see that my regular comfort room (the one for Handicapped customers) had been converted into a staffroom. I was understandably upset at this, because I loved that comfort room. You had complete privacy, all the toiletries that the other rooms lacked, plus there was a ton of space. I could take a crap lying down sideways across the toilet bowl if I wanted to.
And so I grudgingly made my way to the Men’s room and took a piss in a small smelly cubicle with no toilet paper and lousy legroom. Not a very nice way to end the night, but at least my milkshake didn’t taste like cock.