The Nacho Chip Factor

Today I matched wits with a manager of a Taco Bell in London, KY.  Now come on don't look at me like that, he had it coming.  All I wanted was to ask politely if there was the potential of swapping my cinnamon twists in my Big Bell Box for some nachos (a swap my local Taco Bell has no issue with, in fact, it was their idea and now I've grown accustomed to it and speaking of my local Taco Bell, I don't even like those people and I blame them for talking me into the Triple B meal in the first place (somebody get marketing on the phone, that's good stuff, I mean come on, Triple B meal!!?  That was right off the top of my head.  LOVE IT) in the first place when I know I'm not going to eat all that food and if I did somehow pull it off its going to wreck me for the rest of the day).  Well I was barely in my third word of the sentence when he started shaking his head as to the negative.  Which got my gander up as they say.  (you know I have to be honest, I don't know if anybody says that.  I don't know who, if anyone, would ever say it.  I don't even know what my gander is and maybe it should never be up as it were.  This is really not something for me to decide, I think I shall just keep my gander... ummm what?  down?  errrr, STANDARD, shall we say, for the rest of my life.  Sorry about all the gander folks!)  Where was I?  Oh yeah, dude didn't even have the full question and he's already shaking his head.  He said he, and I quote, "cannot" do it.  Cannot.  So since the line was moving slowly, I decided to counter, "well you could but you are choosing not to, and I can respect that."  The reply "sir, I cannot and you need to understand that if I do that there is no way for us to make an accounting for the chips."  I could have left that alone, but I CHOSE not to.  I said, "there is actually nothing true about that statement.  I do not need to understand and I highly doubt there is so much accounting in the Taco Bell world that you would need to count your chips or something like that."  And with the most condescending smile he could muster so as to suggest how truly ignorant I was,  this guy says,  "oh yes we do."  So now I'm apparently dealing with the CEO of Southeastern Taco Operations and I didn't know it.  So I said, "Listen, there Mr. Greenspan (ok, I didn't but I probably should have) are you seriously inferring here that your chip supply is under such tight control that a bag of them would upset the levels of sanity to such a degree that this fine establishment would go under from the sheer weight of such a transgression?"  (Ok, I didn't but I probably should have.)  The end of the story is this:  I traded barbs with the guy for a few minutes and at the end, I went outside to "enjoy" my meal and low and behold, there was a bag of nachos in there.  Now here's where I hope that one of two things took place.  One, Mr. Manager decided that my logic was irrefutable and ultimately decided to say he would no longer challenge me in contests of logic, because I would clearly be the victor.  OR (and I don't know which one I like better) some dude in the back who makes the food who knows that he would be a much better manager than the putz up front due to his far superior grasp of what customer service truly is, knowing full well he will one day be not just a shift manager but perhaps even a manager of an entire region of fake mexican food establishments, overheard our conversation and just could not let me go home without my well earned chips.  That guy understands what it means to face impossible (the cannot if you will) or the choice of doing one thing or another.  That guy, if he exists, gets it.  He realizes that the only true result in giving me my desired side item was that it would make me happy.  No banks would close down, the food service industry wouldn't need a multi-million dollar bail out.  No adverse affects to the ozone layer would take place.  And certainly the bean couters at Taco Bell would never so much as notice.  And it all boiled down to the fact that my man quite simply did not want to give me nachos.  And we all knew it.  And what is truly sad is his explanation probably is the end of it for 99% of humanity.  Most would give up and not push any further.  Most would go "oh, ok" and go about eating their fully flavored, yet nutritionally inept offerings without so much as a "why not?"  Now, I'm not so much of a nerd as to be able to tell you the exact thing that Yoda said about this but I remember him saying something to a whiny, pansy Luke Skywalker something along the lines that always it was with him (you know how Yoda talked) was what was not possible, when truly it was.  Don't try, just do, or something like that, you know where I'm going with this.  Really we are only bound to the extent by which we are willing to deal with the consequences of making the potentially wrong choice.  He was not physically incapable of getting me the chips (as much as he would like me to believe it was true) and the world as we know it would indeed go by quite unchanged if there were a sudden disturbance in the nacho chip/cinnamon twist continuum.  And after all of this, I am left with one totally inescapable conclusion on this matter, and that is this:  Yoda would make one fine Taco Bell Manager...

--finn