I worked at a fast food place in my teenage years, but I worked at a unique one, on a military base inside a large US military hospital in Germany that treated many of those hurt in wars. I was working there during the surge in Iraq.

I started to notice a soldier come in. He had intense burns all over his body; most of his face was wrapped up. You could tell he had burns everywhere, and every step was painful.

He would come to my fast-food place every Sunday and order an original chicken sandwich, with onion rings, everything fresh.

Quickly, I recognized he always orders the same thing, so one day I made a deal with him. If he sees me working, he sits at the closest table, and I’ll punch in his order, get his food, and take his payment at the table.

No, of course we weren’t set up for this, this is fast food, but I did it.

I did it every time I saw him.

Then one day, my manager was working on Sunday and saw me do it, he told me I can’t do that. I basically said, “I understand, I don’t care, I’m going to keep doing it.”

My manager tried to explain the reasoning (which I understand), and I cut him off and said I plan on continuing to do it. That was the end of that conversation.

I would even make customers wait if they weren’t also hurt. I remember one time I made a colonel wait for his food so I could get this soldier his food.

The colonel saw me do this, gave me a coin, and asked me what my name was and asked me where my dad worked. I was nervous. I just told him what I knew.

That night I came home, and my dad said the colonel called him and told him what I was doing.

At the time, my dad was an NCO, enlisted, so a random colonel calling him and giving him props over something his son is doing made him proud.

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Important context: my sandwich store operates on a military base, meaning we do three to six times more business than an average store does on any given day. Our lunch rush might be a hundred and fifty units for the peak hour, whereas a normal store might make thirty to sixty.

A few months ago, we had a guy come in just before the start of lunch rush and begin his order while it was still slow. After completing it, he began to order another sandwich, then another, then another. The line was beginning to form.

He reached sandwich number thirteen, meaning that by this point, the entire store was full of people waiting, and all thirteen sandwiches were lined up on the cutting boards. His fourteenth was his last. When he finished that, he got over to the veggie side and had no clue what he wanted on any of them. Each one was for a different person.

It’s worth mentioning that this customer was what I will delicately refer to as a somewhat… challenged individual. In this situation, that meant constantly trailing off and getting distracted throughout the entire ordering process, significantly extending things.

After multiple texting and phone call sessions and some serious study of his disorganized written order sheet, he manages to complete the vegetables. The line is out the door by this point.

He comes to the end of the line where we are about halfway done bagging his sandwiches, only to start angrily telling us that he wants each individual name written on the stickers of the sandwiches, our one to fourteen numbers just weren’t enough.

I can’t remember any of the specific names, but every single name was an extremely weird out-of-pocket nickname (like something that could never possibly be in a birth certificate). I think one may have been “Smiley.” Once that is finally done, he approaches the register.

I s*** you not, this motherf***er pulls out a rubber-banded stack of credit cards as thick as a deck of playing cards and informs us that he intends to pay for each and every sandwich individually, one to each card. No, they were not in the order he placed them.

Ultimately, this douche clown cost us quite a lot of business in the form of walkouts and took about thirty minutes to move through the system. Our lunch rush was a horrific nightmare because of how backed up we were without ever having had a fair chance to get off the ground.

Because of this one single guy, we made so many policy changes, from the maximum number of sandwiches ordered, methods of payment and everything in between.

I served at a buffet Thanksgiving dinner last night and had an absolute conundrum of an old man in my section. He was by himself and ordered a glass of wine. All was well for the first while, but eventually, he pulled me aside and launched into a ten-minute rant.

Old Man: “I am eighty years old and have been in the military, and this is the worst Thanksgiving meal I’ve had in my entire life. If I’d tried to serve this to my troops, I would’ve been shot! The potatoes are cold, the carrots are cold, and the stuffing is an abomination that I wouldn’t even feed to my dog! I needed to pull out my pocket knife to cut the turkey!”

I listened and nodded and apologized and told him we appreciated the feedback.

He complained to one of the other managers, as well. I went back to ask how his dessert was, and he was displeased with that too. He launched back into his tirade, basically rephrasing everything he had already told me.

Me: *Jokingly* “I hope you at least liked your wine!”

Old Man: “I didn’t! But that was my fault for ordering a bad wine. I thought I could wash down the bad dinner with the wine, but it turned out that I had to wash down the bad wine with the food!”

We had a laugh about this one. He also told me it wasn’t my fault, and he seemed to have a decent sense of humour about the situation. He also still wouldn’t shut up about his woes, though, so I offered to send the other manager over.

While I dealt with my other tables, I saw [Manager] standing there with him for at least ten minutes. Originally, we weren’t going to give him a discount, but after that, [Manager] took 25% off his bill. I was still dreading taking payment and hearing whatever other complaints he hadn’t gotten off his chest yet.

I dropped off the bill and brought the card machine. The man stared at the bill for an uncomfortably long time, but I didn’t really want to ask any questions and open up a conversation again. He was hard of hearing anyway. Finally, he asked:

Old Man: “What’s this ‘promo’ thing on my bill?”

I explained the discount that the manager had applied.

Old Man: “Well! You didn’t have to do that!”

I will never understand.

After completing basic officers’ school and my military occupational specialty (MOS) training in the early 80s, I spent three years in the Far East – Japan, Korea, and the Philippines. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but there were certainly some interesting aspects (good and bad) to being a young, round-eye female lieutenant in that part of the world at that time. 

As an example, my regiment went to the Chor-Won valley in South Korea for a training exercise, and the health, morale, and welfare people (HMW) made sure that we all got at least one chance to visit the shopping mecca that was Itaewon in Seoul. I quickly found out that I was seriously handicapped by my reluctance to haggle. It just wasn’t in my genes, I guess, and I know that I was overcharged for many of my souvenirs.

This is when 2^nd Lt Twardowski (not her real name) took me under her wing. She was a stunning, tough-as-nails redhead who had gotten a commission from the enlisted ranks, and if there was anywhere she hadn’t been or anything she hadn’t seen, it would very much surprise me. Watch and learn, she advised as we approached a street vendor peddling a selection of adorable stuffed toys.

Lieutenant: “How much for bear?”

Vendor: “Eight thousand won for beautiful American lieutenant!” *About $5.75.*

Lieutenant: *Shaking her head and looking sorrowful.* “Too much! Two thousand won is all I can pay.”

Vendor: “Oh, beautiful American lieutenant, you are rich officer, you got lots of dollars!”

Lieutenant: *Lowering her voice and speaking confidentially.* “No, I am WOMAN officer. I get HALF of MAN officer pay.”

A bald-faced lie, but unfortunately, in Korea in the 1980s, it made perfect sense. Although her first offer was never accepted, eventually she would get what she wanted for much lower prices than the rest of us could. I never saw her technique fail.

My brother is back from a military tour, so the whole family has gathered for a meal to enjoy his company. This includes the one bad uncle that all families have.

Uncle: “Hey, [Brother], now that the Republicans are back in power, is the military less gay?”

My Dad: “[Uncle], careful now.”

Uncle: “What? I’m just asking.”

Brother: “It’s as gay as it’s always been and always will be, [Uncle]. These days, the only ones who care are the unemployed fat-a** civilians who have nothing better to do than shout at the TV!”

Uncle: “I gotta job!”

This is true. [Uncle] has a job, technically, as a school bus driver, but is on unpaid suspension while he is under investigation for possible DUI.

Me: *Trying to turn the meal around.* “Anyway, [Brother], now that you’re back for a few weeks, do you want to—”

Uncle: “—The military was better when it was that don’t ask, don’t tell thing! Now it’s all feelings and marines making TikToks and having pronouns!”

My Dad: “[Uncle], that’s enough! F****** stop!”

Uncle: “Yeah, well f*** you! And f*** your pronouns! We didn’t need them when I was a kid!”

Grandma: *Butting in out of nowhere.* “Weren’t your favorite cartoons as a kid, He-Man and She-Ra?”

Uncle was confused, some of us laughed, and I was FINALLY able to change the subject. I don’t know why we allow [Uncle] to come to these things anymore…

Related:
When They’re Not Pro Pronoun, Part 4
When They’re Not Pro Pronoun, Part 3
When They’re Not Pro Pronoun, Part 2
When They’re Not Pro Pronoun