Saturday, November 24, 2018

You Deserve A Break Today

Good guys with guns. Sounds so musical and right. What happens if that good guy has a bad day? Like if that good guy got some really bad news and was in a McDonald's, ordering his Value Meal, and he decided to make somebody else's day just as bad as his. Or worse?
Which may or may not have happened at a Minnesota McDonald's last Monday night. I am trying to give the guy in question the benefit of the doubt, but video of the interaction doesn't make him look so "good." The fact that he ended up pulling a gun on a group of Muslim teenagers makes him look, well, dangerous.
And maybe I should say that it has been a long time since I worked in a fast food restaurant, but I am pretty sure that once this confrontation started, I don't think that my response would have been to send the kids outside where the guy with the gun was waiting. I worked in fast food long enough ago that the idea that a dispute in that establishment would have probably ended up with me having to mop up some drunk guy's poorly digested Beef 'n' Cheddar. I currently live in a neighborhood that has recently installed a bulletproof glass shield around the food prep area of our Subway. This is because you never know how a good guy with a gun is going to react to getting his twelve inch meatball marinara on wheat bread instead of Italian, which is what he asked for! I live in a world where armed guards are everywhere. I live in a world where I have to go through a metal detector to get into Disneyland.
I was a teenager, once upon a time, and I was completely capable of being an obnoxious handful along with a few of my buddies. I was never threatened with a gun. I have been a grownup for a while now, and though I have encountered my share of obnoxious teenagers. I have threatened none of them with a gun. Not the Muslims. Not the Jews. Not the Seventh Day Adventists. This has a lot to do with the fact that I don't believe that a gun is the proper response to a fast food dispute. And probably also because I don't carry a gun around, just in case someone forgets to put my curly fries on the top of the bag, where I can get at them on my drive home.

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