About once every two or three months, on pay day, I go to McDonald’s and get breakfast. It’s wrong, but it’s soooo good. I decided that, after the week I’ve had, this morning was my time to have a sausage McMuffin. I left home a few minutes early, and went through the drive-thru.
When I drove up to the pickup window, the lady handed me my paper bag with the sandwich in it. Then she handed me the Coke I’d ordered (I needed caffeine but I refuse to drink coffee). The Coke which, it turns out, didn’t have the cover on properly.

You see where this is going.

Coca cola spilled all down my front, my pants, inside my shoes. My socks were soaked. My shirt was covered in brown liquid. I looked at the lady inside the drive-up window, who had watched this all transpire, and she closed the window and turned away.

I know. It’s McDonald’s. It’s not fine dining. But you’d think that if you work in the service industry and you see a customer being doused in drink due to something you did (or didn’t do), you would at least be trained to say “I’m sorry”. Not to close the effing window on them.

I stayed there, staring in the window, until she opened it up again and looked at me. “Um, this just spilled all over me, because the cover wasn’t actually on it”.

“Oh. Do you, like, want a… napkin?”

“That would be nice, yes. I think I’m going to need more than one napkin, though. The entire pop is spilled all over me.”

“Do you want to buy another pop?”

“Absolutely not. Shouldn’t I get a refund or something? Or another drink to replace the one that spilled all over me because the cover wasn’t on properly?”

“Well, no… I mean, I don’t know. I mean. Can you park and come inside? I’ll get my manager to come and talk to you in a couple of minutes.”

Now, if I didn’t leave right then, I was going to be late for work. So I said no, and left. Where I took off my socks and wore sticky-inside Coke shoes, wet pants, and a light green shirt with brown stains on it. Luckily I keep a cardigan at work, which I just slipped on (even though it didn’t really go with my outfit but whatever) but it was a warm day today and I was sweating within minutes. I taught my first class, and I had a prep second. I knew I didn’t have time to get home and change so I went to the dreaded Walmart and bought a new shirt. My pants had dried and were dark, so the pop didn’t show, but I absolutely needed to change my top.

So the $1.60 pop I bought (and didn’t get to drink) ended up costing me $30, plus however much dry-cleaning is going to be for these clothes. Plus I am trying to figure out how to clean dried, sticky pop out of the interior of leather shoes. I mean, I can’t just throw them in the washing machine. It’s absorbed into the “lining”, so even just a warm wet cloth isn’t going to work all that well.

On the bright side, the class I taught first period? I had them again fourth period. And one of the girls was like “Madame, did you change clothes? You were wearing different clothes this morning!” and I said “Yeah, this is a new thing I’m trying. I change between each class”. “Wow, Madame, you’re a total diva”.

So at least that made me smile. Because the rest of it was definitely not a nice way to start my day.