There's a reason they call it Road Rage

I dropped off my wife today for her day with our friends with Mommy and Me and I stop off at McDonalds so she can get breakfast, a quick 3-4 minute drive-thru stop over on the way in. That was my first problem, making the stop in the first place.

As I pull up to the drive-thru menu/order kiosk, I see a McDonalds employee come out and pay the driver of the car in front of me, the passenger exits the car and the driver takes off. It turns out that the vehicle is a Car Service driver. Now this is my problem: Why is the drive-thru lane used for something other than it's purpose?

I get upset a bit but try to relax, I wait patiently at the kiosk waiting for Charlie Brown's teacher to ask for the order. And I wait. And I wait. I yell at the microphone. Nothing happens. I tap the horn. Nothing happens. I pull up to the window in case the microphone isn't working. Nothing happens. After a frustrating conversation with an employee who is rearranging the garbage from the previous night, I pull out and drive to the entrance of McDonalds.

My wife gets out to get her order because at this point I would not be nice if I placed her order. She is waiting on the line (there were only 3 people ahead of her) and waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

At this point my wife gives up and goes three doors down to Dunkin Donuts. She is able to place her order, get her order, pay for it and come back before the same people she left behind at McDonalds had exited with their orders.

With little irony I notice the posters in McDonalds windows: We are open at 6:00 a.m. or earlier. With much sarcasm I realize the poster doesn't say: We are open for business at 6:00 a.m. or earlier. This quick 3-4 minute stop stretched out to 40 minutes. That is no way to do business. It is reprehensible to have a staff available to collect money for a service and no staff available to provide the service. It is poor management to allow such a situation to occur regardless of the circumstances. Of course there are reasonably acceptable excuses but the place wasn't on fire, no one robbed them, the building had power and there was no one running away from a lava flow.

It's not just this incident, it's a consistent thing over the years. People and businesses behave and operate as if the rules don't apply to them. We poor suckers that live our day to day lives following the common rules of society and the law are constantly waiting for these people to get theirs only to see the people in authority pull the same crap!!

Stop signs? Bah.
Street Lights? Not me.
Double Parking? They can go around, doesn't matter if the road is narrow.
Speeding? There's plenty of room in front of me and the other car, looks like a good 8 inches.
Turn signals? No one pays attention to those anyway.
Talking on the phone? Hey, it's my roaming minutes...oh wait i'm drifting.
Zipping across 3 lanes at the last minute to make the exit? It was an important call I had to take.
Riding along the service road in heavy traffic? Don't get mad at me because you didn't think of it.
Coming to a complete stop to see the accident on the other side of the median? My friends have got to see this.
Realigning the Xenon bulbs so they blind everyone in front of them? Wow...it's like a Hollywood movie premiere.
Cutting off everyone to get just one foot closer to your destination? Come on! I got somewhere to go!
Driving down the wrong side of the street just to get to the drive way? You mean you want me to go around the block?

And that's just driving, I can go on and on but what's the use. You see enough there just for that alone. I just get really frustrated because I can take every precaution I can to make my son safer but all those people up there that I'm mentioning they are the variable that I can't protect him from.

Those people are dangers to themselves and more importantly to others because any damage they cause usually affects others.

Sigh. I'm just venting, what can you do? Cops, government officials and corporate officers, they don't care about anyone unless it affects them or they can exploit it for their agenda. I just have to hope I do a good enough job that my son doesn't grow up to be one of them.