Taco Bell: Que Awkward.

1pm lunch rush at Taco Bell: About a dozen people waited inside the restaurant lobby for their orders. They rolled their eyes, sucked their teeth, and eventually started bitching aloud about the wait.

Taco Bells are designed so you can see the kitchen if you’re inside, so I don’t understand why people bitched about the wait when they could see the frantic pace of the workers. You try to make that many orders at once. I worked as a cook at WingZone a few summers ago, so maybe I’m more sympathetic…I don’t know.

I think bitching about a wait at lunch rush is like getting on a highway at 5pm and whining about the traffic. What do you expect?

There was another problem: the guy who brought the orders out didn’t speak English. He called out the numbers in Spanish, which, becuase we are in Miami wasn’t really a problem. The rule of thumb is to remember who is in line before you to figure out if you’re next. Seriously. It’s not that hard.

A nurse who was also waiting for her food decided to help the Kitchen Guy and called out the numbers in English when no one responded to his Spanish calls. This worked for a while.

But then came the Hick’s order.

The Kitchen Guy called out the number several times and eventually the nurse called it out in English. The Hick, a 6-foot tall, unshaven guy with the mandatory ponytail, dirty work clothes, and trucker hat, stormed to the counter and screamed, “WE ARE IN AMERICA. SPEAK ENGLISH!”

About six of us were crammed together near the soda fountain. It was a crowded, awkward space, and the Hick broke the unspoken golden rule of crowded, awkward spaces: thou shant cause drama.

We all held our breaths and mouthed “woah.”

The Hick stormed off with his tacos. Kitchen Guy looked perturbed, but he didn’t really speak enough English to really understand anything beyond that he was just bitched at. This was a good thing because Kitchen Guy looked like he could unleash all sorts of crazy.

Looks were exchanged. We all looked sympathetically at the poor unilingual Kitchen Guy, and everyone stopped their bitching about the wait, and glared at the Hick, who was still bitching at his booth.

Yes Miami is technically in America, but it’s a different kind of America than what The Hick and people like him envision: Miami is 69% Hispanic, 57.7% immigrant (foreign-born), and English is not the primary language of 76.2% of the households. Yes Kitchen Guy can do better. But at the end of the day he is Kitchen Guy, and English is not a requirement for that job.  

If you want to demand that people (especially unskilled, min. wage workers)  speak English then move to The Provence like everyone else.