My hometown had an old-fashioned Dairy Queen when I was a kid, one of those vintage establishments that required customers to stand on the sidewalk and direct their food orders to a soda jerk through an open window.
Anadarko’s Dairy Queen sold “soft serve,” not real ice cream, but delicious nevertheless. A small soft-serve cone only cost a nickel, which fit my childhood budget. If I was broke, I could always find at least three empty soda bottles I could redeem for two cents at the grocery store. And voila! I had the scratch to get a soft-serve cone.
My local Dairy Queen only sold two food items: a chili dog, which cost fifteen cents, and a footlong chili dog, which cost a quarter. The footlong came encased in a paper wrapper with a printed ruler attesting that the footlong chili dog was indeed twelve inches long. Truth in advertising!
My favorite food item at the Anadarko DQ was the soft-serve chocolate malt. A chocolate milkshake cost twenty-five cents during my childhood years, but the malt was pricey–thirty cents!
The extra nickel was worth it, however, because the tablespoon of powdered malt transformed an ordinary milkshake into the nectar of the gods.
Growing up, I consumed a couple hundred soft-serve chocolate malts, and I don’t recall the soda jerk ever getting my order wrong. The powdered malt and chocolate syrup were always in the drink I ordered.
Now, chocolate malts cost a lot more than thirty cents. Andy’s Custard, which I once patronized, charged me $6.95 (including sales tax) for a malt about the same size as the malts I slurped at the Anadarko Dairy Queen a half-century ago.
I didn’t begrudge the cost because Andy’s custard is premium quality. Nevertheless, I insist that my seven-dollar malt includes malt flavoring.
The server at Andy’s gets my order right about 60 percent of the time. Other times, however, I get a chocolate milkshake, not a chocolate malt.
This is unacceptable to me. When I pay seven dollars for a chocolate malt, I want a chocolate malt.
I do not mean to single out Andy’s Custard. My experience there is similar to my experience in all kinds of fast-food establishments. Too often, the person who takes my order has a faraway look, and I know he or she is not listening to me. I’m distracting my server from TikTok or a text message conversation about last night’s keg party.
Same phenomenon in the grocery store. I was in Albertson’s a while back, and the cashier was having a personal conversation on his hands-free cell phone. He never acknowledged my presence or paused his phone chatter. I was a distraction from his social life.
COVID wrecked the American work ethic. When the federal government began paying people more not to work than to show up and do something useful, people asked themselves why they should exert themselves just to have money in their pockets. Just send me a check!
This new attitude hurts our whole society. When I order a chocolate malt, it’s no big deal if the Andy’s Custard worker gives me a milkshake. It’s more serious, however, when the Social Security Administration tells the American people it can’t say for sure when it will implement the directives of the Social Security Fairness Act.
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