THE AMERICAN WAY

Gene and his friend Dale enjoy meeting for coffee at McDonald's a couple of afternoons a week. The big attraction used to be that a "senior cup" of coffee cost only 27 cents, with unlimited refills. I think it has gone up to 31 cents now, and they think that is terrible. Typical geezers.

I joined them one day last week and had a senior Dr. Pepper, also 31 cents. Like them, I had to gripe a little. I thought it tasted flat. For 31 cents, they ought to do better.

There's always something interesting going on at that McDonald's. The afternoon manager is a woman who knows them by sight and yells across the room at them. She has one of these born-in-a-barn voices that echoes off the walls. Usually she is yelling at one of the teenage employees, who no doubt deserves it, but she also enjoys heckling Gene and Dale. I suppose they deserve it too. Couple of big spenders.

This particular day she wasn't there, and some other manager was having to deal with a city inspector. Oh, boy. He had just inspected some kind of big grease trap outside the building, and she was out there arguing with him. We couldn't hear either of them, but we could see her mouth moving a mile a minute and her arms waving around and him scribbling away on his little pad. Looks like Mickey D has got himself a ticket. Dale was enjoying this hugely because it brought back fond memories of when he had his Pizza Huts and had to deal with city inspectors himself.

For some reason, this got Dale thinking of plumbing and that led him to a story about a plumber he knew. This plumber worked all by himself and had a lot of business. One day it occurred to him that he could do even more if he hired some help. So he took on two Mexican assistants, whom he called Juan and Two. For a while things were going great. He got lots of calls and sent Juan and Two out on them, and his business was booming. But after a while, he began to notice that it was slacking off. He wasn't getting nearly as many calls; in fact, after a while the phone practically stopped ringing. It got so bad he had to let Juan and Two go. They said that was okay, senor, they would get by. It was some time later that a customer of his revealed what had happened. When he was sending Juan and Two out on calls, they were telling his customers, "Here's our phone number--next time, just call us at home." Nod, nod, wink, wink; call us, we work cheaper.

Hey, it's the American way.