I am overwhelmed by guilt.

I’m sure many of you have heard me reference my irritation with people in the drive-thru at fast food establishments several times, including twice in the past week or so. What can I say? I have strong feelings that can’t be expressed any other way, like latent homosexuality, or fear of bears. One of my basic rules is: if you want to make a special order, you need to go inside. The drive-thru lane is where you go when you want to get a standard order and get it quick.

Yesterday, in the drive-thru, I placed a special order. I know, I’m sorry. I don’t think anyone behind me was inconvenienced, but it hurt my soul. Oh, how I cried.

A little background is in order: on Tuesday, I went to McDonald’s and got my usual order, 6 double cheeseburgers and a large diet coke. When I pulled up to the pickup window, I met a very friendly woman who asked me, “Wow, are you gonna eat all those?” I responded, “Well, I’m on a low-carb diet, so I eat the meat and just throw the bread away.”

“Well, why didn’t you just order them without the bread? We can do that for you!”

Because every time I try to do something like that, each meat hunk gets wrapped in its own individual plastic container, which not only slows down my eating, but is a horrific waste of plastic. That’s not what I said, of course. I said:

“Well, I just figured it would save time.”

“No, it actually would save time to just have ordered ’em without bread!”

“Oh well, sorry about that!”

She smiled. “That’s okay . . . you’ll know for next time!”

Now, I was fairly certain that there was no way that having to individually wrap up 6 hunks of meat and cheese in big plastic containers, as opposed to just throwing them on buns and wrapping them in wax paper, was not going to save time. Unfortunately, I have a very specific problem: I am a wuss. And I knew yesterday that if I returned and ordered in my usual manner, there was no way to predict what this woman might say or do when I got to the pickup window.

In my defense, she was a terrifying sight. She had plucked her eyebrows completely off her forehead, Whoopi Goldberg-style, and then painted them back on very thinly about 3/8″ from her hairline. Also, her teeth were interesting. She didn’t seem to be missing any, but everything appeared to be artfully rearranged, such that she appeared to have a canine in the center, a molar to the left of that, and then a slight gap between it and an incisor that had been twisted about 90 degrees on the vertical axis. I try not to irritate people like that by basically saying “your idea was retarded, I’m going to continue ordering it my way and damn the consequences.”

I worried that she might leap from the window and apply that weird center canine to my eyeball, or something.

So yesterday I arrived and ordered 6 double cheeseburgers with no buns, and cringed. I paid, got to the pickup window, was handed my soda, and then got the horrific instruction: “Sir, can you please pull up to the parking spot up there?” That’s right, the “waiting for a special order” parking spot. It’s like being put in the corner.

So I pulled up, dried my tears, and waited 5 or so minutes for my order. Then I peeled out of there and drove to my office, where it turned out having all the little plates made eating the food a lot less messy.

STILL.

Anyway, next week I plan to show up, order my cheeseburgers WITH BUNS, DAMMIT, and I expect to face the wrath of the eyebrow lady. At least this time I’ll be able to say, “Yeah, I tried it your way last week, and it took 10 minutes. SO SUCK IT, CRAZY LADY.”

Hopefully she’ll cry a little. Only then will I feel redeemed.