When Trash Attacks

If only I had brought my camcorder.

Downtown Denver McDonald's restaurants are a magnet for the barrel scrapings of society. If its not the homeboys speaking in excessively loud voices while making grandiose hand gestures and mixing "yo yo baby" into their narrative while they chew their fries with open mouths and simultaneously rap, then its winos who will either buy a small coffee or a dollar burger and act as if that entitles them to loiter for the next 4 hours and stink up the place, or its winos sneaking into the restaurant and sitting in the back trying to go unnoticed since they haven't bought anything and want to loiter for hours and stink up the place. Tonight, however, I experienced something a little different: The hungry drug addict.

Alcoholics and drug addicts will spend as little money on food as is possible, consequently they'll either depend on food lines or food theft. Entering McDonald's right after me was an unsavory couple, loud, obnoxious, and demanding. The female of the pair, an American of Mexican origin who spoke unaccented, perfect American English with semi-scraggly hair and prominent blubber-like lips -- especially the lower one which both portruded and hung downward as if an invisible weight was hanging from it -- plunked down an extremely wrinkled McDonald's bag on the countertop (cutting in front of me) and immediately and loudly demanded to speak to the manager. When he came over, the woman angrily said that she was given "frozen fries" and "a flat soda" and plunked down an empty drink cup on the counter. Loud "I can't believe this" and "what kind of place is this" followed from her mouth. The manager said they don't give people frozen fries which only caused her to be even louder. If that wasn't bad enough her idiot boyfriend began chiming in, louder than her. Putting on a lame act of pretending to be Mexican, this blonde-haired, blue-eyed pale face began speaking bits of Spanish like, "Papas, mi papas... No salt.. Si, mon!!" and, "I no speak good Eeeenglish." He would look down at his blubber-lipped love and speak a few more words of Spanish as if we were supposed to think this guy was actually a Mexican. In a quieter, yet still very audible voices, the two conversed in perfect American English between the outbursts "papas" and "si, mon!!" which got the Mexican employees laughing. At that point the manager got sick of the crap and offered a refund and then gave them a free meal. The two finally shut up and began speaking to each other in more perfect American English. Clearly this blonde moron has had enough experience with Mexicans to know that one game they enjoy playing is pretending they don't understand Gringo to get out of trouble. Too bad his pale face, blonde hair and blue eyes give him away, the idiot. You can't expect drug-addled refuse to think things through, though; after all, they got what they wanted. Free food. Either one ate the food and the other came for free seconds or they found a discarded bag outside and cashed in.

This, by the way, happened less than an hour before closing so a Denver CARES paddy wagon for drunkards had pulled up and was rounding up the drunken homeless loiterers in the restaurant and piling them inside the van for an overnight trip to detox.


At the same restaurant some years ago, I had a black guy in front of me who ordered only a sandwich. He was given the sandwich, then lingered a moment, then grabbed a straw, stuck it in a drink intended for someone with me and walked out with it, slurping.

Salute to Denver Drunks