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I’m unfamiliar with the hiring practices at Taco Bell, so I just picture some sort of Special Olympic hurdling event where the winner is told to apply elsewhere and everyone else gets a job.

Financially, the business appears to be perfectly functional. I assume this is a nebulous surprise that has since turned into a joke in the corporate headquarters. “Gentlemen and ladies of the financial review board, we’ve done it again.”

I did not intend to buy anything from Taco Bell today. As I stood completely alone and next in line, I realized that I was waiting for my friend in the exact wrong spot. A cashier emerged from behind the counter, probably from a trashcan or possibly as freshly hatched egg, and stood there silent and motionless. She managed to make a good point that we both knew how this works and verbally expressing it is unnecessary and perhaps trite.

However, just as I began to place my order (which I chose instantly and without thought), it occured to me that the dull sound coming from her general location was not only a form of speech, but in fact the very beginning of a sentence she had begun nearly ten seconds earlier. For some reason I looked at her boobs and then wondered if things smell better when you’re retarded. Somewhere in a reflection I noticed that one of the elderly employees was making laps around a table.

I was halfway through filling up my drink when the cashier finished telling me how much change she gave me half a minute ago.

The drinks are something special there, I know it. My theory is that they put about twice as much syrup in their soft drinks compared to everywhere else. While you sit there and drink your perversely sweet and viscous version of your favorite soda, your body is going into hypermetabolism trying to process the near lethal sugar intake. This explains why you are digesting and expelling your seventh burrito while eating the eighth and wondering why sixteen pounds of food only costs you three bucks and some change.

While I was waiting for my food I became full from the smell alone. I had eaten what felt like a pound of food molecules just floating in the air. The atmosphere is so thick you can jump twice as high if you flail your arms enough. Try it some time and see if you can stay afloat for a whole minute.

When I actually got my food, via a decent toss from about 6 feet behind the counter, I wasn’t really hungry anymore. Once again, the business manages to actually decrease the customer’s hunger and seems to do so intentionally. Yet they are still in business. I suppose I had already paid for the food by that point…

I didn’t start writing this with a conspiracy theory in mind, but I really am starting to wonder why Taco Bell doesn’t want you to eat their food and make money off of you. I wonder if someone made a minor accounting error sometime in the 80s and it has since been multiplied so many times that it’s causing terrible side effects. The company could be bleeding money from every orifice (as they seem to be) and get a report each week that falsely indicates they’ve once again made 50 trillion dollars. I don’t know.

Now that I’ve finished my meal, I feel sick and strangely satisfied simultaneously. If I can find a use for the bag full of hot sauce packets I do not intend to put on or near food, I will still consider my lunchbreak a success. An odd and uncomfortable success.