At the time of writing this, we remain in level 4 lockdown, thanks to the COVID-19 virus. It looks like, however, there’s a chance we could go from level 4 to level 3. What does this mean? It means we can start getting takeaways again (yay!), provided it’s local, and drive-thru. Hmm.
I live in a lower-middle class area that borders an area that can only be charitably described as very low working class. So if I want to stick to the “only local” rule, I can only buy takeaways from fast-food franchises in that area. And to put it mildly, the food and service sucks.
Just as an example and to give you some idea, I’ll start with the bakeries. I wouldn’t buy food from any of the local bakeries unless I actually wanted to get food poisoning. Buying a pie means buying watery gravy wrapped in week-old pastry with bits of mystery meat floating in it.
Same for the standard takeaways unless I get something that’s so deep-fried that no bacteria or virus has the chance of surviving. Oh, and looking around in some of the places you have to wonder who they paid and how much to get their food grade “A” certificate.
There’s a “char-grilled” or something like that burger fast-food franchise down the road from me. So far it’s gotten my order wrong at least twice, including forgetting to put the cheese burger in a cheese burger combo, and literally giving an order that belonged to me to someone else. And using the drive-thru means driving through and then parking around the corner and waiting 10 to 20 minutes for the order to arrive.
The other local franchises aren’t much better. Maggots in the chicken, yep, although it never happened to me personally. Cheeseburger deluxes where the bun is ice cold and the meat patty barely above cold? Yep. Pizza where even when you pick it up it feels like it’s just been taken out of the freezer and the mozzarella cheese has been substituted by plain cheddar? Yes again.
All this means of course if I want to get some decent takeaways I have to go out of my local area. I have no choice.
The question, and the point of this post, is why is this? My answer is the people who live in the area just put up with it because it’s all they know and they just don’t care. They don’t care if the food isn’t fresh or the service is atrocious. It’s a feed bro, stop complaining!
Low expectations, low results. Meanwhile, and assuming we do move to level 3, I’ll stick to homemade burritos or risk going a little bit out of my local area for some decent grub.
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