I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight!

A line from an irritating song in a British advert for a chicken cooking sauce.

Mr Man and I went to KFC for dinner tonight. I accidentally asked for a McFlurry instead of an Avalanche, which brought back some funny memories for me of when I worked there. We had people coming in all the time asking for things that were on the McDonalds menu, including the fillet-o-fish and the McChicken sandwich! The best was when little old ladies used to come in and ask for fish and chips!

I know it must sound like a rubbish job to have, and in those days I only earned £2.50 an hour, but I had a fantastic time working there - despite my managers! I got on really well with all my other colleagues, I got to meet people every day (which I love), and I got to listen to whatever music I wanted all day long. I still miss those days sometimes, and the people I worked with. At the time I swore I could write a book on life at KFC as you could guarantee something funny would happen every day. I wish I had now, or at least taken some notes at the time because it was all a very long time ago now and I can only remember a few funny things.

One thing I remember, going back to the funny things that people used to ask for, is one time when we had a new food item on the menu. We always had to wear T shirts to advertise the new product, and we also had these square bits of cardboard hanging from the ceiling with a picture of the product on them. One day this bloke walks in and says “I’ll have one of those please” pointing at the piece of cardboard. My work colleague, who we will call Tom, instantly replied with “Certainly sir” and reached up and took the cardboard down and handed it to the customer!

There was also the time when I had a customer ask me for “three wings”. At that time the “hot wings” were a new product and being heavily advertised so I asked him “Would you like the ordinary wings, or the hot wings?” He replied with “I want three wings”. “Which wings would you like though? The hot wings, or the original recipe wings?”
“I want three wings”
“Well these are the hot wings” I said as I pointed to them “And these are the original recipe wings. Which ones would you like?”
“I want three wings”
This went on for an extremely long time, and in the end I just gave him “three wings” and I can’t even remember which ones. Thankfully he didn’t then complain that I had given him the wrong ones, which I was expecting. They were the only four words that he said though, so maybe he didn’t know how to complain.

Some of the funniest stories are the things we saw on the screen upstairs while we were having our break, via the CCTV camera. People seemed completely unaware that it was there. What made it even funnier though is that the person serving the customer would be completely unaware of what was going on over the other side of the counter. One time these two women came in, and while they waited for their food one put her arm around the other and smiled. “Ahh, that’s so sweet” I thought, watching from upstairs “you don’t often see two sisters show affection for each other like that”. How naïve could I possibly be? The next minute she had put her hand down the back of the other ones trousers! “Oh, maybe they’re not sisters then” I thought. And there was Tom, completely unaware of what was going on right in front of him!

The same sort of thing happened to me one night as well, when Tom was upstairs watching. A couple came in, one male, one female this time, and as I was busy packing their order the man got his “thing” out, nudged his girlfriend, and glanced downwards, indicating to her to look. She looked and then quickly turned away trying to pretend nothing was happening. He carried on nudging her and trying to get her to look, and then he started gyrating and “swinging” it about! And there I am in the background packing their food and wishing them farewell with “Enjoy your meal”, completely unaware of what had just happened! When something like this happened and one of us were lucky enough to witness it “live”, we would always come down stairs laughing and tell the others to rewind the tape and watch the last customer. They had no idea how much entertainment they created for us.

Sigh, they were the days.

Just as a side story, we had a piece of chicken left over tonight so I asked the girl behind the counter for a box to put it in to take home. We couldn’t figure out how to close the thing! The girl was laughing as I went back to the counter again, and she closed it for us. I said “It’s like something out of the Krypton factor, but I don’t suppose you know what that is, do you?” “No” she replied, shaking her head. “No, I expect you’re too young”. I then walked away, realising what I had just said and thinking, “How is it that the things we hated in older people when we were younger are the very things that we do when we’re older ourselves?”