So the other day, I decided to go to Qdoba for lunch. For those of you who don’t know, Qdoba is a chain of Mexican restaurants similar to Chipotle. The food is made in front of you, everything is fresh, and although I guess it would be classed as fast food, it’s quite a step up from Taco Bell, so I don’t mind eating there on occasion. It’s clean, fresh, and has some decent vegetarian options — personally, I’m a fan of the vegetarian burrito with guacamole.

Anyway.

As I was ordering, a woman walked in and I immediately took notice of her — she was wearing the most beautiful Japanese silk dress I’d ever seen. Assuming she was simply a very cultural woman, it didn’t really strike me as too odd that she would dress so nicely just to pick up Mexican. It then became clear to me, though, that she wasn’t there to pick up food — in fact, she had food with her! I then realized she was a delivery woman who worked at a Japanese restaurant. She did not have any sort of uniform on, but from what I heard of her conversation with the cashier, someone called in and gave the address of Qdoba. Assuming, as I would have done, that an employee ordered the food for lunch, the cashier called to the staff in the back room. However, no one had ordered it. The cashier told her she had the wrong place — and I can’t blame her, because it’s not as though she was being rude. How was she supposed to help? This poor woman was just trying to do her job and deliver the Japanese food, but if no one had ordered it, they weren’t just going to take it off her hands and pay her.

Understandably, though, the woman delivering the food looked a little bit disoriented. In addition to the general confusion on the side of from the employees, she was having difficulty understanding their English. The cashier herself had a bit of an accent and the Japanese woman only spoke broken English. She tried explaining again that she had a delivery of Japanese food at this address, and finally, a guy stood up from a table in the back of the room.

“Dude, your Japanese is here.”

Okay. Now, I’ve been in situations before where my friends all want to eat a certain place that I don’t like and typically, I sit down with them and simply don’t order anything. Depending on where we go, it probably wouldn’t even be that rude to bring my own meal. If you’re in a fast food restaurant or sitting outside of a cafe, it’s quite different than going to an actual upscale restaurant and eating nothing or bringing your own things to eat. However, regardless of how casual or upscale the place you’re eating at is, it is NEVER acceptable to actually have the food delivered to you!

At this point, I had already paid for my order (to-go) and was about to leave, so I didn’t stick around long enough to see how it played out… but had I been the manager, all of those kids would’ve been kicked the hell out. After paying the delivery woman, of course. And hopefully she got one good tip for all of that trouble.

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