While I was attending my university, I would frequently partake in late night cafeteria visits.
The late night menu was much more limited than during the day, and so there were only like six items you could order. They had chicken strips, french fries, egg rolls, and some kind of asian beef and rice. So, I’m all stoned and half-drunk and standing in line looking forward to ordering some chicken strips .
The line is moving fast, so in my head I’m kind of just preparing my order with an internal monologue that went something like this:
“Hi, chicken strips please. Hi, chicken strips please. Hi, chicken strips please.”
Chucking these chicken strips onto trays is this frizzy-haired meth addict chick who seems somehow excited to be doing something but also obviously disdainful of all the college kids she’s encountering. It is actually a pretty weird dynamic. I can describe it in the following terms. Let’s say you met this person after work. Without any sense of irony or passive-aggression, she would smile and say,
“Hello sweety”
Then, a few seconds would elapse and without changing emotion she would say something like,
“Cock smoker”
Very strange but typical of Northwestern methiness. So I’m getting ready to order. There’s only one guy in front of me now, and I have my three word speech memorized and all signs point to go, until suddenly, this guy pulls a fuckin’ move! Now, this isn’t your average move, this is a really fucking sweet move, and it throws me off.
Here’s the thing about ordering at the late night menu: You can only order one item. It’s just the way the system works. So, this guy goes to order and he goes:
“Chicken strips, oh, and can you put a little bit of rice on the side for me?”
See, he didn’t actually order the rice as a second item. He just went with the classic do me a solid Mafioso type of vibe, and it worked. The wench shrugged and threw some rice onto his tray. What does she care?
Now it’s my turn. Because I’m highly suggestible and basically now just conditioned to repeating whatever I hear because I’ve been repeating the same three words to myself for fifteen minutes, I say.
“Hi, chicken strips please.”
And then, without thinking, purely out of some kind of autism spectrum reaction I just go, with the EXACT same inflection as the previous guy:
“Oh, and can you put a little bit of rice on the side for me?”
I immediately felt like I’d fucked up. And that’s when seven dollars an hour got her money’s worth. She leveled me with this line, which I will never forget:
“What is this – monkey see, monkey do?”
Fuck! Goddamn that’s a good one. I mean, its not overly witty, but it’s stinging because its accurate. Its literally monkey see, monkey do, like how a monkey would order food.
I shuffled away quickly and hid under my covers. Well done bitch.