Myself and a group of partiers were walking home after drinking one night. There was no place to eat on the way that was still open. Except a Wendy’s drive thru.
We knew that there was a hose that the cars drove over that alerted the staff that they could take an order. We found that black hose and stomped on it but nothing happened. We weren’t heavy enough.
But my sister had heels on and knew that they could make a lot of pressure on what they stamped on. She stomped on the cord with her heel.
“Welcome to Wendy’s. May I take your order.”
We all ordered. Then the Wendy’s voice said “Drive up to the window.”
We were drunk enough to make “Vroom, vroom,” sounds.
They didn’t initially notice us standing beside the window. They were busy making our order. Finally the one girl noticed us and asked us if it was we who had ordered.
We said, “Yes,” but the girl began to get irate.
“You’re not allowed to use the drive thru without a car!” she went on but finally we asked if we were going to get served. She said, “Just this once. Never come back without a car.”
I don’t know if any of us tried this trick again, just that I didn’t. Of course I’m not near a drive thru with heels most of the time.
I’ve heard of the Toronto police carding pedestrians if they felt they were not in the right area. This has been used as an example of racial profiling and I don’t blame the complainants. You see when I used to live in Toronto, sometimes I would walk miles from one section of town to another. I’m white and never got asked for ID or even got stopped by the police.
Oh I can see where the rationale comes from. NIMBYs would complain that, “I pay good money to be in a good area of town. I’m not going to sit idly by while ruffians from the bad side of town simply walk into my area.
But they’re ignoring the fact that there are cars in the poorer side of town, too. Any ruffian with a car can spend two minutes driving far out of their originating area.
And know, too, that the racially profiled aren’t all from bad parts of town.
In my present city of Kitchener, there is a proposal to build a pedestrian walkway over the expressway near Chandler Ave. Businesses want this because the Laurentian Power Centre is hard to get to from the one side. Some of the people definitely want access to this retail complex.
But Chandler Ave. is known as a lower class area with more drugs around. So NIMBYs are against this obvious improvement for the area. Again, cars make this NIMBYism moot because it only takes a few minutes to drive from one side of the expressway to the other.
Do people with cars not steal? Do people with cars not do drugs (and sometimes before driving)? Do people with cars not cause trouble?
A car is already a nice asset. There is no reason to give people with cars extra rights on top of everything. Drive thrus shouldn’t discriminate and neighbourhoods shouldn’t either. Down with extra rights for car drivers.
