Two Sundays per month, L and I are in charge of High School youth group at the church. Since we start at 6:30pm we provide dinner for the kids. So as we are driving around Seattle yesterday, we begin the discussion that we have every time we have youth group... "So" I say, "What are we going to feed the kids tonight?" L says, "I don't know... chicken?" The discussion then moves on to where to acquire said chicken (fried in this case). The choices come down to local mega-mart or national fried chicken parts retailer (NFCPR). We don't come to any particular decision until driving to get said chicken. As we're passing the local mega-mart, L says "I thought you were going there?" But, no, I decided to go to NFCPR.

Now mind you that they are in the middle of renovating the local outlet of NFCPR, so when we pull up the whole building is covered in plastic wrap and has scaffolding all over the place. But it's fine, so we head on in. The discussion ensues about how much chicken we need to satisfy 8-12 hungry teenagers. We decide on the 20 piece with all the fixins. So we head up to the counter to place our order... "We would like a 20 piece meal deal, please." Now you would think that as the words came out of my mouth that I simultaneously grew a second head by the look I got from the order taking monkey (OTM). Evidently right before we got there, word had spread that there might be a chicken shortage and there was a run on fried chicken (or something). Yes, that's right, they were OUT OF CHICKEN! How do you run out of chicken? You only sell ONE product! CHICKEN! I mean it's in the name of the restaurant! And the OTM looked so put-out that we would have the audacity to come into NFCPR and order such a large amount of chicken. I wanted to say "I'm sorry for ordering so much of the product that your chain exists to sell." And of course by this time we were going to be late so there was no time to leave and go somewhere else. So we had to wait a good 10-15 minutes while they made more of just about everything. Chicken, biscuits, gravy... You name it, they were out. I guess that what you get when you hire people who don't think past their next company allotted smoke break.

To add insult to injury, when we finally got to the church and I started unpacking our fried chicken feast... they shorted us one order of mashed potatoes!

I hate you NFCPR.