If you know me, you'd never believe I'd get kicked out of anyplace. I'm the easy-going type, I never start anything and I'd sooner run and cry than get into a fight with anyone. My friends, however, aren't like that, so I've been ejected from a few establishments over the years.
The first such occasion was in the mid 90s. We were, as modern youths go, still very innocent. We would stay up all night playing video games and drive all over Westchester looking for 24-hour hang outs. We never drank or smoke anything, we were just a bunch of silly kids. One place we would occasionally go was the Dunkin' Donuts on Route 6 in Mohegan Lake. I, being a big fatso, loved the donuts. I don't know what the appeal was for my more slender friends. I suppose part of the novelty was the egg sandwiches they sold any time, day or night. They were absurdly cheap (and tasted that way) but I think there's something about eating "breakfast" at odd hours that always fascinates the young and impressionable.
Anyway, this Dunkin' Donuts was open 25/7/365 so we'd drop in during the night, hang out for an hour or so and then leave. We'd frequently encounter cops and state troopers (big surprise) and the occasional homeless man. One of these guys would always sit on one particular stool near the bathroom and he'd sit there for hours at a time. You'd think he would just sleep somewhere but he preferred to stay up late, slowly drink some coffee and enjoy the (relatively) pristine restrooms at the Dunkin' Donuts. Being homeless, he stank something fierce and he would leave his favorite stool discolored and reeking of his scent. We often saw him ejected during our visits because the staff hated cleaning up after him.
I'm digressing from the point only because our ejection was so sudden and unwarranted. We were in this place and my friend Ben was being rude, albeit unintentionally. Ben has a tendency to latch onto a phrase or song lyric and repeat it when he feels like it, which is often. Usually it's something silly like "bonesmuggler" and we'll all have a laugh. On this particular evening, it was "titties." He just kept saying it, like some kind of affirmation, and it was irritating the hell out of the female employee. She was an unpleasant middle-aged woman and something about hearing Ben say "titties" over and over again made her furious. Every so often, he'd say it and she'd retort, usually with "Stop saying titties!" or "If you want to see titties, go to a strip club!" Ben replied, "I don't want to see titties, I just want to say titties." After a few minutes of this she told all of us to get out. I couldn't believe we were being thrown out; it wasn't like Ben was even talking to her but somehow that word got us all in trouble.
I don't remember exactly who was with us that night but we didn't consider for a second not returning to the Dunkin' Donuts; if anything, we felt obligated to come back and stand up to that woman. Subsequent visits were uneventful because we never saw her again. When we asked other employees where she went, we were told that she got fired because she was rude to the customers. We were quick to agree even though, in hindsight, we were hardly free from blame.
Fast forward a few years and we all had become young adults and frequent patrons of fast-food. I'm not sure why were so high on it. I suspect it was the low prices in contrast to the expense of going to real restaurants. So on one evening, we went to the KFC in Ossining at 9PM. The four of us (myself, Dylan and probably Ben and Dave) walked in and we were disappointed to see the chairs on top of the tables, the universal symbol of "closed for business." However, we knew the KFC was open until 10; it said so on the front door. We asked if they were closed. The manager, a surly Italian guy named "Vic" said no but the "dine-in" area was closed. Since eating outside or in the car sucked, we asked why we couldn't eat inside. Vic had little patience with us, rambling about how the employees were tired and how the dine-in area was closed early to allow for everyone to go home sooner at the end of the night. Dylan pressed, insisting that if they were open for business until 10 then we should be able to eat our food inside until that time. For the record, this KFC had no drive-thru window and the dine-in area only had four tables, so this decision made even less sense. Vic kept bemoaning the plight of his employees, complaining that all of them had been there for hours already and they wanted to go home.
Three of us were ready to order our food to go, not willing to argue with this guy over something that didn't really matter. Dylan, however, took umbrage to Vic's arguments and kept pressing his point. At this point Dylan had experience with staffing a supermarket so he asked why Vic didn't have people come in late to work later hours. Vic got very angry and told all of us to get out. He refused us service and demanded that we leave immediately. We were pissed that he kicked us out because we hadn't done anything wrong besides getting on his nerve for wanting to sit down and eat. We vowed to complain to his superiors as we went down the street to Wendy's which was also open until 10 but they happily let us sit down. Once we got home, we started drafting a letter of complaint but somewhere between finding out who to send it to and our eagerness to just chill out and relax, we abandoned the project. It would have meant free food for sure but I guess you can only get so upset about being denied fast food.
I know, not very exciting stories. Nobody was drunk, nobody got in a fight or broke anything. Frankly, we didn't really do anything to deserve getting ejected. Perhaps that was actually part of a bigger problem: we rarely did anything other than hang out in someone's home, go to our lousy jobs and eat out. I suppose at the time we had fun but looking back, we wasted far too many years doing nothing. I'm glad I realized that before I hit thirty and I'm doubly glad I've made so many friends over the years who'd rather get kicked out than not have fun.
© Copyright 2005 Daniel Feit.
Return to the Main Page