The First JERK I've Met In Japan (Or, How Brett And Ken Got Bullied Out Of Line At McDonalds By A JERK).

I say the "first" jerk because up until that fateful day, I had been interacting with nothing but kind, considerate and gracious people. At the very worst shy. But then came along this douche bag.

There is some back story required to fully appreciate the whole experience.
You should know that Brett eats at McDonalds fairly often, maybe a few times a week. But he had not gone to this McD for the past three weeks. Why, you ask? I will tell you why, without asking Brett's permission, because as a journalist he knows that it's best to write first and ask questions later.

Brett hadn't eaten at this particular McD for a while because the last time he was there, a new girl had taken his order and at the very end, asked him a question which he didn't quite hear. So he said, "sumimasen, moikkai" (sorry, once more?). But the girl assumed Brett didn't understand Japanese and just sort of froze up and no matter how Brett implored her to just REPEAT THE QUESTION, I JUST DIDN'T HEAR YOU; I HAVE TERRIBLE HEARING FROM ATTENDING OVER 360 ROCK CONCERTS!, she just wouldn't repeat it again and the manager had to help out and Brett was like "Screw THIS." and didn't feel like going back again.

I for one do not experience this kind of frustration because unlike Brett's situation, everyone assumes I am Japanese. So when I say "pardon?" they repeat it again and if I still don't understand, they look at me in a strange way. So then I say, in perfect Japanese, "I'm a Canadian, so my Japanese isn't that good yet; could you just use simple Japanese, please?" and then they fall over.

Anyways, Brett told me this is why hadn't been there for a while, so we were all, "We will go to McDonalds and we will conquer it!". This was the spirit of our lunch quest.

The place was packed but we thought, "no, we are here to conquer" so we got into line and were prepared for a long wait. After a solid 5 or 6 minutes, this guy behind us starts yakking at us in angry tones. We were a bit confused as to what his problem was...I mean, we knew he was complaining that we had butted in line, but the fact was, we didn't. And if we had, why not speak up right away? Anyways, this dude -- who is maybe mid-thirties, buzz-cut, glasses, kind of solid and strong-looking, looks like he could drink and smoke really hard -- just kept going ON and ON at us. He called out one of the waitresses and complained to her. She looked at us, we looked at her and shrugged: "We didn't butt in line." So she went back to work (the place is really busy). So then this jerk-hole called out the manager and just went off on the manager! The poor manager was just meekly taking it (the customer is always right) and apologizing. Brett and I were getting kind of pissed because we felt bad for this manager; he's a nice guy. So we said sorry to the guy and offered him to go ahead of us in line but he was all, "no, no, you go ahead, it's too late now!".

Honestly, I think if we were in America, Brett would've gone off on the guy. But we were in Japan, a bunch of my students were right beside us watching.... so we decided to just leave, for the sake of the manager. We swallowed our pride and did the diplomatic thing. We left, we biked in the rain to 7-11, bought a bag of chips for lunch, and went back to Brett's place where we spent many gleeful minutes thinking of all the great things we could've said to him if we were not self-respecting citizens.

One of the students who was at McD that day approached me at school later that week and, though I didn't actually understand what he was saying, I got the general impression that he was sympathizing with me; at the end, he patted me on the arm and gave me a bracing look as if to say, "Don't let those jerks get you down. You will conquer McDonalds someday."

I think if we meet this guy again and he starts complaining that we budded in line again, I think what we'll do is just ignore him and stay in line. Maybe tread on his toe accidentally.