You guys know by now that I'm not content simply to entertain RinkWorks readers but that I have to throw out things that challenge people to think about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Prepare to be challenged. I present for you, the true story of my visit to McDonald's for lunch.

The McDonald's in Newington, NH, is set up like most across the country. The public area is L-shaped, with the kitchen occupying the quadrant of the building closed to the public. The cashiers are facing out from the kitchen, and if you were to face them, the whole half of the building to the right is the seating area. There are two doors for customers: one way over on the other side of the seating area, and one in the opposite corner of the building that opens right up to the ordering area.

I parked the car and entered via the seating area doors and wove through the tables to the ordering area. I had discovered that by some peculiar happenstance the lines had evolved into a bank-style line rather than the customary grocery-style lines. Grocery-style means a separate line forms in front of each register. Bank-style is where everybody waits in the same line and the person at the head of it goes to the first available register. (In my computer science studies, I learned that the bank-style is actually better; although you can't "hit it lucky" with bank-style and find a register with a short line, the AVERAGE time it takes for someone to maneuver through the line and get service is SHORTER than it is with grocery-style lines. So I was perfectly happy with this bank-style line scheme.)

So the single bank-style line was formulating parallel to the counter of cash registers, some six or seven feet away from it. The head of the line was positioned between the two furthest registers. The end extended back just into the seating area a ways. Maybe 8-10 people were in line. Since the line was running smoothly this way before I got there, I don't know how long it had been like that, but it worked for around 4-5 people after I got there without any hitches.

But the thing about this bank-style line is that it was not the way people are used to doing their line-waiting in a McDonald's, and the natural tendency, without bank-style ropes marking off where the lines should form, is to formulate separate grocery-style lines. This was particularly confusing for people entering from the door opposite the one I came in from, because they would enter and be immediately in front of the head of the line and were not inclined to walk all the way around, behind a ton of people, when there were four registers with no one lined up immediately in front of them.

So enter Crotchedy A, a woman somewhere in her sixties, bundled in winter clothes. Crotchedy A was the epitome of a stereotype I'm not sure how to describe if you're not already well aware. She was probably mid to upper middle class, probably casts few smiles, and probably goes about her business with little or no reflection about why the world works as it does. I could be completely wrong about Crotchedy A, of course, but this was the impression. Crotchedy A came in from the problem door, and while I wasn't paying much attention to her entrance, I believe she was not particularly aware of her surroundings so much as her will to eat. She saw an open register -- the one furthest from her -- and walked past the head of the bank-style line and started ordering her food.

This did not sit well with Indignant B, a younger woman, perhaps in her thirties, whose dress, manner, and speech suggested lower middle class. "Excuse me," Indignant B said indignantly, approaching her at the register, "but you just cut in front of all these people."

"Well I'm sorry," Crotchedy A said, obviously not, and the rest of what she said was too muffled for me to hear. Indignant B gave some look of exasperated disbelief, scanned the line to see what other reactions she would find there, and reluctantly backed into line again. As luck would have it, the next available register was the same one -- you know how McDonald's takes two or three orders in a row before the food arrives for the first? -- and Indignant B sidled over to the register and, after ordering her food, started chewing out Crotchedy A again. I didn't hear it all, but snippets of the conversation were, from Indignant B, "Don't pretend you don't know what's going on," and, from Crotchedy A, "Well why don't they line up here?"

Meanwhile, Snicker C and Snicker D, two twentysomething males immediately behind me, had started snickering at the exchange. They started almost from the outset, before Indignant B got a chance to order her food, and they were trying to snicker inconspicuously, but, as is often the case when two or more friends find something mutually amusing, the one made it harder for the other and vice versa, and although they managed to keep things quiet, they didn't manage to be inconspicuous. I didn't catch what joking they exchanged between the stifled chuckling, even though I was standing right next to them, but I think they took the approach of, "Whoa, don't cross her! You better watch out, Crotchedy A, she'll whoop you!" Not those words, but that kind of thing.

So Crotchedy A and Indignant B, trading barbs, get their food and move out of the picture.

Enter Cutter E and Cutter F, road construction workers on lunch break, if the reflective orange vest things they were wearing were any indication. They were black, a fact I would not have noticed except that New Hampshire's entire minority population is roughly 18. Cutter E and Cutter F stroll in the problem door, weren't particularly paying attention to the unusual line structure, and walked right up to the nearest of the four registers which was just now coming available. From the door to the nearest register, one did not have to go around the head of the bank-style line but merely cut across, some eight feet away from the head of the line. Cutter F I never got a good look at. Cutter E was a man who carried himself confidently, perhaps defensively confidently.

Profanity G, somewhere behind Snicker C and Snicker D in line, was a prematurely balding white man, probably approaching 40, whose face -- and again, I could be wrong -- said two things to me. "Attitude" and "uneducated." Normally I wouldn't presume to make such conclusions based on appearances, and actually I'm not, but what I am doing is trying to convey a sense of what impressions the cast of this episode conveyed about themselves in the way they looked, acted, and carried themselves. Profanity G said, not quite shouting but definitely loud enough for everyone to hear, "Who the f*** is he to cut?"

Cutter E turned in the direction of the voice, wearing one of those smiles that indicated he was unperturbed, and whether that was true or whether his smile was defensive, I do not know. "Hey man, there's four lines," he says, gesturing to the other three registers attended only by one customer each.

Some moments later, Worker H, the lady who was helping Cutter E and Cutter F and who was working too hard to have noticed anything about what was going on with the lines before, said, "There's four lines," and at that point the 8-10 waiting in the bank-style line sort of drifted toward the registers and ended up in grocery-style lines once again. "There you go!" said Cutter E to the crowd, still wearing his possibly defensive smile.

Throw me in as a character, too, as Observer I, who did not interact with anyone in this or react to anything that happened. When Indignant B scanned the line quickly for other reactions, I do not know what she found, but my own face was a stoic mask.

So in this cast of nine principles -- Crotchedy A, Indignant B, Snicker C, Snicker D, Cutter E, Cutter F, Profanity G, Worker H, and Observer I -- who acted rightly in this, and who acted wrongly? Obviously, at the very least, Crotchedy A, Indignant B, Profanity G, and arguably Cutter E had very particular opinions at the time about who was right and who was wrong, to the point of these opinions being voiced confrontationally toward total strangers (which may or may not tie in with Dagmar's recent "to those who consider themselves human" thread). And yet, as these particular opinions were at odds, they can't all be wholly right.

You have the floor.