Coming from the wake of a high school classmate, some batch mates requested for a “pagpag” where, in practice of a superstitious belief, one should not go straight home from a burol (wake). It is believed that in doing so, bad spirits would be shaken off before one reaches the house.
I am not exactly a believer of that but I gamely obliged. My original choice was to go to a donut shop near Tierra Santa Memorial Park. But they prevailed upon me in choosing McDonald’s Mabalacat. We ordered seven sets of double cheeseburger, regular fries and pineapple juice for each of us.
The newly-renovated burger store seemed cool at first with the convenience of those touch screens for orders – for burgers, chicken, drinks plus side orders. So we ordered in a breeze from that machine.
Here comes waiting time. For like 15 to 20 minutes there I had to wait for our number to appear on the TV monitor that has two columns. If I recall rightly, one has line up of numbers for “for preparation” and one has “for serving”.
I did not mind waiting. What I minded was I had to keep standing up as the place where we were seated was a little far from the monitor. And there were some big artworks hanging on hall dividers too that covered the screen. I had to do a stand-sit-stand act for like four times just to see if our number was already appearing. It was not so kita-kits from where we were seated.
And voila, our number was announced. To our surprise, the drink was orangey. That prompted me to tell the server that we all ordered pineapple juice from the touch-screen board. They apologized though. I thought that this is another case of not so kita-kits where the touch screen and the servers (or their available supply) do not see well too. Their electronic system should have grayed out the pineapple juice from the board to tell customers in advance that it is out of order.
At the counter where the order was being prepared and served, there was a rugged-looking man beside me and started a conversation as I waited. To my surprise, the man was telling me of names of some classmates. And before I knew it, he was asking me for some money “for some drinks.” I gave him P20.00 (yes, twenty pesos).
To now recall, I can only sum up with this: yung touch screen at supply nila di nagkita-kits, yung now preparing and now serving monitor di makita-kits (from our seats), pero yung mama, aba eh, kumita-kits.
