I have two small stories related to water and food places. I will post one story today, and the 2nd story tomorrow. I went with a friend today to a Target store. We had been going to different places doing some errands all day and needed a break, and decided to go to a Taco Bell inside the Target store located in CrossRoads in Irvine. I had my jacket in the backseat of the car, and my wallet was in it. Once we stopped near Target, I wanted to open the back door to get my jacket in order to get my wallet. My friend told me that he would give me a treat; I had been paying all day for different things including gas, and this sounded like a good way to balance things. I left my jacket in the car. That was mistake number one, and the only mistake needed to make things a little bit interesting.

We were hungry, and thus ordered 4 chicken quesadillas. I didn’t want any soda, so me and my friend asked for 2 cups of water. The cashier, a 17 or so year old kid, told us that they don’t give out any cups of water anymore because of liability, and that we could get water in a drinking fountain located on the other side of the huge store. Me and my friend thought it was a joke, so my friend, instinctively, asked the cashier if he was joking. The cashier was serious; that Taco Bell would not give out a cup of water for free, and the only drink we could get from them was in the form of a $2.50 small cup of soda of our choice.

My friend didn’t have enough money, and thus we couldn’t order any drinks. I asked the cashier if he could ask one of his coworkers to get us water, if possible. He asked his assistant manager, who nodded a no from far away in the back kitchen, and then pointed to the drinking fountains provided by the store. We were hungry, and we knew that quesedillas only tasted good with hot sauce. My friend asked the cashier why they have to be so “uptight about it“; the cashier responded by saying “We don’t want to be liable for things people don’t buy, sorry“, to which I replied “What are you guys afraid of? Someone drowning in their own cup of water?” The guy only smiled an uneasy smile and said “Sorry” again; I couldn’t blame him. Every cashier has to follow their manager or assistant manager, and doing anything otherwise would not be good for the young guy in the eyes of the managers.

This small fast food chain is located within a big store, and thus can afford to not give out something that should be free since most of the people don’t have time to complain. The focus is not on giving the best experience possible, but on making the food as quickly as possible so that people can take the food to go or eat it quickly and start shopping. Families would rather finish the whole food and drinks drama immediately instead of having kids who eat something spicy cry for water, and having to take such things all the way over to the small drinking fountains. A cup of water costs nothing to the store compared to the profits made each week. However, at a time when the focus is on profit maximization, the place probably thought it was good to forget about water, as that would mean that people buy drinks. How many times have you gone with kids into a store with shopping carts and then walked out in the middle of the shopping to get some free water, and then come back? Not many times, I think.

We ate the quesadillas, and my friend then walked over to the other end of the store to drink water. I couldn’t walk all the way to the fountains, so I decided to drink water once I got home. I just got back home about half an hour ago, and forgot all about the water; I just remembered about it while writing this last paragraph, and drank lots of orange juice before finishing this very sentence.