I said that my blog would involve a lot of reviews, thought I hadn't thought about writing a food review -- until this afternoon.

I'm still chugging away at Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits. For those of you who aren't too familiar with this food chain, it's a fried chicken joint, much like KFC. However, its style couldn't be any more different. Popeyes was founded in New Orleans as a means of having the wonder that is Louisiana cooking, but without the hassle of going to fancier restaurants. Since its opening in 1972, Popeyes has expanded its branches all over the United States and even across the seas. To this day, it remains true to its New Orleans heritage, serving not just fried chicken, but a variety of spicy dishes that were first made popular in the land of fine cooking.

Having been working for Popeyes for a little over two years now, I've experienced many lineups in our menu and seen new dishes being added to the mix. For the most part, the concept remains the same: fried chicken, sides, biscuits, and seafood. However, every so often the corporation brings back -- or sometimes creates -- flavorful dishes that exemplify the spirit of Louisiana cooking. This time, it's the crawfish Po'Boy sandwich.

First, you might be wondering just what the heck a Po'Boy is. Well, I'll just let the Popeyes website explain this delicious bit of New Orleans:


There you have it. A simply made sandwich with just the bare minimum -- in the case of Popeyes this includes lettuce, pickles, and a lot of meat stacked between. Note, however, that the picture of the sandwich seen above is NOT the crawfish Po'Boy. Po'Boys are made in a variety of ways at Popeyes -- chicken strip, shrimp, and even catfish. This month's special is centered around crawfish, shrimp like food that's marinated in famous Louisiana spices and fry cooked to perfection. When I took my lunch break at work today, I wanted to try out this sandwich, being both a fan of crawfish and a fan of the Po'Boy.

The result was amazingly delicious. I wish I had a picture to show just how delicious looking this sandwich really was, but I hadn't thought about picture taking for reviewing purposes until after the sandwich was long gone. Instead of using mayonnaise, the Crawfish Po'Boy uses horseradish as its sauce. It was an unusual thing, but it worked VERY well. The sauce gave it just that extra kick that makes me enjoy Popeyes food so much even after having been working there for so long.

With a side of famous New Orleans style red beans n' rice and a cup of our Sweet Iced Tea, this was one of the best meals I'd ever tasted at this place. I'm very much a fan of spicy food. I tend to dump loads of hot sauce on my steaks, burgers, and even my french fries just to satisfy my spicy needs. The food I had here needed absolutely nothing extra. All the spice was there and all the flavor was there.

Suffice to say that I recommend this sandwich to anyone. I know in this day and age fried food is looked down upon, but as the saying goes: "Everything in moderation." There's nothing wrong with indulging yourself a little bit. It might not be entirely healthy for you, but if flavor and good food for your money is what you're looking for, this kind of sandwich is definitely a good way to go.

Have you ever had to deal with a customer -- whether in food, retail, or any other business -- who likes to bargain? Do you hate that? I sure do. I dealt with that today at work.

I'll admit, I don't personally believe Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits has the best deals. But that's just it -- they're still deals. Regardless of my or anyone's opinion, it's still a deal, even if they're not as good as, say, KFC's $5 fill up boxes. Anyway, as of right now, the branch of Popeyes I work at has a deal going on for 10 pieces of mixed chicken for $9.99. After tax it's $10.97. Basically, about $11.00 for 10 pieces. And it's JUST 10 pieces of chicken. There's nothing else. I say again, there are much better deals out there. However, compared to what's on our menu at regular price this is actually a sweet ass deal. And note that the advertisement just says chicken only. Nothing else comes with it.

Every so often, however, a customer seems to think he or she can sway me into making any deal into a better one, and this pisses me off to no end for two reasons: 1.) It's already a deal! and 2.) I could get into serious trouble for doing that. That happened again today. Some guy -- about in his late 30s I would say -- came in at around 6:15 pm. I was at the register at the time and took his order. The first thing that came out of his mouth was this: "That deal out there on the window -- the 10 pieces for $9.99 -- how many sides and biscuits come with that?"

Let's look at this question really, really carefully. I'm not taking his question out of context, he specifically meant "what else comes with this deal?" It's the manner of how he worded his question. "How many sides and biscuits come with that?" The answer is none. There's no indication anywhere on the sign that this deal comes with anything other than chicken. "But, Kevin," you may be saying, "he just made a mistake! No big deal, right?" Ah, read on, my friend.

I politely informed him that nothing else comes with this deal. It's just chicken. This is where the second problem arose. He looked back at the sign and then at me, and gave me a look that clearly said, "Are you fucking crazy?!" He seemed to compose himself for a moment and then added, "Nothing? It's just chicken?"
"Yes, sir." I answered.
"10 pieces for $10? That's not much of a deal."
"I'm sorry, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

He began negotiating a better deal for him. First, he asked if we had any sort of deal that was only sides and biscuits. I informed him we didn't. He looked over at another of our specials, which was a family meal special and asked why that particular one did have a side and biscuit deal. I explained that that was how the deal came to begin with. For whatever reason, this answer seemed to send him on a bit of a rant, accusing us of being cheap (irony at its finest) and calling me a poor example of customer service. Eventually, he left saying, "You need to serve the customer! We're always right!"

No, sir. No, you're not. Customers are NOT always right, and I hate this stupid saying with a passion. You are not in the right when you try to negotiate what's already a deal or bargain to better suit your needs. I'm sorry, but you don't. Not in fast food anyway. The deal already comes how it says; I can't change it just because you don't like it. I'm sorry we don't have something better for you, but you can't satisfy everyone. Instead of getting so angry about it, though, either find another place or get something else on the menu, but don't start getting angry at me -- a simple worker who just follows what he's been told, and try to pin blame on him. As the saying goes: "I just work here."

Seriously, this whole sense of entitlement crap people seem to have of themselves needs to go away.

I love Chipotle Mexican Grill. Sure, it's not authentic Mexican cuisine, but it's still delicious. I absolutely love going there and hearing the sizzle of chicken and steak on the grill; gazing at the sight of freshly prepared, creamy guacamole; smelling the mouth-watering combination of rice, lime, and cilantro; and, finally, tasting all of this and more as I sink my teeth into one of their massive burritos.

The lucky thing is that just about every experience I've had with this restaurant has been positive, and lucky that I love their food so much. Because unlike a few people today, I didn't turn my back on that amazing burrito just because some lady ruined some of the food because she didn't follow a simple policy.

Which is actually what this post is about. Chipotle is only a block or so from my campus, so it was worth walking to even though the line was sure to be long at the time of the day. That never stops me. As soon as I walked through the doors, all the smells and sights of why I was so drawn to it in the first place came back to me -- I knew I made the right choice. I'm standing behind this lady, about my height, dark haired, wearing sunglasses even though it had been overcast all day. In her left hand, she's got her cell phone. In the right, she has a cup of coffee. Nothing interesting, right? Read on.

Finally, the line moves froward and it's her turn to order. I'm so close to getting my meal I can almost taste it. My view of the rice is blocked by this young woman as she starts telling the young man behind the counter what she'd like, so my eyes glance over toward the meat selection, watching as a female worker replaces the insert of old chicken with freshly sliced chicken, and seconds later does the same with the steak. "Yes!," I'm thinking to myself. After all, who doesn't prefer fresh food?

My eyes move back to the woman in front as I hear a bit of conversation between her and the male employee. It turns out she had reached over the glass with her right arm to point at something, and the employee had kindly asked that she not do that. It's a simple policy. It says on a sticker in the corner of the glass "LOOK, DON'T TOUCH! Keep your hands on the other side, please. Thank you." Really, really simple. Unfortunately, either the lady doesn't seem to register what the employee said or doesn't care. She moves down the line toward the meats, just when I move forward to place my order. I had just asked for rice when yet again the woman reaches over the glass with her right arm. This time, however, her coffee didn't stay in her hand.

She knocked the bottom of the cup against the glass, lost her grip on it, and it tumbled out of her hand, falling onto the counter and burst open, spilling what looked like two-thirds of a Starbucks Grande size cup of coffee all over. It spilled very quickly onto the chicken and steak, both of which had just been put there, freshly made, not more than about thirty seconds before. The employee who put them there quickly took them away and threw it all out. More chicken would be ready within five minutes, she had said. At this time, about four people behind me left, grumbling. Of course no one really wants to wait at a fast food joint, but honestly it was only a five minute wait. And I hadn't walked here just to turn around because someone made a mistake, albeit a very stupid one.

So, what's the point of this post? I'm not at all upset that I had to wait five short minutes for my lunch (I've waited twenty before, and I still wasn't too annoyed). Actually, what I'm annoyed about is the carelessness this lady showed with regards to policy. Sure, it was a mistake, but what customers sometimes forget with this sort of thing is that policies exist for certain reasons and I bet you more often than not they're good reasons. I've been working for the past two years at Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits and I can attest to this personally. Many places -- especially restaurants -- have regulations and policies like this because they realize shit happens, and it's best to avoid these issues as best as possible. That's common sense.

Some might think it was stupid for the employee in this story to have thrown away ALL of the meat. After all, the coffee only spilled onto the top layer. However, that's not how food regulations work. Generally, a policy for this sort of situation will require the food be completely thrown away in case of contamination. Even if you, the customer, don't see a problem, the employee does. He or she has been trained to follow the procedure carefully and to the letter. There's also the other way around, in which the employee might not see a problem but the customer might. Had this employee not thrown away the whole thing then there is still the likelihood that even one customer would be pissed off they were given a certain product knowing coffee -- or anything for that matter -- spilled all over it.

Even then, that's not the worst. No, the worst is knowing that money was wasted. Yes, I understand it might have just been a little bit of chicken compared to how much Chipotle may usually purchase, but it's still a waste. In the end, the ones who get the worse end of the deal are the employees and the employers, whether or not they were to blame for the incident in the first place. Policies do exist for certain reasons, and in my experience it's more often than not because it's to help save money (especially important in this current economy) and to try to satisfy both parties -- the workers and the clients.

The long story short: Don't reach over glass with a cup of coffee. Actually, don't do it at all if you're asked not to. Simple enough.