Please picture the following:
I, Mike, and Danfriend are at Chick-fil-A about half an hour before closing. I order a kid's meal (6 piece nuggets, if you must know) and Mike gets a chocolate shake. I wait with the tray for Dan, while Mike goes and sits down in a booth with some bud-buds. When Dan is ready, I pick up the tray and attempt to walk to the booth, but the way is blocked by "Caution: Wet Floor" signs. There is a woman mopping the floor.
I attempt to walk around the signs, and she says: "This section is closed!"
Okay, I think, and I attempt to go the long way around, only to find that my way is blocked on that side by a row of chairs. As I try and squeeze through them, the woman says again, "This section is closed! I've already cleaned it... I don't want to have to clean it again."
"No problem," I say. "I'm just going through to sit with my friends." I gesture to where Mike and the buds are sitting, in a section still populated by diners. Exasperated, she agrees, and I continue through the closed section, heading toward the booth of friendly faces.
Halfway through the clean section, I swivel to maneuver around a table and feel an odd weight shift on the tray I carry. I look down just in time to see Mike's untouched chocolate milkshake topple off the tray and explode on the freshly-mopped floor, splattering the tables, chairs, and walls of the area that, if it's not too much trouble, the cleaning lady would really rather I avoid.
There is a painful silence as every head turns toward the explosion. The woman hasn't figured out yet what's happened, being on the other side of a partition mopping another area. She knows something is up, but she's not yet sure what, as I stand helpless in the middle of the restaurant, milkshake dripping from my jeans onto the floor.
Silence, and then a precocious young lad rushes to the scene from his family's booth to stand, hands on hips, and shout: "Clean up on aisle seven!!"
It was one of the most perfectly constructed moments of my life, and I thought I would share it with you.
