Rainy day and Monday, to boot (K.C., may you be enjoying a sunny, heavenly day.) Needed my second cup of coffee en route to another meeting. McDonald’s drive-thru. I order the coffee: “I’ll have a small coffee with two creams.” My standard order. The voice through the box said “Okay, that will be sixty cents.” Hmm…I had already counted out my one dollar’s worth of change from the collection that accumulates on Mike’s nightstand. I took away forty cents of it and handed it over to the man at the window. But I had to know why. So I asked: “Why did you charge me only sixty cents for coffee?” “Because I gave you the senior price” he replied. My next question “Can you see me when I order?” He said no. And the questioning continued: “Then how do you know to give me a senior price for coffee?” “Well”, he said, “I am 50 years old and I thought your voice sounded like you were also 50, or older.”
Okay, hold the phone, or the microphone or whatever fits here. My next question: “So you can tell a person’s age from their voice?” His response “Usually.” All of this is going on when there are five cars behind me awaiting their Big Mac value meals.
This left me in deep thought.
If voice is the age give-away, then Miley Cyrus and Mila Kunis should be paying sixty cents when they order their small coffee with two creams.
And in that same vein, I will begin practicing my best Didi Conn or Mindy Kaling or Ariel voice.
Newsflash restaurants: Do not assume someone’s age by voice, or even by face, for that matter.
A rainy Monday with too many assumptions ended with a lovely dinner with five dear women who are my true sisters in Christ. We laugh together and cry together and break bread together. We show our pretty sides and our ugly sides. We love unconditionally. I am extremely grateful for them every day, but especially on the days when the world tells me I am too old to order a regular priced coffee.