Who among us doesn’t know the shock, the horror, of turning the wrong way down a one-way street? Your pulse quickens, your pupils dilate, and perhaps worst of all, you feel like an absolute dumbass while your fellow citizens honk and yell at you.
Admittedly the stakes aren’t as high in the drive-thru (it’s not like anyone is moving over five miles an hour) but the dumbass factor is increased tenfold. Add to that the patience of the typical drive-thru dweller and you have a recipe for disaster. Your heart has to go out to the mystery driver. There but for the grace of god, and well-placed drive-thru arrows, go any of us.
Okay there’s a lot going on here so let’s break this video down a bit:
- First of all, it seems to be captured by someone’s dashboard camera. Why does this person have their dashboard camera on in the Taco Bell drive-thru? Did they need proof that they did indeed eat a gordita?
- The first thing they say when seeing the car pulling in the wrong way is “What the fuck?” This is completely reasonable. No questions here.
- They then proceed to eat their Taco Bell while the poor driver in front of them struggles to back their car out of the drive-thru like a toddler throwing a bowling ball down a lane with those bumpers in it. Again this makes total sense. Who would pass up dinner and free show? Besides, it’s not like they have a lot of options.
- At this point we get our first, inevitable, “What are you doing dumbass?!” This is to be expected, but what’s odd is that it’s followed with what sounds like “Fucking polecat!”, which, according to Urban Dictionary (most trusted of all Internet sources) could mean either a skunk, a man who prefers heavyset women, or a scoundrel. Although the last option is most likely, isn’t it more fun to believe that, in addition to the car stuck in the drive-thru, there was a skunk wandering between automobiles causing a separate, yet equally hilarious problem? So much of life is about how we choose to view it.
- Next, there’s some incoherent mumbling followed by someone, most likely the “polecat” guy, yelling “C’mon ding-a-ling!” What’s going on? Is there an 1840s prospector stuck in this drive-thru? Is he in a big hurry because he has to get to the gold in dem dere hills?
- Now we’re introduced to this guy:
We’re going to call him Archie, because he looks like an Archie. Archie is the kind of guy teenagers make fun of on the street, but is also the exact person you want around when you’re having trouble backing up a vehicle. Archie might very well be “polecat” guy. He’s mean but ultimately the one who gets the car out of the drive-thru. Eventually an employee comes out, but his main function is to deliver the line they teach you the first day on the job at Taco Bell: “I’m so sorry, sir.”
- It’s the final moments of the video that are the most confusing. As the car is finally pulling away someone says something about how the driver of this vehicle should not be on the road and someone else (maybe Archie?) very matter-of-factly answers “Well they’re from Africa.” What does this mean? Is it racism? Did the driver at one point actually indicate that he or she was from Africa? How exactly would that affect their driving? It’s a mystery that is never explained.
So what’s the lesson here? Pay attention to drive-thru signs? All car problems can be solved by old guys wearing utility belts? If you get too high, maybe call a friend and ask them to go to Taco Bell for you? Like all great films these questions must be answered in the mind of the viewer.
What’s more fun is to imagine is that the driver had the balls to pull around the building, get back in line, and order that chalupa they’d been craving.