 Arby's #05523
I stop in at this Arby's sometimes when I'm in Chicago's Loop, as Arby's seem increasingly few and far between, and I secretly love their deliciously gross roast beef sandwiches. I like the Beef 'N' Cheddar, which I'll get with some potato cakes and a cola. Yum! What I like about this particular Arby's is that, since it's in the gritty, citiest part of the city, there always seem to be some real characters that come in. This visit was better than usual. A Black guy stepped up to the counter while I was waiting for my order. He ordered some kind of combo meal, and after a vague misunderstanding about what side order he wanted, he was asked by the diligent cashier what kind of drink he wanted. He paused for a mysterious few moments and said, almost under his breath, "Suicide." The cashier was visibly taken aback by this remark, as was I, until after a few seconds I realized that what he wanted was a drink comprised of all the available fountain flavors, except for the diet ones. This made my day. I didn't realize that anyone outside of elementary school even thought about "Suicide" as a beverage, much less that anyone would walk into an eating establishment, at any age, and actually order one by that name … much less expect the cashier to instantly know what he was referring to. It was a real delight to then watch the guy explain the concept to the cashier, who seemed to get the idea surprisingly quickly, as if to suggest that in the back of our minds, we all have hazy memories of "Suicide." This also rekindled memories of a rather odd phase during 5th grade wherein a group of kids seated at the same lunch table would spread out a napkin and combine all their various snack chips into a big pile, and that would be called a "Party." Those "Parties" never were any good, as they ended up making all the chips taste equally wretched, and I imagine that it's a similar situation with "Suicide." What does any of this have to do with Arby's? Nothing, I just thought it was a funny story, fuck-ass.
Review by Emily Emergency, April 2004 |