http://www.baddesthacks.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=598

so, my dad had seen the ad for the ghost pepper wings at Popeye's, and decided he wanted some, and asked me if I'd go with him sometime. I told him that would be awesome. two days ago, we decided to do this and smoked a joint first because of course we did.

we drive to Popeye's which is about 5-10 min away, and the parking lot has a fair number of cars in it, but nothing insane. we go inside, and I immediately notice that the line is long as fuck -- but goddammit we wanted those wings. so, we shuffled into place in the line.

what happened over the next 20 minutes or so I can only hope to fully describe.

a few minutes into our wait, during which time a few people have been served so things don't seem SUPER grim at first, a lady mentions that neither drink machine has ice. the shift manager or whatever comes out to look into this, and someone also points out that the machine on the left is backing up with some mysterious and disgusting black goop. my dad and I watch over several minutes, never moving in line, as the manager uses first some powder or some shit and then some kind of massive fucking syringe thing to stop the hellish black flow from the drink machine. whether he was injecting something into the cesspool or attempting extraction, I could not say.

it's around this time that I notice that, while several people had gotten food in the beginning of our journey, there were also several people who had been waiting the entire time we'd been there -- or very close, anyway. additionally, one of the people who had gotten their food brought it back up. the guy had apparently asked for / paid for only thighs in his box of chicken, and they had fucked that up. as soon as he brought his chicken back is when shit really started to hit the fucking fan.

the girl who had taken his order, and was theoretically attempting to rectify the thigh situation, left her register and basically wandered from the front to the back over the next several minutes slowly accumulating thighs in boxes (dude had ordered 3 boxes of thighs, however many pieces that was). thing is, she never fucking tells him what she's doing, and disappears for minutes at a time.

during this ordeal, and quite literally the entire time we were at Popeye's, the kitchen staff kept cranking out absurd amounts of original recipe chicken. like, batch after batch of it. there is a fucking mountain of original recipe fried chicken. a chicken Mt fucking Fuji. a chicken fucking Vesuvius. this is when people in line start getting pissed and talking to each other, and it turns out that most of the people who are waiting are waiting on the fucking ghost pepper wings. you know, the fucking new wings they run ads for on TV a hundred fucking times a day. the kitchen cannot seem to make any of these tho, as they're hellishly busy churning out fucking original recipe.

so, back to the man who wanted thighs only. after like literally 5 minutes or more of the girl floating around, occasionally flipping a piece of chicken with tongs and deciding it was not a thigh and disappearing again, said "fuck it" out loud and walked back to his table with whatever they'd given him. the girl who was on thigh quest either did not notice or did not care, because she never took another fucking order the entire time we were in there. she just floated from front to back fucking around, as best as I could tell. I will return to the shenanigans of this rogue cashier, known here on in as "Thigh Girl".

since my dad and I are now like halfway thru the line and about 10 or 12 minutes in, I began internally struggling with whether we were, at that point, "in too deep" so to speak. I began to wonder if I should mention leaving and just going somewhere else, but my dad had really wanted those wings, so I kept it to myself. in particular, there is a Captain D's right down the street that is pretty bomb. anyway. another thing that naturally occurs in such a situation is you begin to study your surroundings. my dad pointed out that the registers (all three of them, of which only one was actually ... kind of... being used) still had scrolling messages advertising the "$20 HOLIDAY FEAST". I don't know when that promotion ended, but surely it was by the fucking New Year.

he points this out, and we start laughing. my dad says if he ever gets to the fucking register he's ordering the Holiday Feast. everyone else in line has tense, edgy looks. really, the only reason we were taking this so well was because we had gotten super stoned beforehand. also worth mentioning is the demographics of the line -- now quite literally to the door. as might be expected at a fried chicken place in South Richmond, the racial makeup was largely black. however, there were several other white people and an asian guy as well. there was everyone from a young black girl with her mom to an elderly white woman. and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US is muttering like "yo, what the fuck is going on."

meanwhile, the manager is still fucking with the drink machine. there is no end in sight, and whatever the fuck was going on with the drink machine on the left, the one on the right still doesn't have any fucking ice in any case. the line has not moved in several fucking minutes. there are people waiting for their food, still. there are people waiting for ice. there are people waiting to use the drink machine on the right anyway, ice be damned. Thigh Girl is still floating around doing God knows what. it is at this point that I realize how fucking tall Mt. St. Chicken is getting. the cooks are still working like fucking galley slaves to produce ungodly quantities of original recipe, to what end I do not know. I also notice that, while Thigh Girl has been fucking around with the chicken off and on, both in the front and in the back -- she's been running back and forth, don't forget -- she hasn't actually been rotating it. in fact, no one has. Lord fucking knows how old the bottom chicken is. it's been buried for an hour or two probably... at least. who the fuck even knows. it's probably fucking petrified. it's probably fucking compressed into a diamond. it's probably a fucking fossil fuel.

this thought is troubling me, and it's worth mentioning now that my little brother spoke against this particular Popeye's in no uncertain terms -- claiming it gave him at least horrible shits and perhaps minor food poisoning. I had eaten there in the past tho, and written his experience off as a single unfortunate incident. but now, still roughly only half-way thru the line and about 20 fucking minutes in I think about this more. I mean, their fucking register displays still are showing shit from Christmas and it's like over a week into January.

at this point everyone in line is united in their confusion, disgust, anger, etc. etc. etc. no one gives a shit about being polite anymore, openly pointing out how fucked up everything is. one guy is apparently a plumber and is attempting to give the manager advice on the black ooze situation. the people at the front of the line look dead inside, but they've already given up too much. the manager is as clueless and useless as Thigh Girl. it seems that, at least, the girl working the drive-thru is at least somewhat competent. my dad says out loud "yeahh... they're definitely not on their A-game tonite". I reply "yah they're out of their league and they playing tee-ball". people in line either snicker or get more visibly angry.

a few more minutes pass. nothing else of note happens except endless repetitions of the things I've mentioned already. Thigh Girl's shuffling around. manager's fucking around with the drink machine ooze. the one cashier actually kinda-sorta working is slow as shit. people are still waiting around. the kitchen keeps making original recipe.

and finally, fucking finally, my dad says "do you just want to go to Captain D's?". I said "yah I was thinking that like 10 minutes ago. fuck this." we then went to Captain D's and ordered, got our food, and fucking ate in the same amount of time we had been at Popeye's.

this was just such a fucking insane experience I've still been thinking about it, and thought you guys might think it was funny. since then, I have thought about things like... I did not, and would not want to, use the restroom at that Popeye's. but I really wouldn't be surprised if there's like fucking alien birthing pods in there. like, this is the type of place where there's not just one dead junkie in the stall, there's fucking 4 or 5. there's a crew member who's on-paper job is "bathroom junkie removal". but he fucking sucks at his job like everyone else there and just keeps making fucking original recipe fucking chicken.

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file from Nov 2019
recovered Jan 2021