Actual useful observation from last night #2:
If you’re at New Meadowlands, and like your hamburger and fries with a side of healthy competition, get your ass to the Brooklyn Burger concession stand. The burgers are slightly-better-than-average by outdoor sporting event standards, but that’s not why you go there.
Getting in line isn’t about getting to the shortest one, it’s also about observing your cashier/server. Apparently, Brooklyn Burger keeps things “fresh” by not having the food sit endlessly under heat lamps. Yet it’s not exactly made to order. Ideally, I guess they are aiming for some sort of flow where the food gets made and the cashier/server heads over to pick it just as it’s ready.
Of course, like any idealized utopian economic system (communism, libertarianism, and pure capitalism all know what I’m talking about), it sounds excellent in a well-crafted manifesto, but it goes to shit when put into practice by actual humans. What results is a gleefully uneasy mix of gambling and dining as you watch your cashier battle for your burgers and fries. You immediately see if you have chosen your cashier poorly. The attributes you want in a cashier is either cunning or strength combined with the will to get you your food quickly, without the incentive of a tip.
“It’s like watching horse racing,” someone who would later accuse me of farting observed.
If you have chosen poorly, you’ll be waiting a while. I must have inherited my dad’s horse racing instincts, because I did precisely that. The cashier was big enough to use her physicality, but, alas, like a 300-pounder who only plays defensive tackle for the money, she was patient and pleasant and ultimately frustrated because she simply didn’t want it bad enough and do what needed to be done. Watching her get cut off again and again was dispiriting. All I could say to myself was, “Shit, those were my fries.”
But as the noted fictional philosopher Maximus once asked, “Are you not entertained?” I was. So the Brooklyn Burger experience was not one I’d soon forget. I encourage you to head down for some real entertainment the next time you’re at New Meadowlands and you’re hungry for more than just sustenance.
7 months ago