An ice cream rant (or: Turns out they're ALL Baskin-Robins of fail)

Okay time to get something off my chest (and the way I eat, it may well be a clogged artery):

I went to get ice cream tonight, because it was hot and it makes me forget for a few minutes how lonely and useless I am.

Carvel was closed. Assholes. Cold Stone was too far away. Dairy Queen had just closed, though the girl cleaning up was hot, in all defiance of any reasonable expectations for a DQ girl on a Friday night in my town. So I might have been able to barter sexual favors in exchange for dessert. As in, let me buy a Blizzard and I'll put my clothes back on.

Then I remember that Baskins-Robins1 exists in a tangiable, real-world way, not just as a metaphor for people ignoring boots. And there's one a half-mile away from me. So I swing by and lo and behold, they're open. And they're on the waffle bowl sundae bandwagon, offering one with a brownie, peanut butter sauce and peanut butter cups. I loves me some chocolate with peanut butter, I tell you what. And I order one ... but with a twist! Instead of the vanilla ice cream, I wish to take my chocolate/peanut butter experience to new heights with ... chocolate/peanut butter ice cream! Makes sense, no?

No.

No as in no, I'm not allowed to substitute the vanilla ice cream.

Why? I incredulously ask.

Because Baskin-Robins management said so, I am told.

Okay, time out. First of all, that line only works when a) I'm eight years old or b) Stone Cold Steve Austin is saying it. I'm not a), and the middle-aged B-R zealot goose-stepping to the spoken word recording of the company's mission statement is not b). Second, why on earth does anyone in the Baskin-Robins universe, from the part-time janitors all the way up to the person who looked at the menu of 30 flavors and decided it just wasn't enough, give two frozen fucks about what ice cream I wish to grace the bottom of the waffle bowl of my Peanut Butter Brownie sundae? Are the rules governing time and space torn asunder because I don't want your fail-laced vanilla ice cream? Does chaos theory kick in, and the extra quarter-ounce that two scoops of chocolate/peanut butter provide over the vanilla trigger a chain of events that produces hurricanes in the Hudson Bay, bananas that walk and talk and a peaceful Trentonian thread on the jobs board?

Well, fuck you, B-R! Fuck you right in your unnaturally-colored sherbet! I'm 33 years old, making me the same age as Jesus Christ when He was crucified on a cross to redeem the sins of the repentant believer. Even if I can't turn water into wine or two fishes and five loaves of bread into enough food to feed a NASCAR beat writers luncheon, I should be allowed the ability to change vanilla into decent ice cream by way of a request! Y'know? I'm old enough to make my own food choices and old enough to make my own expenditure choices, and guess what? I'm choo-choo-choosing to tell YOU to gtfo of my list of ice cream parlors! In fact, here's the new list:

1. Awesome local place a few miles away (hit it after the aborted B-R run, got some etherial chocolate oreo marshmallow. Did they make me eat vanilla? Hell no!)
2. Cold Stone Creamery
3. Dairy Queen
4. McDonalds
5. A zillion other places
3 million 8. Cut my asshole out, freeze it and eat it.
3 million 9. Baskin-Robins

So stuff that in your collective pipe, then stuff that pipe in your collective ASS.

1 -- Yeah, it's technically spelled Baskin-Robbins, with two Bs in Robbins. But while we're being technical, I don't technically give one hoot in deepest, darkest hell what they want to call themselves. Become more service-oriented and customer-friendly and I'll consider spelling your name right. Otherwise, say hello to Boomtown, where nothing is spelled right or makes a lot of sense.
2 -- Holy hell, the girl in this Honda Civic commercial? I'd plow her like a wheatfield under a harvest moon.
3 -- Making some spelling changes, and our spellechecker suggests "coexisting" as a proper substitue for "goose-stepping". Contemplate THAT.

 

Bubbler called. He wants you to go to Walmart with him

 

Wow, footnotes. And if there were a flavor called lonely and useless, what would it be?

 

How was the sundae?

 

Ice cream . . . yum.

 

Has anyone, in their life before, read a rant about the late-night help at an ice cream shoppe that was annotated?

Bravo, sir.

And I hit Cold Stone last night. The girl had never been to one. After I got my watermelon sorbet and my change, I looked her dead in the eye and said, "Watch this."

I dropped my .47 in the jar and the singing suburban fuckups burst into song and the girl damn near shit herself.

That sorbet tasted good, too.

 

Rum raisin

 

Now see, I wouldn't drop .47 in the tip jar to make them sing. I WOULD drop a .44 in my hand to make them stop.

 

That singing makes me cringe.

 

The last time I was jonesing for ice cream, I went to Wal-Mart at midnight and bought a bag of those single-serve cups of vanilla. Unfortunately, they didn't have the strawberry swirl and there was no wooden spoon-stick.

 

Never had Ben & Jerry's.

 

Megadittoes.
(Sorry.)