Popeyes and Pancho excerpt, (well, this one is just Popeyes)

"That's all I can stands, 'cause I can't stands no more!"

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So, as I’m wont to say, hola amigos. I know it’s been a while since I rapped atcha, but we suffered a loss here in the Kelly house this week. I’ll get to that in a second, but there is an issue that’s way more pressing to me right now and it’s turkey. 

Here’s what’s up: as some of you probably know, Thanksgiving is coming up and turkey is our national tradition on thanksgiving. I personally have always absolutely fucking hated turkey, so a couple of years ago when I worked at the Onion, my colleagues at the wonderful site thetakeout.com reviewed an item that seemed too good to be true: a deep fried cajun spiced turkey from Popeyes. In short, you go to a store, you order it and pay, and you pick it up by thanksgiving and you know the rest.

I know what you’re thinking: that sounds like absolute garbage. But I ask you the following: when have you ever had a turkey for thanksgiving that wasn’t mostly garbage? Beyond that, the people at the Takeout are bona fide food critic types, and their review was (and this is such an approximation that I can’t even call it a paraphrase in good conscience) “I expected this to suck, but it’s a deep fried turkey that I just heated up in the oven and the spice is great and it’s the hands down best, juiciest, most flavorful turkey I’ve ever had.” That, my friends, sounds like something worth trying. 

So anyway, I was finally pushed over the edge when my neighbor and fellow dad (a fireman, so we are a great odd couple type of team) was talking about how he usually makes 3 turkeys every year (firemen all think they’re great cooks, which is particularly funny when you consider that they’re just cooking for a bunch of young drunk dipshits who have permanent smoke damage to their sinuses and therefore no taste buds, and that they’re just probably mostly stoked to be away from their wives more than anything, but I digress), and I said, “man, I’m thinking about that Popeyes turkey this year” and he just acted like I said I was just gonna take a series of shits and feed it to my family.

So I told him about the reviews I’ve read and his response was more or less “I’ll mop the fucking floor with that Popeyes turkey. It’s dogshit.” Now, almost nothing makes me fired up more than someone hating on something that they’ve never experienced. I think it’s a fairly shameful quality. It’s at the heart of all xenophobia and racism and blah blah blah blah blah, but in this case, it seemed remarkably hubristic. It’s Popeyes! They do fowl pretty well 364 days a year. You don’t think they could juke into turkey territory on day 365 with a semblance of ease? AND, I ain’t never had Jeff’s 3 turkeys but I bet they’re all dry. There. I said it. So anyway, at this goddamned SCOFFING at my idea for a fun easy take on thanksgiving, my goddamn dander was up. 

What, you may ask, did I do? Well, I went online to order one of these turkeys only to find out that you have to either call or go in to an actual store in order to reserve one. So called four spots before I found one that would admit that they were offering turkeys, but by the time I got there (15 minutes later) they had “already sold out.” 

Do I believe this is what actually happened? I do not. I believe that the people who are employed on the front lines of Popeyes during a pandemic want nothing less than to deal with ordering you a fucking turkey and having to potentially carry its 30 pound ass in and storing it and so forth. I also believe that they probably have their antennae up for corporate secret shoppers who call and make sure that they’re at least amenable to the idea of the turkeys being available. So I get the hustle.

Here’s the fucking problem as a needer of the turkey: I get down there and there’s no fucking way to order the turkey. I get to the next Popeyes, they also just ran out of turkeys. Next one, same. Mind you, these are ALL places that said they had them available on the phone. 

Today i drove 45 minutes into the suburbs. My friend had called to see if they had turkeys. They said they had two but they were first come first serve (which, yeah, that’s kinda how all restaurants work) so I cruised out right away. When I showed up, homeboy was like “nope. No turkeys. We don’t do that.” and I said “My wife called 45 minutes ago and you said you had two,” (it was my friend, but you know, for ease) at which point he said “Well, they are first come first serve” and I said “you’ve sold two turkeys in the past ¾ of an hour?” and he straight up looked me in the eye and said yes. 

Now, folks, I am no big city supply chain aficionado but it seems UNLIKELY AS HELL to me that the Melrose Park Popeyes flew through 2 turkeys today between 11 and 12. The whole thing is infuriating, and now this fuuuuuucking smug fireman is gonna get to sit around and crow like I had a dumb idea simply because teenagers that work at Popeyes understandably don’t want to deal with my turkey needing ass. The whole thing reeks of unmitigated bullshit. 

Capitalism and franchising: as american as it gets. Thanks for nothing, America. 

That’s the end of part one. If you’d like to subscribe, you can read on. If not, thanks for reading! See ya next time.