It is a dark day in University Town. Krispy Kreme has descended upon us.
I have nothing against donuts, which a 1962 ad proclaimed "the best break coffee ever had." R. and I used to run the donut sales at my middle school. If I'm not up early enough for McDonald's breakfast (and these days it's rare that I am), the next best thing is an original glazed Krispy Kreme donut. But enough about me and my status as a corporate bitch.
As usual, the only thing I have something against is stupidity. In other people. Especially stupidity en masse.
The store's construction had been completed weeks earlier. The management provided students free donuts on our first morning back in class. The employees had been practice-baking their asses off, at least according to one woman I accosted at the local Kwik-E-Mart last week. They even had a sign in front of the building counting down the days until the grand opening.
There was some discussion in my circle about possibly camping out in front of the store in hopes of being its first customers. After all, the first customer was rewarded with free donuts for a year, doled out at a dozen a week. There were subsequently smaller prizes for others who braved the line. It sounded like fun times.
But that was before my Monday night class. While there is an advantage to taking a class that meets but once a week, it also requires three solid hours of dedication and consciousness. Thus, Speech 201 may not have been the wisest choice. I did learn during the course of the evening, however, that a line was already forming outside the Krispy Kreme, more than twelve hours before its scheduled opening.
The girl told me that "a few people" were already hanging out in the parking lot. That turned out to be an understatement. A drive-by survey of the parking lot at around 9:30 last night revealed the following sights:
Approximately 200 people; a radio station-shaped van promising a 'live broadcast'; a large crowd-herding tent; a few smaller pup tents strategically erected in the line; balloons; a grill.
Also, the parking lot was blocked off with cones. By the police. Insert your own joke here.
It was a sight to see, because while Monday itself had been pleasant, a chill was in the air by that evening and the forecast promised (as well as later delivered) snow flurries. I scoffed at the insanity, because things like camping out in the Krispy Kreme parking lot are only crazy when someone other than me is doing them. Then I resolved to return tomorrow for my free donut (one per customer on opening day) and other fried fat purchases.
I spent the better part of the day in bed, but my scouting reports indicated that the store was still insanely busy as of early afternoon. The line of cars in the drive-thru allegedly stretched all the way around the shopping center and behind the Lowe's that anchors it. Again, only crazy when it's not me.
I figured that by the time I got there for my glazed treats around 8 tonight, the crowd would have waned. I was wrong. The in-person line wrapped around the entire store and out the front door to the aforementioned crowd-herding tent. We hesitantly took our places in line and waited.
After a few minutes, some random employee arrived to pass out paper hats. I promptly donned mine to stave off what I thought might be impending hypothermia. A while later we finally made it to the physical door of the actual store, but not before being treated to lively and intelligent conversation from some excited yokels who'd apparently missed the 'free donut' memos and were salivating at the prospect of free fried goo.
As the line slithered on through the store, I admired the sort-of clean floor and took a mental picture, because I knew better than to expect it ever to be that clean again. The man with the free donuts came by. Mine was good, but eerily reminiscent of those MREs we got at summer camp one time. Just how long did they expect us to stand here in wait of breakfast food in the dead of night?
The free donut guy kept on down the line and rewarded the patience of the yokels with free food. The woman behind me had the gall to, in all seriousness, make the following comment: "Tasting this makes it all worth it."
Never mind that she could've driven to the next-nearest Krispy Kreme and back in the time she was standing in line. Licking free crusted icing off her lips from her very own local donut store was worth the price of nearly freezing to death.
That same woman went on to invent the word 'alumees,' which I gleaned from the context to be a possible perverted plural of 'alum' (yes, as a matter of the fact, the actual plural is 'alumni'). God, she was stupid.
After a good couple hours in line and a demoralizing peek at the terrifying world of donut production involving a continuous fattening wall of glaze, we finally made it to the counter. We ordered a dozen original glazed, a dozen chocolate iced (yum!), and Diet Cokes. We have to watch our calories, you know.
As we hiked back to the car in the bitter cold, I noticed that the drive-thru line continued to stretch well into the shopping center lot. Better them than us, I suppose. I can't imagine that line moved too much faster. I didn't care, though. I was too busy wondering what the hell was wrong with our town and why a donut store opening drew such a huge crowd. I suppose we're the perfect market for a Krispy Kreme: nothing but college students, old people, and the obese, mostly. In fact, it's a wonder we survived so long without one. I bit into my chocolate-covered treat and realized that in order to avoid overlapping those categories, I'll have to join a gym.
Someone got here by searching for: "apparently no matter how hard you try and how much you give your all to the person you care about, in the end i am still just a fuck up who has messed up someone else's life." My readers have issues. Reading: A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice. Listening to: Fiona Apple. Eating: Donuts. I'm going to have University Town's fattest freshman ass by Friday at this rate.
