I’m not a fan of fast food restaurants. For whatever reason, I always seem to overhear random conversations and it just puts me on edge not being able to tune out. Here I am at Burger King, having some dinner while waiting for my flight and there’s this lady talking to what appears to be her husband. From what I gathered, she writes episodes for some show and there’s a coworker who really annoys her. According to the lady, this coworker is so self-centered that whenever she contributes ideas to an episode, it’s always in a way to show off her knowledge of a given topic.

Fair enough, we all know people who just don’t realize how the people around them have learned to tune them out because they aren’t that pleasant to be around. But there was something about the way this woman was telling the story that actually made her sound exactly like the coworker she was complaining about: unknowingly self-centered. Ironic, isn’t it?

She just kept going on and on about how it was her plot and this other lady tried to hijack it just to serve her need to show off that she knew more about Catholicism and what a godmother is. And in the process, I heard a petty woman who was so focused on how much she disliked her coworker that she herself became oblivious to how self-centered she became.

What really bugged me more than that was that she was talking about something that made this other lady horny – right in front of her young son! He couldn’t have been much older than 8 or 9 and he just sat there listening to his mother rail on about some woman from work. I wonder what he was thinking. That certainly was no example to set for a child.

This woman got to my nerves a bit, just like another who was with a man at McDonald’s earlier this week. As they cozied up in a booth, I kept hearing her say to him in a nasally voice: “You don’t like kids… but you don’t like kids!” Saying it twice to make your point? I get that. Saying it at least 6 times in a row in a scratchy high-pitched voice that grated on my ears? Not cool. I’m not sure what they were discussing, but the entire conversation subsisted on her insisting he doesn’t like kids (or anything that bogs him down) and him chuckling and occasionally mumbling something. I was amazed that they could have an entire conversation where she said a whole of two sentences over and over again.

And so it goes, eating at fast food joints just hasn’t been panning out well for me. I’ve since moved to the terminal waiting area, and thankfully there are no conversations to overhear, just the echoey hum of conversations across the room.