that’s whacked

random musings from my commute on BART

Thursday, Oct 20. 2005  –  Category: Food, Musings

the south hayward station has a disproportionately high number of cute asian girls, compared to the rest of the BART stations - at least the ones on the east bay. why is that? CSU hayward/east bay? or do they just have better looking asian genes in south hayward.

i get into the union city station around 7:40 since i have to get to fruitvale BART by 7:15 to get parking. the Sun shuttle doesn’t come until 8, so this leaves me 20 minutes of time to kill. lately, i’ve been watching all the migrant workers, and all the asian general contractors/construction guys who pick them up in their trucks. it’s been kind of interesting trying to figure out the seniority/pecking order among the workers. for the most part, it seems to be a FIFO queue - but every now and then, there are people who for some reason or another (designated senior migrant workers?) who get to jump the queue and go ahead of others. the other funny thought that occured to me was if you were some random dude who just happened to be going to the union city station to pick someone up, and you pulled up in your truck - and two random hispanic guys just jumped into your truck mistaking you for a contractor. would it be weird? awkward? freaky?

yesterday, i took the bus to BART instead of driving - so i got to union city @ 7:30. 30 minutes to kill, so i figured i’d go grab a bite to eat at McD’s across the street. a sausage/egg mcgriddle’s (yeah yeah i like ‘em, deal with it) is clearly labeled as $3.69 for the meal. the cashier rung me up at $4.88. i gave her a $5 without really thinking and she gave me 12 cents change. after about 10 seconds (while i was waiting for my meal), it occured to me that $1.19 tax on something that is $3.69 is insanely high (i’m slow in the morning). i pointed it out, and she kindly pointed out that i had gotten coffee. i kindly pointed out that coffee and a hashbrown are included in the meal. she less kindly pointed out that it was due to tax. i less kindly pointed out that i didn’t believe Union City had a 32% tax rate, and that a more realistic rate was probably around 8%. she quite rudely pointed out that her computer was down. i, just as rudely, asked how she had arrived at $4.88 if her computer was down. she spitefully claimed that she did this every morning, and that a $3.69 meal came to $4.88 after tax. i thought about explaining to her how percentages work, and that .08 of 3.69 is not 1.19… and how you can make it simpler by just rounding .08 to .1, and taking 3.69 and shifting the decimal point, etc. etc. all these neat little shortcuts to estimate percentages. instead, i took the easy (less work) way out and pissed-offed-ly told her maybe she should brush up on her basic math skills … to which she gave me my breakfast, gave me a $1, and then told me “whatever.”

sigh. all this for some processed breakfast sandwich combo meal. on my way out, i handed her a piece of paper on which i had calculated all the various meal prices for the 10 “extra value” meals with tax.

“extra value” my ass.