I must be in a better mood today ...

... because complete strangers are making me angry again (whereas yesterday they would have just made me cry).

Bally's Health Club. A woman with very long legs decides that the amount of bench space we get in the locker room must somehow correlate to our height. She spread out her handbag, her water bottle and her big gym bag all along the bench so that when I sat down, I was barely in the same area code as the locker with my belongings. Rude! Rude! Rude! It would be nice to have such a sense of entitlement that I felt I somehow deserved more space than anyone else. (It also would be nice to have her legs.)


McDonald's. My niece has begun spending time at Mickey D's with her friends. She is in 7th grade now, and there are no busy streets and she has her cellphone, so I guess it's OK. (But she does have a real love affair with food, so I wish her friends still preferred Panera because as fast food goes it's of higher quality.) Her birthday is coming up so I bought her an Arch Card, loaded with $5, to slip into her card. Today it occurred to me that, even at McDonald's, $5 isn't going to go very far, so I tried to add another $5. It says on the card and on the website that you can reload the card anytime. Unfortunately, the only ones who don't seem to know this are the counter staff at the McDonald's on Wabash in Chicago's Loop.

The fresh-faced, polite kid behind the counter wanted to be helpful but had no idea how to accomplish what I was asking of him. So he called over his supervisor, who spoke heavily accented English and seemed confused about my request, too, but for different reasons. He took my $5, played around with my card, swiping it several times, grumbled something and disappeared. Then he brought me a new card which he assured me was worth $5. Instead of loading the card I originally handed him, he had erased it.

Okay ... but then I'm still out $5, aren't I? It took me forever to explain this to him, and he was the polite kid's SUPERVISOR. The kid understood me, the people in line around me understood me, but the supervisor did not. I told him to forget it, that I just wanted a $10 bill and no card, and to get out of there. Somehow, in his eyes, all this was my fault.

So I'm sorry, Beck, but it's back to Panera for you. Their food is lower in fat and they understand their own gift card program.