The Worst KFC Store in the Galaxy, and the Next One Over

I have discovered the secret of the universe and am preparing an entry to disclose it to you.  But this is more important.

I have the superseding moral duty to call to your attention the Worst KFC Store Ever before another hungry citizen is subjected to its awfulness.  It is located in Frisco, Texas, at 7560 Preston Road, just north of the Rolater/Stonebrook intersection, hard by Kroger's and a Sonic.  The following event, which is not even the most infuriating consumer experience that I have suffered at this appalling establishment, took place today.

When the Memsahib is at a professional conference out of town I have implied permission to return to my pre-Memsahib habits (culinary only).  I had started work at 4:30 that morning and had left work early to run a couple of errands, which concluded a few minutes before 5:00 this afternoon.  I decided to have some Kentucky Fried Chicken and a styrofoam bucket of that sweet cole slaw and perhaps a serving of mashed potatoes made from the Colonel's secret recipe consisting entirely of nonorganic reconstituted potato by-products rendered palatable by watery gravy whose salt content is calibrated to match that of the Colonel's Original Recipe 11 Secret Herbs and Spices, five or six of which are probably some isotope of sodium chloride.  

I had some doubts that I would be successful in this quest.  I had not had good success in purchasing fried chicken products at this particular KFC, the only one convenient to my path home, and, oddly, the only one in Frisco, a rather large municipality.  Do any of you recall the Monty Python cheese-shop sketch, where John Cleese attempts to purchase cheese at a cheese shop operated by Michael Palin, but the shop seems to have no cheese of any variety available? 

(You may view it here.)   

That's the way I felt as I entered the Frisco KFC -- but I always think, no, surely this time they will be able to complete a consumer fried-chicken transaction.   So I enter, step right up to the counter, and place my usual order -- the eight piece dinner, Original Recipe, with the aforementioned slaw and spuds as the sides.  Two each of breast, wing, drumstick, and thigh.  About eighteen bucks.  The pleasant young woman who took my order called a special offer to my attention -- ten legs and thighs and three sides and a tank-car sized drink for only fifteen bucks, the difference being accounted for by KFC's desire to sell the less desirable dark pieces, since the larger white-meat breasts are preferred by customers who purchase by the piece.  (You just know that some people order breasts instead of thighs claiming they're less fatty, which is like justifying petting a water moccasin instead of a panther because it's smaller.)  In this way, KFC may maintain a more favorable statistical balance in their inventory of the various salable parts of the chicken which they assemble into the white-and-dark dinner buckets and the like.   Ah, but what KFC Corporate does not know is that I actually prefer dark meat, so the all-legs-and-thighs promotion + extra side + bladder-busting drink was a steal for me -- I'd have paid more than fifteen bucks for it.   Ha.

But I had been deceived by this particular KFC before.  On many occasions.

I thought the auspices were favorable, however.  Bear in mind -- I looked at my watch -- it was 4:55 p.m.  What most fast-food franchises would refer to as "the beginning of the dinner hour," or what Bronco's Hamburgers, where I used to work in Bellevue, Nebraska, would have called "rush."   You know, when customers were expected.  To come in to the store.  And order Kentucky Fried Chicken.

And it was the beginning of that time.  There was no rush at that time.  No uncontrollable demand for fried chicken that would push those pools of hot grease up to and beyond their chicken-frying limits, causing delays in completing fried-chicken sales.  No -- all signs for fried-chicken availability were positive.  There were a handful of customers in the store, some of whom were eating fried chicken (a very hopeful sign right there), some of whom were attempting to decipher the menu choices, and some of whom appeared to be plotting meth deals.  But I was the only one in line to order.  Cars were beginning to enter the lot, and some people had come in behind me.  But I was there,standing at the counter at that first blush of fried-chicken-purveying commercial activity.

Still, I found it necessary to ask the nice young woman:  "Do you have dark Original Recipe chicken ready to go?"

"Oh, yes," she said, betraying no impression that my question was in any way unusual.

"Sold," I said.

And she left to busy herself assembling my order.

After a minute, she returned with a portly young man with irregular facial hair.  His shirt said "assistant manager."  They seemed rather sad.  "I'm sorry," the young woman said.  "We  have no dark Original." 

"None?" I asked.  I was prepared to compromise, as one must at this shop.

The young man spoke.  "One piece."

Now consider that in addition to it being the beginning of the dinner hour, the store was promoting an all-dark chicken special calling for the provision of multiple pieces of dark-meat fried chicken in a store that holds itself out as selling almost exclusively fried chicken, of which Original Recipe is the most popular, as it is the  recipe that has brought millions of people to KFCs in preference to other fast-food joints for decades.

I had already filled this enormous vat -- I mean, it wasn't a cup, it was almost a barrel, with a handle and everything -- with my gallon or so of free drink.  And I had been deucedly clever about it; I got the Hawaiian Punch with no ice, which I could take home and slurp out of for days without worrying about loss of fizz or dilution by melted ice.

"How long?" I asked.

"Eighteen minutes," the irregularly-haired assistant manager said.

In other words, they didn't even have any Original Recipe thighs or drumsticks in process.  Some poor jamoke was probably back there frantically starting to shovel half-breaded chicken parts into the deep-fat fryer.

And so I'm standing there like an idiot with this bucket of lukewarm Hawaiian Punch and this irregularly-haired portly kid telling me that, at 5 PM on this fine, fine late-Spring afternoon of June 9, Year of Our Lord 2010, in the only KFC store in a city of over 100,000 souls, in a part of the country that is not known for its insistence on a healthy diet, located on the most heavily trafficked road in that city, at one of its most heavily-trafficked intersections, with excellent access from several directions, he had to offer for sale to the public precisely one (1) piece of Original Recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken (dark), among the very most frequently-ordered items of franchised fast food in the universe.

I actually smiled.  I made a show of looking at the baffling menu display, as though there were some relief to be had up there.  Finally, realizing that this particular Frisco/Preston Road KFC had once again failed to possess conventional fried chicken to vend to actual customers prepared to pay actual cash money therefor during the actual dinner hour, I asked for my money back.  I went home and ordered Domino's, but it tasted nothing like an Original thigh.

Here's the problem:  Original Recipe Dark Meat Kentucky Fried Chicken is really yummy.  But it is available only at KFC stores.  If you want it, you have to go there.  This particular store is notorious throughout Collin County, Texas, and, if I have my way, worldwide, as almost never having on hand what one wants to order: 

     --  The store is apparently unmanaged.  I doubt an adult has set foot in any food-related area in that store in years.

     --  The employee turnover there is so rapid you'd think the place is staffed solely by Obama appointees.

     --  During prime food-purchasing intervals, it consistently fails to have popular food items prepared for purchase.

     --  While customers cluster in increasing numbers around the counter, waiting for orders placed many minutes earlier, or when, like me, they finally give up the attempt to purchase chicken products and ask for their money back, they are never offered consolation certificates for their trouble (perhaps because there is no consolation in returning to this dump on yet another futile quest to acquire chicken).

     --  The destruction of the ozone layer by hydrocarbons exhausted into the atmosphere from the tailpipes of vehicles waiting in line at the drive-through has single-handedly reduced the population of harp seals -- those cute little white ones with the big trusting eyes -- by seventeen percent in the last year.

At a social gathering recently I casually mentioned that I'd had to get my blood pressure medicine adjusted after my last couple of trips to this God-forsaken family restaurant, and I was instantly mobbed by other Frisco citizens who had been similarly crushed by the defeat of their expectations for the ambrosial KFC product.

Anyone know anyone in QA/QC at KFC (owned by Yum! Brands, Inc.)?  Please send them this article and beg them to send the chairman in to attempt to purchase some chicken. 

And then you see these documentaries on how inhumanely mass-produced chickens are treated.

At least they get fed.

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