Meditation on a drive-thru encounter

The other morning I pulled up to the drive-thru at McDonald’s to grab a soda. As I rolled down my window a friendly female voice asked me very sweetly whether I’d like to add a McCafe Mocha to my order, to which I replied, “No thanks, I just need a large Diet Coke.” The next moment I was jarred by a gruff, male voice informing me, “That’ll be $1.07 at the first window.”

Wait a minute, what happened to that charming lady I was just talking to?

We all have become accustomed to the obligatory “upsell” greetings suggesting that whatever we thought we wanted to order wasn’t quite enough. If you are like me, you have learned to have the words, “No, thanks. I just need …” at the ready. Perhaps the folks at McDonald’s corporate have figured that out and decided that if we are going to have automated conversations with the drive-thru operator, then the operator may as well be automated, as well.

But back to that nice lady.

Wasn’t it impolite of her to start a conversation with me that she had no intention of finishing? I wondered afterward what would have happened if I had said, “Yes, I’d love a McCafe Mocha!” Would the nice lady have kept talking to me, or would she have passed me off to the pimply-faced guy still? I suspect the latter. What a tease.

Of course, we all start conversations that we don’t intend to finish. We greet people with “How are you?” when we really don’t mean to have a discussion about their well-being. We tell each other, “We should get together sometime,” knowing how unlikely it is that we’ll follow through. The exchanges we have at the drive-thru window are no less social rituals than these, and they all are useful for our mutual purposes.

I wonder, though, are there bigger, more substantive conversations that we invite others into without moving past that first turn? President Obama this week said he was trying to open a dialogue with the Muslim world with his speech in Cairo, and many people in the Middle East have said, “Nice speech, but we’ll wait to see what happens next.”

Are we willing to continue pursuing the conversation even when the other person’s first response is, “No thanks”? When we invite our students into conversations with perspectives that challenge their own, do we respect their discomfort and continue to hold space open for dialogue? Are we willing to ask the same questions more than once, realizing that they may not be heard the same way each time they are posed? Do we view teaching and learning as more than a set of pre-formulated questions and prescribed responses?

I know it was a very brief encounter, but I really thought that nice lady and I had made a connection. I don’t drink coffee, but she might have been able to talk me into a hash brown …