McDONALDS' SAUSAGE-EGG McMUFFINS...
...if it's true everyone has a vice, well, that's mine...

Can it be true? If it is, McDonald's might just be gettin' my business more often. I'm not a big fan of their little wimpy dollar hamburgers, each which has about as much meat as Twiggy has body fat. I love the secret sauce in the Big Macs, but from all the medical stuff I read, those "sandwiches" have more cholesterol than the Great Salt Lake has salt. But I'm not here to talk about the Big Mac...although if you wanna buy me one, I won't turn it down. Anyway, according to a blurb in today's newspaper, Micky-D's is gonna be selling selected breakfast items (heretofore available only until 10am) all day long! I think that's glorious. Especially if one of those items is the SAUSAGE-EGG McMUFFIN. And it just might end up on the good ol' Dollar Menu. Gosh, those things are tasty. I used to have two of 'em for breakfast back when I drove Cab.
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A taxi-cab shift is 12 hours long, and those Sausage-Egg McMuffins were the high spot of my day. Well, that and any big tips I might've managed to get from fares, which didn't happen too often, since as a Daytime Cabbie, most of my customers were Senior Citizens who weren't exactly the most cost-effective customers; they all got flat-rates instead of metered fares, and most of them wouldn't tip. Some days all of my fares were seniors; it was entirely possible to rack up less than $80 dollars worth of fares in a day's time. Do the math: I made 10% commission on each fare. Which didn't leave a whole lot of money left over for those relatively meatless tiny McDonald's almost-hamburgers. But if Sausage-Egg McMuffins are gonna start showing up on the Dollar Menu and are served all day, well...just the thought makes me excrete more saliva than Pavlov's dog when Pavlov rang the bell...hey hey hey!
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So McDonald's is changing its tactics slightly. They've had a sales slump over the last year. It probably doesn't help things any that "Jack-In-The-Box" has been airing commercials, one of showing "Jack" and his entourage trying to order breakfast at McDonalds after 10am. Hah. Fat chance of that. At the end of the commercial, Jack and crew pull up to another McD's drive-thru, and upon being told that they don't serve breakfast items after 10am, Jack says, "Do you know of a place that does?" and the drive-thru clerk says, "Jack-In-The-Box". Point, set, match. Sometimes Capitalism can really slam-dunk ya, which is obviously what happened to McDonald's. So perhaps I'll be able to get my Sausage-Egg McMuffin at noon, 5 o'clock, or perhaps I can grab a couple of 'em after my evening jam sessions. Who says you can't have Breakfast for Dinner?
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My biggest-ever cab fare, as far as tips go, was on a summer afternoon. I got called to a motel where the guy was staying; he had me take him to a Wendy's drive-in, and then had me take him to a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Prior to our journey, he put a couple hundred dollars on the front passenger seat, which, well, didn't happen every day. A multi-destination fare usually involved running the clock (billing in 'real' time), rather on just a fare-by-fare basis. By the time I'd taken him to the fast-food joints and billed him for real-time, his fare came to something like $60. The cost of all the fast-food was fairly negligable in light of the $200 that would cover it. Evidently this guy had worked the Big Grain Harvest, and came to town loaded with megabucks to spend. I drove him back to the motel, he got out with his food, and left close to $70 on the front Passenger seat. He said "Thank Ya", and I told him, "hey, you've left a lot of $$$ on the seat here"...he said, "keep it, come back later on and party with me"...talk about a danger signal...I maintained my dignity, told him, "Thanks, take care", and I got out of there fast. I felt a little guilty, but all that cash made my guilt just kinda go away. Funny how that works...
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That was one of those days where I couldn't help thinking that the reason I held out for the lower-revenue day shifts was so that I could avoid all the weirdos that come out at night. Guess not, huh?