Chick-fil-A Has My Back

Last Saturday I had an interesting encounter with the fast food chain Chick-fil-A. I was working at a children's event at our local mall for just a few hours. For some reason the mall guest services department thought it was appropriate to promote the consumption of slaughtered animals to young children and gave Chick-fil-A a table at the event. The main reason for their presence seemed to be the promotion of their new Spicy Chicken Sandwich. In case the casual observer missed the link between the sandwich and the children's event the name of the product was printed on several mylar balloons which festooned the table upon which was set a hackey sack tossing game.

The Chick-fil-A cows were also present since they seem to like the idea of promoting chicken slaughter in the vain hope that Americans will spend more of their food dollars at Chick-fil-A than on dead cow. These cows were wearing sandwich boards that read, "Eat More Chikin" (supposedly cows are not good spellers). As I watched them interact with the pint-sized omnivores swarming them I recalled a Chick-fil-A commercial in which the cows vandalized a new hamburger joint to deflect customers away from eating the burgers and towards chicken and I got inspired. I took a large black marker to the balloons at the Chick-fil-A table and added a few words. Once my work was done each balloon stated, "Try our new spicy rotting chicken carcass sandwich!" Every child at the event screamed, ran away, and became a lifelong vegetarian. A moment later I snapped back to reality when a shy four-year-old needed help gluing fun foam leaves onto his bug jar.

Obviously I didn't actually alter the balloons, spit on the cows, or any of the other things I thought of doing, but I was fully prepared to proclaim my vegetarianism unashamedly had the woman working the table offered my one of her coupons for a discount on fried animal flesh. No opportunity presented itself, though we did have a little interaction early in the event.

Her table was almost directly behind mine in our circle and I felt my lower legs pegged by flying hackey at least a couple of times. I didn't really mind since it momentarily distracted me from glue sticks and fun foam ladybug body parts. After some time passed I realized I hadn't been hit in a while and looked back at the Chick-fil-A table to see the woman there holding up an empty cardboard box as a backstop for the hackey game. I thought that was very nice of her and was thankful I hadn't said anything to disparage how she earns her living. After all, I was the one earning money by making bug jars at a mall on a summer Saturday morning.