Let me preface this by saying that I don’t expect five-star service when I hit up a Taco Bell/KFC hybrid location. I’m not looking for linen napkins or a sommelier to walk me through the Baja Blast pairing notes. All I want — all I ask — is to receive the food I paid for, with the basic tools necessary to eat it. Unfortunately, this apparently Herculean task is far beyond the capabilities of the staff at this establishment. Not once, but twice, I was denied the humble, plastic symbol of fast food decency: a spork.
Now, I know what you're thinking: it's just a spork. But no, it's not “just a spork.” It’s the one utensil that makes a sad tub of mashed potatoes and watery beans remotely edible in a car, at a park bench, or literally anywhere other than a fully stocked kitchen — which, believe it or not, is not where most people are eating their fast food. We come to KFC for the chicken and Taco Bell for the crunch wraps, yes — but also for the convenience. That convenience vanishes the moment you forget to include the one tool I physically need to eat the food you handed me in a sealed, greasy brown bag.
And let’s not gloss over the fact that this didn’t happen once. It happened twice. Two different visits, spaced days apart. Two times I checked the bag and thought, “Surely this time, they remembered.” Two times I was wrong. Am I being punked? Does this location have a personal vendetta against cutlery? Or is it simply a matter of chronically poor staffing and a complete lack of care?
The staffing issue at this place is glaringly obvious the moment you step inside or pull up to the drive-thru. Orders take forever. The employees seem either wildly overworked or completely indifferent — and honestly, who can blame them when management clearly doesn’t have their act together? But here’s the thing: while I can empathize with an overworked crew, I’m still the paying customer. If your store can’t handle basic order accuracy — and by that I mean adding a 5-cent piece of plastic to a bag — then you shouldn’t be open.
I would love to say I calmly called the store to ask about the missing spork, but let’s be real — no one answers the phone. Or if they do, they transfer you to some other line that rings into oblivion until you’re ready to smash your phone into a bean burrito. Because that's what you’re left doing — scooping sad piles of food into your mouth with the lid of the mashed potatoes container like some kind of fast food goblin.
Bottom line: forgetting a spork once is annoying. Forgetting it twice is inexcusable. It speaks to a larger culture of not caring, of cutting corners, of assuming the customer will just deal with it. And that’s exactly why I won’t be returning to this location. Not for the tacos, not for the chicken, and certainly not for the "convenience" — because if I have to go home and dig through my own kitchen drawers to eat this food, I might as well have just cooked something myself.
Do better, Taco Bell/KFC. Or at the very least, start giving a spork.