Stories not really worth telling but I don't want to not post it after I typed so much #1

What would you call a restaurant where you stand in line and pay a cashier for take-out food that's of good quality but not necessarily good for you? Like Chipotle or Cosi? It doesn't seem right to call it "fast food", but it doesn't seem innaccurate, either.

Whatever these places are, this new series that will likely not go beyond the first episode will examine why these cashiers and line workers in restaurants in the 20th and M area seem to distrust and dislike me so much.

Example #1: Chipotle, a few weeks ago. I get my food, am standing at the register, the woman behind the counter says "Anything else?" and I say, "Just water to drink". She then adds the price of a regular drink to my tab and pulls out a soda cup. "Oh, no", I say, "I just wanted water." Her mouth drops and she gives me an incredulous and angry look, which is international sign language for, "Now I'm going to have to get my manager to void it out." I figured that was coming.

What I didn't see coming is that, after she calls her manager over, she looks at me angrily and says, "You said 'soda'." I couldn't believe it...a simple misunderstanding, but why the hell would I have done that? Her theory was probably that I was put on earth deliberately to make her miserable, but—and this may surprise you—I was not.

"No," I said. "I said I wanted water to drink."

"No," she said in a way that reminded me of a 14-year-old telling her mom that she hates her, "You said soda."

This went on for a while, and I was getting flustered. It's bad enough to have someone call you a liar, but over something so ridiculous and petty? I wondered if maybe she thought I was trying to run some scam on her, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was. The old get-water-for-free trick? God only knows.

Just so I don't leave you hanging, the manager came over and got the drink voided off the register, but only after she had angrily asked me, "What happened?", like a cop on the scene of an accident.

Example #2: Working today, I ran downstairs to get a sandwich from Cosi, something I hate to do because, in spite of their tastiness, they're the most overpriced sandwiches anywhere in the world. I waited a while behind the only other two people in line while the guy seemed to give them a tour of every ingredient that might be put into a sandwich. Another guy finally showed up to make my sandwich.

As he was putting the final foil touches on, he gave me a hostile and suspicous look. I can't really said he said anything that's going to make this story any good or really worth telling because he mumbled so much that all I caught was that he was asking me something about only being there on Saturday. I couldn't figure out what he was saying, so I asked him to repeat it, and he mumbled the same thing. "I'm not sure," I said, and he gave me another suspicious look and then mumbled something again that sounded near outrage and ended with, "since early December."

I have no idea what I did to this guy, but I wasn't going to push it anymore to find out. Maybe he's the boyfriend of the Chipotle cashier. Point is: there's something about me that's bugging these people, and I'm beginning to get a little nervous about getting meals anywhere around here anymore, which is kind of inconvenient, considering I live and work around here.

Consider me spooked.