Nobody eats there anymore. It's too crowded.

- Yogi Berra

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I want my food ordering to resemble the TV commercial where there's never a line.

Did I mention that my wife hesitates to send me out to fill a fast-food order because she knows there's a good chance I will neither return fast nor with food?

"Sort of defeats the effort," she points out.

"Bad luck," I say.

But she knows better.

She knows if I approach a restaurant and see a full parking lot and a long drive-through line, I'll go try my luck elsewhere.

"I thought you were getting chicken," she'll say when I return with bags of something else.

"There was a line ..." I'll say noncommittally.

Still, I try.

Just last week, I was sent on a foraging mission and found the original destination absolutely surrounded with cars. "It was like the Indians circling the wagon train," I later explained.

However, I went inside and found a counter that resembled the crowd at the Wal-Mart return desk the day after Christmas. The restaurant appeared to be manned by only two employees.

Although impressed with their effort, I quickly sought an alternative. There was another restaurant with a similar burger theme almost next door (They tend to cluster, you know.) So I figured I'd outsmart all those waiting in line by changing locations.

There, I found only one other customer at the counter, and what appeared to be eight employees busy in the back.

This should be quick, I thought smugly.

Well, you know what happened. The lone customer in front of me was ordering for several construction crews, and the young woman working the cash register was doing so for the first time. She had to keep getting someone in back to come correct her mistakes, while I stood and watched unwilling to correct mine and leave.

It is disappointments such as these that make me prone to patronize fast-food restaurants that don't attract much business.

"I imagine their only customers are you and the health inspectors," my wife will say when I return with our meal.

I laugh and say, "Yeah, when I saw the sign on the door: 'No shirt, no shoes, no service,' how was I to know it described the staff?"

With such an insight to consider, she quit talking, and I was left to ponder in silence that fast food usually isn't.

When it is, there's usually a reason.