Let me begin by stating that I don't even eat fast food. I bring my own snacks to work every day—a carefully curated collection of protein bars, mixed nuts, and those little hummus cups with pretzel thins that make me feel like I'm making good choices even though I occasionally cave and devour a bag of Cheetos from the break room vending machine. My snack game is immaculate. My Amazon Subscribe & Save for RX Bars would make Marie Kondo weep with joy.

But still somehow, when my coworkers were discussing lunch options on Wednesday, my mouth opened without consulting my brain and said, "I can pick something up for everyone if you'd like." I immediately felt my collection of convenient yet allegedly healthy snacks judging me from my desk drawer. Betrayal in compostable packaging form.

Why did I offer? Was it a desperate bid for workplace popularity? A momentary delusion that I had more free time than I actually do? The lingering effects of being raised by parents who taught me that setting myself on fire to keep others warm was just good manners? Whatever the reason, suddenly I was the designated lunch fetcher for six people who all wanted different items from Wendy's.

I spent fifteen precious minutes of my life writing down orders that included specifications like "no tomato but extra pickles" and "can they put the sauce on the side but also a little bit on the sandwich itself?" One person wanted their fries "extra crispy but not burnt" which I'm pretty sure is just a normal request for properly cooked fries. I nodded and wrote it all down like I was taking minutes for the world's most depressing meeting.

By the time I got in my car, I was already regretting every life choice that had led me to this moment. This Wendy's has exactly one entrance and exit, creating a drive-thru situation that could only be described as a snake eating its own tail while also being constipated. Once you're in, you're committed. There is no escape.

As I inched forward in line, a thought occurred to me—the kind of intrusive thought that should be immediately dismissed by any functioning adult brain. But my brain, apparently taking the afternoon off, decided to entertain it instead:

What if I ordered in a British accent?

Not even a good British accent. I'm talking the kind of British accent an American puts on after watching exactly one episode of Downton Abbey. The kind that makes actual British people develop an eye twitch. This accent was not in my skill set, nor had anyone requested it. There was absolutely no reason to do this.

Yet when I finally reached the speaker, out it came:

"Good afternoon, might I place an order for takeaway?"

The universe gave me one final chance to abandon this nonsense. There was a pause—a merciful moment where I could have laughed it off and ordered normally. Instead, I doubled down.

"Terribly sorry for the large order. My mates at the office are absolutely famished."

The poor Wendy's employee, who was undoubtedly not paid enough to deal with whatever this was, responded with an uncertain, "Uh, go ahead."

I proceeded to order six different meals in an accent that was rapidly deteriorating, bouncing between posh London socialite and cockney chimney sweep with occasional detours into what might have been Australian. I kept saying "brilliant" and "cheers" and at one point referred to fries as "chips" only to immediately panic and call them "crispy potato batons" instead.

It was while ordering the fourth meal that I realized I was trapped. There was no way to drop the accent now. I had created a prison of my own making, and that prison had walls of social awkwardness and a moat filled with shame.

By the time I reached the payment window, my accent had somehow incorporated elements of Mary Poppins, Gordon Ramsay, and what I can only describe as "Victorian street puppet with a head cold." The window attendant gave me a look that somehow communicated both pity and contempt as I fumbled with my credit card.

"That'll be $42.87," she said.

"Blimey, that's a proper sum, innit?" I replied, immediately wishing for the sweet release of death.

Her expression suggested she was one "cheerio" away from calling security. I handed over my card in shameful silence, accent momentarily abandoned, only to immediately panic and say "Much obliged, gov'na" when she returned it.

I inched forward to the pickup window, where I was informed that the third meal (Mary's Spicy Chicken Sandwich with no tomatoes but extra sauce) would require an additional three-minute wait. Under normal circumstances, this would be a minor inconvenience. In my current situation, it was a sentence to three more minutes of maintaining an accent that was rapidly spiraling into something that might be considered a hate crime in some countries.

"No worries, I've got all the time in the bloomin' world," I said, my accent now veering dangerously close to Mary Poppins doing an impression of Austin Powers.

The window attendant squinted at me. "Have you... always talked like that?"

I couldn't bring myself to admit the truth. "Born and raised in..." my mind went blank on British place names, "...Hogwarts."

Her eyes narrowed further. "Hogwarts isn't real."

"Right you are!" I said with a manic laugh that definitely didn't help my case. "Just a bit of British humor there. I'm actually from..." I frantically searched my brain for a real British location, "...London England Street. In London."

She stared at me for what felt like several decades before saying, "I need you to pull forward and wait for the rest of your order."

I moved to the waiting area, which positioned my car perfectly for maximum visibility to anyone walking by on the street. Several pedestrians glanced curiously at me as I practiced maintaining my accent by quietly reciting "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain" to myself like a complete lunatic.

When the Wendy's employee finally approached my car with the bag, I was ready to accept it and flee. But she didn't hand it over immediately.

"So you're British?" she asked, suspicion evident in her voice.

"As British as tea and crumpets," I assured her, my accent now somehow incorporating Dracula.

"That's funny, because my cousin lives in London, and you don't sound British at all. You sound like an American doing a really bad British accent."

It was at this moment that I noticed the employee was wearing a name tag with "Beth - Manager" written on it. This wasn't just any employee—this was someone with the power to make decisions about my Wendy's future.

"Why are you pretending to be British in our drive-thru?" Beth asked, still holding my food hostage.

There was no good answer to this question. Nothing I could say would make this situation less weird. So I went with the truth.

"I started it as some fun and then I got too deep and couldn't stop and now I don't know how to end it and oh god please just give me the food."

Beth did not give me the food. Instead, she stepped back slightly and crossed her arms.

"Ma'am, are you mocking our international customers?"

"What? No! I was just—"

"Because we've had complaints before about people using accents in a derogatory manner, and here we have a zero-tolerance policy."

"I'm so sorry, I wasn't trying to be offensive, I just—"

"I'm going to have to ask you not to return to this location."

And that, my friends, is how I got banned from the Wendy's on Market Street. Beth the manager did eventually give me the food, which I delivered back to the office with as much dignity as one can muster after such an event.

My coworkers, thankfully, were too busy inhaling their now-cold food to ask why it took so long. I offered no explanation, and they requested none—perhaps because they already think I'm some kind of government spy (a rumor I've never bothered to correct because it's significantly more interesting than my actual job), and random unexplained delays fit neatly into their conspiracy theories about my double life.

I silently returned to my desk, unwrapped my protein bar with slightly shaking hands, and vowed never to offer to pick up lunch again. My convenient yet allegedly healthy snacks and I have renewed our vows. Till death do us part, or at least until I find a new Wendy's that hasn't yet documented my crimes against accents.

The story might have ended there if not for Theresa, the coworker who frequents the Market Street Wendy's with such religious devotion that I'm pretty sure she has a punch card hidden somewhere. Two days after The Incident, she came bouncing into the office, eyes wide with gossip.

"You guys won't believe what Marcus at Wendy's just told me," she announced to the office at large. "Some woman came through the drive-thru with a fake British accent so bad that Beth had to ban her from ever coming back!"

I froze, protein bar halfway to my mouth.

"Apparently she called fries 'crispy potato batons' and told them she was from Hogwarts," Theresa continued, clearly delighted by the absurdity. "Marcus said Beth interrogated her for like five minutes before telling her she couldn't come back."

My coworkers erupted in laughter and speculation. Who would do such a thing? Was she drunk? Was it a dare? A TikTok challenge?

I stared intently at my protein bar as if it contained the secrets of the universe, offering occasional noncommittal "hmm" sounds when appropriate. I will take this secret to my grave. I am a government spy, after all.

Learn from my mistakes. Keep your accents to yourself, and never, ever offer to pick up lunch.