After spending some time at a few bars in Dinky Town, which is a typical college area for anyone unfamiliar, Julie (my lady love) and I were feeling pretty hungry. Being that it was around 1 in the morning there were only a few options for food, so naturally we swallowed our pride and ventured toward the golden arches.

We walked in and the place was pretty busy so we waited in line for five minutes. I took, this time, to scan the place and observe the people that were clearly the most qualified to be observed. First, I watched a young man and his friends pass to one another a small bottle of fireball whiskey, which got my attention because it was so incredibly obvious that I actually pondered whether or not they were allowed to be doing that in a McDonald's. Well, they weren't. A manager soon saw what was going on and made the young man who had the bottle in his hand leave.

The next fellow I observed was arguing from across the register counter that he had gotten the wrong sandwich and wanted a new one. He was waving around his receipt in the air and looking like he was about to shed some tears as well. It was all an act, I'm assuming because he didn't have any sandwich with him; he ate the first one and then returned with a complaint in hopes of getting a new one. He didn't get a new one, the manager shut down that game pretty quickly. As an aside, shout out to all the fast food workers who have to deal with that sort of disrespectful garbage on a daily basis.

Julie and I got our food-- an Oreo and Reese's McFlurry and a small fry-- and found a nice, plastic booth to sit in. We slid in, excited to eat and get a chance to talk outside the noisy bar scene. To our surprise, a fairly tall, twenty-something guy slid into the booth just a second or two after we did. He sat next to Julie, across from me, and pivoted his body so that he wasn't facing us but was at an odd, slanted angle from the table. There were plenty of open tables around so Julie and I just sort of looked at each other, our faces each half smiling and half signaling "what the fuck?" to one another.

The guy didn't leave so I figured we were the victims of some harmless prank, whatever. I offered him some McFlurry and he took it; I figured maybe he would leave after that and feel bad about bothering us or something. He didn't.

The guy started talking to us in a fairly intrusive manner (as if he wasn't being intrusive enough already) and before long another guy slid into our booth, this time on my side. For the next ten minutes or so the guys-- mostly the first one-- continued blabbering about this and that to us, being pretty disrespectful of us and our personal space the whole time. At some point, the second guy slid away from me and left the booth. He then proceeded to go talk to a young woman behind me who was sitting and eating, talking to her friends.

At this point, both guys, simultaneously it seemed, started to move in on the women they were next to, and I do quite literally mean move in. I immediately heard the young woman behind us telling the guy to leave her alone, that she wasn't interested. I had it in my head that I would go confront him if he didn't leave soon, but then the fellow remaining in our booth started doing the same thing to Julie. He was much larger than her and started leaning towards her in the booth, cramping her as he inched closer.

At this point, what was going on was very blatantly harassment. I felt somewhat like a deer in the headlights because I'd never quite dealt with something like this before. I finally asked the guy to leave us alone, to which he replied, "You mad cause this is your girl bro?" As I said to him, it didn't even matter if she was or wasn't, we were trying to have a conversation and he needed to go now.

Eventually, after the guy argued with me, swiped at our food in an attempt to steal it, and then pulled at my shirt to try to antagonize me, he left. His friend, after finally taking the hint from the young woman he was bothering, urged the big guy out of the restaurant and the two left.

Admittedly, this whole scenario bothered me a lot; I couldn't shake it off. Julie and I just couldn't understand why someone would purposely harass another person like that. After talking about it for a few minutes, I got the sense that Julie wasn't nearly as shocked as I was. I shared this with her, and she basically told me that situations like that can be somewhat common, especially for young women. Julie explained to me that out at bars or any other social gathering place (McDonald's included apparently), a lot of guys just assume they have the right to approach and say whatever they want to women, and they're not always respectful of the response that they get back.

I knew that this happened in theory, but the incident at that McDonald's was probably one of the first times I've had to actually (somewhat) live through the experience, and let me tell you, it was awful. There's a certain feeling you get when someone goes way past personal boundaries like the guy at McDonald's, and that feeling isn't just anger. I was very angry, don't get me wrong, but the more prominent feeling I had was actually one of disgust. I felt disgusted with him, of course, but I also felt disgusted with myself, not only for allowing the incident to go on for as long as it did but for being so unaware of just how intrusive and harmful these situations are to the person on the receiving end of it.

I think, as a guy, it's pretty easy to dismiss women when they talk about how irritating it is to be hit on or even cat-called out in public. Many of us think, yeah, maybe it's annoying, but it's kind of a compliment too, right? Or we think that women are lucky because generally men will approach them and express interest on their own. Well, the McDonald's incident made it pretty clear to me that neither Julie nor the other young woman being approached felt lucky or complimented. Based on their body language alone, the women felt uncomfortable, intruded upon, angry, and even frightened and scared. And I've got a hunch that these incidents, which happened in a crowded McDonald's restaurant, aren't even close to the first time these women have been the victims of this sort of intentional harassment.