Thursday, September 29, 2005

An Off Topic Anecdote


Mark Evanier has a little tale in News From Me about trying to get what he ordered from a fast food restaurant. I think we all have these stories about bucking the robot like mindset of the people behind the counter. Here's mine.

We went to MacDonalds a couple of weeks ago after a morning of trainspotting - my nephew at age 2 1/2 is nuts about trains and my brother knows all the right places to see them - and as usual I am responsible for ordering for my mother and myself. On this particular day I had the Oriental salad but my mother, who isn't a heavy eater wanted a cheeseburger with onions but none of the other stuff they slather on it, fries and a drink. I ordered a cheeseburger Happy Meal (which has everything she wanted plus it's cheaper and there's a toy involved which I though would go to my nephew; it's a rather nice cast figure of Donald Duck and it's now sitting on top of my computer because Brian doesn't like those according to his dad). I told the server that I wanted "a Cheeseburger Happy Meal with nothing on it but onions". Unlike Mark we weren't eating in so it wasn't till we got to my brother's house that we discovered what had happened. The cheeseburger had no cheese on it, just the onions - and a pretty pathetic sprinkling of them at that. Obviously I am too stupid for MacDonalds. I believed that when I said that I wanted a cheeseburger the clear implication was that it would have actual cheese on it. How after all can you have a cheeseburger sans cheese? Back when I was a kid we called that a hamburger with onions, which if I'm not mistaken MacDonalds also sells. Apparently the people at MacDonalds believe that believe that if you say you only want onions on a cheeseburger you mean that you want onions and no cheese.

Last weekend I went to Wendy's instead.

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