The Fast Food Irritation

McDonald’s, the fast food chain, is losing customers, and their new CEO, Steve Easterbrook, is making changes to win back customers. And changes need to be made.

I like McDonald’s hamburgers – the little ones, not the Big Mac, not the Quarter Pounder, not the Double Quarter Pounder – I like the little under-a-dollar hamburgers and I’m often tempted to walk in and place an order for two hamburgers and a small order of fries. But I don’t any more.

For one thing, it seems like whenever I do place such an order at McDonald’s, I get the two burgers right away. They’re placed on a tray, and then the staff has to cook more French fries because they just ran out. So I stand there with my burgers getting cooler by the second. When I finally get my tray of food, and stop by the condiments counter for ketchup and salt, and put ice in my drink cup, followed by cola, and pick up a couple of napkins and make my way to a table, and sit down and tear open the salt and ketchup packages and apply their contents to the fries, and then unwrap one of the hamburgers and take a bite, the burger is by now just a fraction of a degree warmer than room temperature. And if they’re not actually out of French fries, they’ll find another way to ensure my burgers are not hot. Such as leaving the burgers in the hamburger bin for too long.

Then there was the time I went into the local McDonald’s and placed my order. Since I’ve mentioned this in a previous post, allow me to quote, ah, me.

“Two hamburgers, small fries, small diet, for here.”

The counter girl punched in the order and took my payment. Then she meandered over to a stainless steel bin and picked up one cheeseburger. She meandered back to the counter and placed the cheeseburger on my food tray. The reason I knew it was a cheeseburger is because printed on the wrapper in inch-tall, cheese-yellow letters was the word “CHEESEBURGER”.

“I asked for two hamburgers,” I reminded the counter girl.

“Oh yeah,” she replied, and returned to the food bin, picked up another cheeseburger, and placed it on my tray beside the first cheeseburger.

“Aren’t those cheeseburgers?” I asked, trying to be helpful. The counter girl looked down, dumbfounded, at the cheeseburgers on my tray. An older employee working nearby said to her, “Those are cheeseburgers. Hamburgers are in the brown wrappers.” Then she turned to me and said in a confidential tone, “She’s new.”

New? That’s a very generous euphemism. When you tell the order-taker that she has your order wrong, and she reacts like you’re speaking Latin … well, Houston, we have a problem. Or rather, Mr. Easterbrook has a problem. Nowadays, when I want a hamburger with mustard, ketchup, pickles, and onion, I make one in my kitchen. It’s always hot and it never turns out to be a cheeseburger.