Stinking McDonalds:)

I remember growing up in a small Montana town.  I remember a small Montana town without a McDonald’s.  I remember, on any trip that my family took, eating out at McDonald’s and a trip to McDonald’s being an exquisite experience!  We would each order two fat-encrusted hamburger patties slathered in mounds of special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions served on a whimsical sesame seed-encrusted bun and enclosed in magic Styrofoam castles!  With this magical burger, inside the “to go” sack that contained the wonderful burgers and their irresistible deep-fat fried french fry counterparts, rested a seemingly-endless pile of small packets of ketchup!  A fry not covered in a conspicuous covering of the wondrous tomato-sugar mixture was not worthy of finding its way to your mouth.  I remember that, after a trip to McDonald’s, my mom would not purchase ketchup for several weeks because we would rely on the small packets of  ketchup from McDonald’s to provide our ketchup needs for several weeks after a visit to the restaurant chain 🙂

Flash forward to the year 2009.  You are going through the drive-through at your local McDonald’s is an effort to provide sustenance for your body in an extremely rushed environment.  You order a burger and fries and, most likely, some form of liquid refreshment.  You pay at the first window in a clinical manner not reminiscent of your youth… you pull up at the second window and are hurriedly handed a grease-spotted bag containing the magical food-items ordered a few moments previously at the large order-stand at the back of your local restaurant… you drive away in a rush to get home and enjoy this meal in a friendly environment.  Often, you will reach your hand inside the warm, moist bag to pull forth a limp fry.  This fry will make it to your mouth… and, even more satisfying, your stomach… and in the front of your mind you are thinking about how good that burger will taste when you get home… and how good that piece of deep-fried potato will be with a little KETCHUP!!!  And then you get home and… guess what… you forgot to ask for the STINKING KETCHUP… SO YOU HAVE NO STINKING KETCHUP!!!

Oh sure, you may have some ketchup in the fridge, but that just isn’t the same.  The ketchup in the fridge is cold, and you had to purchase it seperate from the McDonald’s food… and purchased cold ketchup just doesn’t seem to go quite right with fast food.  You need those little packets of ketchup that have been heated by resting against the heat-lamp-warmed food in the greasy bag on the ride home.

You can’t tell me that McDonald’s doesn’t take into account the cost of ketchup when they price their products!  They budget a certain amount of those little bags for each customer for each purchase.  So, when you go to McDonald’s and forget to ask for the ketchup, they are literally RIPPING YOU OFF!  When you consider that there are even some freaks out there who do not partake of the ketchup while enjoying their fries, then you really start to get enraged.  There are people who don’t take full advantage of what they are paying for and yet the staff at McDonald’s is still now being trained to not give me my stinking ketchup unless I ask for it?!?  What’s next… the drink that comes with the “value” meal?  You get home and realize they didn’t give you your Diet Coke (’cause we all know that a McDonald’s meal is a healthy choice as long as you order a Diet Coke).  You will have to turn around and go back to the restaurant.  Can’t you hear the response already:

“Well, you didn’t ask for it, so I didn’t think you wanted it.”

Ok, so let’s say you aren’t brain-dead like me and you actually remember to ask for the ketchup at the drive-through window.  They don’t ask you how much you would like; instead, they look and rummage around for a good 20 – 30 seconds (as if no one ever asks for ketchup and you have just interrupted the magical flow that makes fast food fast).  When they finally find the hidden vault of the nightshade-delight, they reach in and grab what looks like a large handful of the wonderous packets.  They shove them in the bag (in an apparent attempt to wedge as many of them as possible in between the actual fries) and throw the bag in your general direction.  Apparently asking for ketchup makes you somewhat of a nuisance.  The really strange thing is, when you finally get home, you discover that large handful of packets that appeared to be placed into your bag is actually only four packets.  Four (4) packets!  Four packets is not enough to get me through a small bag of fries let alone the super-sized version that I let the fancy graphics on the stinking drive-through order-stand talk me into!  You would think the amount of time and money that McDonald’s apparently spends on training its employees the make-it-look-like-a-handful-while-only-grabbing-four-bags technique could be better utilized by, oh, I don’t know… GIVING US AN ACTUAL HANDFUL!?!

I blame my addiction… er… normal, healthy attachment to ketchup on McDonalds!  They are like the drug dealer that used to hook you up with the crank for free, until you got addicted, and now expect you to pay for it.  Ok, they really aren’t like a drug dealer selling crank… maybe more like sex and marriage.  At first, you get as much as you want, so you become quite fond of it.  Over the years, you get less and less until it gets to a point where you actually have to beg for it… or so I’ve been told by people in less-than-perfect marriages unlike my own marriage which has been, as of tommorrow, 15 years of perfection!  Yes, my wife reads my blog 🙂

At McDonald’s, the staff has no problem asking if you would like to purchase anything else before the transaction is completed; the correct thing to do would be to ask if you would like ketchup with those fries.  After all… one way or another… you’ve already paid for it!