Tag: ketchup

Happy New Year!

What did you do for New Year’s Eve?  Did you party?  Did you make some resolutions that you will never keep?  Did you check out the blue moon?  Did you even stay up until midnight to watch the new year come rolling in?  I’m going to share with you how I spent part of my New Year’s Eve.

I had to work for part of the day.  Our office closed early (1pm) and it was a pretty uneventful morning.  We did a little potluck at work amongst those of us who actually worked and I made Cincinnati chili.  Never heard of Cincinnati chili?  Neither had I until I came across the recipe in the local newspaper.  Sounded interesting.  Tried it, liked it, will probably have it again.  Anyway, the potluck was a success.

After work, me and the family went shopping.  We were getting some munchies for our little New Year’s celebration and some seafood for the Cajun boil we were having New Year’s day.  Well, we decided to avoid Walmart because, well, Walmart sucks.  On a normal day, Walmart sucks.  On New Year’s Eve day I imagine Walmart super-sucks, so we went to Family Thrift (which is a Nash Finch grocery store… and Nash Finch sucks too, but they usually have decent seafood.)

Anyway, so we go to Family Thrift and we suddenly realize that, as much as Walmart sucks, Walmart really does have the lowest prices.  Family Thrift just kind of sucks, but Family Thrift is sooo overpriced that it’s not even close to funny.  So, we’re walking around picking up crap that is like twice as expensive as it would be at Walmart when we get to the seafood counter.

Now, usually for the Cajun boil, we get shrimp and snow crab (along with the corn, sausage and potatos.)  It just so happens that Family Thrift is out of shrimp and snow crab.  So, we check out the king crab.

The lady working behind the counter says, “The king crab is on sale for $15.99 per pound.”  We really don’t want to spend $15.99 per pound for much of anything, so I happen to notice a little freezer with prepackaged crab in it.  “That’s king crab bits and pieces,” says the counter lady.

Now, I don’t know exactly what “bits and pieces” means, but I do know that the “bits and pieces” are about half the price of the stuff behind the counter.  For some reason, this difference in pricing makes me mad.  I know this sounds stupid, and it probably is, but the “bits and pieces” look about the same as the stuff behind the counter yet there is a drastic difference in price… and I smell some stupid marketing ploy… and stupid marketing ploys tick me off.

“Why would we pay twice as much for the non-bits-and-pieces stuff,” I practically yell at the wife.  Now, it’s not the wife’s fault by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m really yelling at the lady behind the counter indirectly by yelling at my wife directly… it’s a beta male thing and the wife, God bless her, is used to it and takes no offense.

Now, the point I’m making is that we’re gonna buy the bits and pieces because buying the $15.99 crap would be stupid.  The lady behind the counter seems to think I’m looking for a deal.

“I’ll tell you what,” the counter lady says, “I’ll let you have the king crab for $15.99 per pound, but that’s as low as I can go.”  She is dead serious.

The lady behind the counter seems to think I’m looking for a deal… and semi-retarded.  I don’t even bother looking at the counter lady.  I don’t want to know if she really thinks I’m stupid enough to fall for the fact that she is offering me a “deal” price that is the same as the sale price she quoted to me only moments earlier.  I don’t want to know if she is offended at the fact that I indirectly yelled at her by directly yelling at the wife.  I just want to pay for the overpriced crap we have in our cart and I want to go home.

So, we check out, get to the car, and start for home.  Now, the wife has this brilliant idea to pick up some McDonald’s for supper.  That’s right… New Year’s Eve and me and the family are having McDonald’s for supper.  You can’t live in Nebraska and not have at least a touch of trailer trash running through your veins.

“Alright,” I think to myself, “at least it will be quick.  Yep, a couple of minutes in the drive-thru and we’ll be on our way.”

We place our order, pay at the first window, and proceed to the second window to pick up our order.  A total of about 60 seconds have passed.  So, we’re sitting and waiting and excited to start our night of board games and snacking (yeah… we’re party animals.)  A couple of minutes go by and I’m starting to get a bit upset.  The adolescent people working on the other side of the sliding window won’t even make eye contact.  What’s taking so long.  This is “fast food,”  for crying out loud.  Finally, the zit-faced teenage girl who should be handing us our food opens the little sliding window and says, “Uh, your order isn’t, like, ready… so could you, like,  pull forward and we’ll, like, bring it to you or something?”

“Uh… ok,” I say.  How could some fast food be not ready?  Isn’t the purpose of fast food to be ready?  I pull forward and am getting pretty hot under the collar.

“How can it not be ready,” I yell at my wife.

“I don’t know,” she smiles.

“What the hell,” I yell.  “Do they need me to go in there and make it myself?”

“I don’t know,” she smiles.

We sit out there for almost 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, cars behind us are pulling up to that stupid window, getting their food, and driving around us.

“What in the hell are they ordering that is so much faster than our order,” I yell at the wife.

“I don’t know,” she smiles.

Finally, some skinny teenage boy comes rushing out the door of the restaurant with our order out in front of him.

“Here you are, Sir,” says the boy, his voice crackling and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s nervous or if it’s just because he’s a teenage boy.  “Sorry for the wait.”

By this point I can’t even look at the boy ’cause I’m so upset.  I’m afraid if I look at him I’m gonna start yelling at the wife again… and she’s had enough for one day.

“Uh… ok,” I say to the boy, take the food, and drive away.  I’m so ticked, I don’t say anything the whole way home.  When we finally get to the house, we head to the dining room to dig into our McDonald’s feast.

After getting my part of the order out in front of me, I ask, “Can someone pass some ketchup?”

“Looks like we didn’t get any ketchup,” says the wife.  “I’ll go to the kitchen and get some.”

I can feel my face turning red.  I am on the brink of really letting the wife have it when I think better of it.  It is, after all,  New Year’s Eve.  Instead of yelling or cursing, I begin to weep.  My salty tears fall silently on the fries in front of me and are every bit as good as ketchup… or so I tell myself.

That is how I spent my New Year’s Eve.  I have spent all time since then doing everything I possibly can to avoid contact with the outside world which seems hell-bent on driving me insane.

Happy New Year!

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!