So… I’m on my way back to the office, the sun is shining the air is warming nicely coming gently from the south. As I’m driving into New Cumberland there’s a Burger King on the corner and my belly starts rumbling. So, I think to myself, “Ya know? I could really eat a Whopper with cheese!” Suddenly without warning, as if possessed with a mind of it’s own my car whips into the parking lot of the Burger King I’m about to pass by. Geez! I hope it at least thought to put the turn signal on before practically giving me whip-lash from the sudden and unexpected 90 degree turn into the parking lot!
My car expertly rolls up to the drive-through intercom and I hear a voice ordering a Whopper with cheese and a medium diet coke. “How amazing!”, I think to myself; that’s exactly what I was thinking about just before my car took control away from me.
I get back to my office and with great anticipation and much drooling I unwrap this culinary delight of fast-food and what to my wondering eyes does appear: The sandwich looks like it was put together in a hurry by someone lacking opposable thumbs! Half the lettuce was outside the bun along with most of the onion that was meant for the sandwich requiring me to put the thing back together before I could enjoy that first bite that I knew from past experience was going to taste wonderful! And it did… It tasted just as good as I expected it to taste, but come on… just how hard is it to put a sandwich together correctly when you’ve got all the necessary ingredients right there in front of you?
In my younger days I too worked at a fast-food place just like many other teenagers have and still do. Except in those days, at least at the place I worked, the manager was rather fussy about making sure that, that which is meant to be under the bun actually got placed there and stayed there. Ya know how these days you stop at McDonald’s or Burger King or any one of the other places and order a sandwich and the blasted burger is in the bun cock-eyed, or the pickles and/or onions are playing peek-a-boo with the wrapper and if you’re not paying attention when you lift the sandwich out of the container or wrapper you end up wearing the contents of your sandwich.
Do they really employ people with no thumbs or are they just that careless or lazy or lack the necessary self-respect and pride to do a job as simple as constructing a burger to the best of their ability so that the customer getting the sandwich gets to eat it without having to perform half of the work that should have been done in the first place before they can eat it: in this case rebuild the sandwich.
It might seem as though I’m nit-picking, but as a business owner myself, if I took that attitude towards my customers I wouldn’t be in business very long. The sad thing is the folks running these businesses don’t see this as a problem; its totally acceptable and even expected that one must open the container, center the burger (not always, but most of the time) then replace all the other bits of the sandwich back under the bun before eating can commence.
Lazy… LAZY… LAZY!
I’m sorry, but having it my way includes getting the sandwich with everything meant to be in the sandwich placed neatly under the bun and ready to be eaten when I open the package or unwrap the item inside.