Click here to return to the man menu

THE DEATH OF COMMON SENSE

I am pleased to report that I have not made a difference in the world. Not that you should be surprised. To date, my most noteworthy achievement is that I accidentally tripped President Bush in 1990. (It was an accident, and he technically stepped on my foot, so I can hardly be blamed.) But I have always hoped that somewhere, somehow, I might make a small difference in the wrinkle of the time. Not so, I have learned. Years ago, I reported on a fast food incident that shocked and dismayed the world. OK, it shocked and dismayed me, but much like a good fishing story, my stories tend to swell and grow over time. (Ten years from now, I’ll be telling people I arm wrestled President Bush.) Anywho, I was once again — dare I say — shocked and dismayed when a nearly identical incident took place just last week. I went to a local fast food restaurant, which is becoming an overused term. Traditionally slow restaurants have taken to putting up signs that say things like, “Great food takes time to prepare!” so that they can then take gobs of time to get a processed burger patty out of the freezer. Another in my ever-growing list of platform positions when I make my historic presidential bid: If you have a drive-through, you have three minutes per customer. After three minutes, the vehicle will be catapulted out of the lane. This will keep people from (a) personally inspecting every French fry while blocking the pick-up window and (b) dilly-dallying about inside when they should be slinging burgers like a speed-freak Frisbee golfer. Sure, things happen that cannot keep the time under three minutes. That’s just the sacrifice we have to make to keep America strong. So let’s get back on track. I went to the window to place my order. I asked for a hamburger combo meal. “Uh, we don’t have a hamburger meal,” came the reply. “Well, it’s the cheeseburger meal. But I’d rather have a hamburger.” “Uh, we don’t have a hamburger meal.” “I know, but can’t you just not put the cheese on?” “No, sir. That would be a hamburger. And we don’t have a hamburger meal.” Arrrrrg. I decided I would take another route at getting my hamburger. I initially accepted the cheeseburger meal offer. When I got to the window, I waved at the woman at the counter. “Hey, on that cheeseburger meal, can you do me a favor?” “Uh, what?” she said with a tone of grave concern, like she was expecting me to ask her to deliver my meal while doing a Charo impersonation. “Can you hold the pickles on my burger?” “Sure,” she replied. “Great. Oh, and go ahead and hold the cheese, if you will,” I ever-so-slyly slid in. “Sure,” she said. “HOLD THE PICKLES. HOLD THE CHEESE,” she screamed to the kitchen. Slipped that one in, I thought. A few minutes later (well beyond the time that I would have been catapulted out of line), she came back to the window. “Uh, can you pull up? Special orders take extra time.” I considered arguing with her that there was no way in the normal physics of our world that doing less work should take more time. “I said, ‘Can you pull up?’” she repeated. I decided this would not be a candidate for task effort discussions. I dutifully pulled around and waited another 10 minutes. Apparently, not putting cheese on a burger can be a monstrously time consuming venture. Eventually, my food was brought out to me. The time they put into not doing something paid off, as the cheese was, in fact, not on my burger. I just don’t understand how some people can have such extreme tunnel vision when it comes to the simplest of things. Turning a cheeseburger into a hamburger is not a major shift in its very being. It’s just not slapping a piece of processed cheese on some processed meat in between a processed bun. Maybe this times I can make a difference and get people to realize these simple things. I know I can make a difference. Even if I have to arm wrestle the president again.