Drive-thru times are a major evaluation criteria for fast food places. They’re electronically timed and can even effect things like bonuses. What you should do if they fuck up your order and you realize before you leave is simply wait in your car for them to either fix your order or call a towtruck. As to the OP’s dilemma the point isn’t whether or not E can just pick the pickle off it’s that E ordered an item a certain way, the cashier didn’t tell em E couldn’t get it that way, and the establishment make’s a point of allowing special orders. They couldn’t follow a simple instruction like “don’t put pickle on it”. Now what if a customer is allergic to peanuts and orders a sundae without peanuts and is served one anyway? E sends it back and ask for a new sundae, but staff simply scrape the peanuts off and send if back to em. If E didn’t notice E could it eat, injust a small amount of peanut dust, and become very ill or even die.
If someone is deathly allergic to food that is served at a fast food restaurant, they would be wise to take is upon themselves to watch the preparation like a hawk or just not eat there unless they enjoy Russian Roulette.
McDonald’s is totally hit and miss. Some are fantastic, and others I wouldn’t go to on a bet. The one in my town is pretty good. I love Big Macs exactly as they’re made, so no problem there. But they put WAY too much salt on the fries for my taste. So I order them without salt. That way they’re always fresh, too - they can’t take the salt off, so they have to cook fresh ones. 
And they always do it for me with no complaints. They even have a “no salt” button on the cash register. Mmmmm… I’m getting a Mac attack right now. Too bad that stuff is so bad for you. 
I’d be pretty steamed if they messed up my order as many times as the OP. I definitely wouldn’t go there again.
A lot of it is common sense, though, which seems to be sorely lacking in so many people. Or just plain tuning in to what you’re doing (and trying not to get completely stoned before each shift).
“I’d like a number 2 combo to go please.”
“Will that be all?”
“Yes.”
“Will that be for here or to go?” :smack:
“That’s to go, please.”
“What drink would you like?”
“Coke, please.”
“Will that be all?”
“Yes, that will be all.”
“O.K., that’s a number 2 combo with a coke. Will that be for here or to go?” :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack:
YES, YES, YES. I went to a Taco Hell; the cashier took my money, then turned around, grabbed my order, and started to hand it to me.
“I need my change, please.”
“I was gonna give it to you.”
“You need to give me the change immediately after I give you the money.”
I have been ripped off too many times to ever accept that kind of nonsense again.
I share your amazement.
Ginger, me thinks you might need to have a talk with Wierddave. 
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, pickles should never be the default when ordering a burger at a fast food joint. When I order a cheese burger, I should be asked, “would you like anything on it?” This way, they’ll be no confusion, and I’ll get what I really want. A FUCKING CHEESE ONLY BURGER. I don’t understand why pickles, ketchup, mustard and onions are the default on burgers. I actually enjoy the condiments (except pickles), but they really need to be optional. And this only happens at fast food places. When I go to place that makes decent burgers, I’m always asked if I want the extra condiments, and it really is the best way.
But I guess fast food means assembly line mentality, and they assume that every motherfucker wants pickles and onions on their burger. I bet most would prefer a burger without all the bullshit onions and pickles. It’s like the asshole that orders a 3 garbage pizzas and 2 with sausage because of majority rule for garbage. Then what happens? Yep, you guessed it, the sausage gets eaten way faster then the garbage, everytime. And there’s always leftover garbage pizza. I don’t have a cite, but I wonder if I could do a study on this and prove it. I’m assume that most people don’t like pickles as the default at fast food on their burgers. The shit is str8 up nasty! And if you like the stuff, you should have to ask for it, not get it by default. Otherwise it tastes like battery acid, even after you take the pickles off the burger.
When I’m out with the twins we often get chicken nuggets at a drive-thru - or else, I’ll buy them an oatmeal raisin cookie at Starbucks when I get my caramel macchiatto.
And I always, always, ask for 2 small cups of water, half-full. Give them a full cup and they’ll spill a good portion of it. Plus, asking for 1/2 should safe the server a couple of seconds, which seems the considerate thing to do, especially since they don’t charge for cups of water.
I’ve probably placed this order 60 times in the past two years.
Only once did I actually receive 2 small cups of water that were, in fact, half-full.
The remaining 59 times I’ve pulled ahead, removed the lids, and poured half the water onto the driveway.
One guy even asked me what “half-full” meant.
I’ve varied the wording, asked for “just a couple of ounces of water”, “fill them up halfway”, repeated the phrasing “half a cup, just fill it halfway”. Doesn’t matter. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Hardees, Starbucks – all of them, exactly the same.
Subway will do the same thing. I tell them, “just a 'lil bit a mayo”, and they squirt the whole fucking bottle on the sandwhich. Dumbasses :rolleyes:
Ask for “a cup of water and an empty cup,” and make the two half-full cups yourself. As long as it doesn’t offend your principles, you’ll end up saving yourself time this way.
And I don’t think Burger King is especially better than McDonald’s. The stories of fast food horror I remember from my youth mostly involved my mom’s misadventures at Burger King.
Consider: if McDonald’s started paying its workers $20.00 an hour, do you think they could be more selective in whom they hired? Do you think they could hire people who would get the orders right all the time and would handle special orders appropriately?
If so, then it’s just a question of where the profit point is for McDonald’s: at what point does the increased labor cost not result in increased profits from increased customer visits?
From this thread, it sounds as if that profit point is below minimum wage: the people complaining loudest about the fool workers at fast-food restaurants seem to be the people who continue to patronize them. As long as you’re giving money to the restaurant that’s hiring idiots, they’ve got no incentive to stop hiring idiots. It’s as if your dog is peeing on the rug, and you yell at him while you give him a meaty treat. Bad training protocol.
Daniel
Yep - I tried that variation once and ended up spilling water on myself (seems to be genetic) 
. But you’re right, that is one valid solution.
Although I’ll join the chorus of complainers, I should do so with a big caveat - I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken for 2 years in the early 1980s. It was a fantastic experience for me, I happened to have a wonderful store manager and most of my co-workers were great.
But then things changed - the government started offering big tax write-offs when we hired unemployable morons. Working with them was a disaster, and caused the better people to leave.
At the same time the company automated more processes, to make the job easier and improve product consistency. Like, we used to make the cole slaw from scratch, right in the store (starting with 7 lbs of sugar)- but then the “dressing” came pre-mixed instead. Less work, but less of a challenge - kind of took the fun out of it.
There’s that saying - create a job that any idiot can do, and you’ll have to find an idiot to do it.
Pickle brine. That’s ordinarily a topic I never have a reason to think about. But I read about pickle brine in a travel book about Turkey once… Somebody was selling drinks of pickle brine on the streets. Had big jars of pickles on a pushcart and ladled the liquid into cups like a beverage. Yeah, I don’t get it either. How could anyone just drink the stuff? Eeewww. I think this may be obsolete now, because when I went to Istanbul I didn’t see any pickle brine being sold by street vendors. The book was written was back in the 1960s. The writer remarked that Turks are such sweet-toothed people you would think the mere idea of drinking anything so sour would drive a typical Turk into paroxysms of insanity. But the little old pickle-brine vendor sold the stuff with an expression that seemed to say “Now be a good boy and take your medicine.”
Sorry, Muffin, I should have put that in a spoiler tag for you.
In the desert, one tends to sweat out a great deal of salt as well as water, and I imagine that pickle brine would tend to replace that salt. I love pickle brine, and every now and then I’ll pour myself a couple of ounces and enjoy it. I don’t do this often, because I really don’t need the sodium, but it’s like eating a pickle, only more intense.
I’m sorry about the places that have closed, but for someone from the Bay Area who LIVED at Canters Deli every time he was down in L.A., and now lives in Toronto, this is good news!
Moe Pancer’s, here I come! 
I never knew a discussion about pickles on McDonald’s burgers would be so useful…
I drink it on the rare occassion I’m hungover. The salt, liquid, & sour quench my thirst like nothing else can. Also, in Hungary pickle brine is watered down with carbonated soda water for a summer thirst quencher. This is not as popular as it once was, but you’ll still see people drinking it in the countryside. I love the taste of brine, can you tell?
Because a cheeseburger with nothing on it tastes fucking nasty.
That’s like when I took my g.f. out for chinese food. She says, “I really like tofu; let’s get something with tofu”, to which I replied, “Well o.k., if that’s what you really want; but I’m ordering shrimp.” Guess which dish barely got touched. :rolleyes:
Yeah, I wonder what “a lot” would look like. :eek:
It was a big secret at the MickeyD’s I ate at, when I was still eating at Mickey’s. It was one of those things I used to hear you could do, once every decade or so, and I’d try it again with about that frequency - inevitably to blank or resentful looks from the person at the counter, and a superlong wait for my burger.
And I’d usually just be asking them to hold the pickle on a Big Mac.
I know, I can pick them off myself, but you never know how many there are, and whether you’ve gotten them all. And besides, it’s messy, picking the damned things out of the special sauce - which I like.
If I could walk into a McDonalds and order their hamburger with no ketchup, mustard, or pickle, but with special sauce instead, and not have it take a year, I’d have reason to go to McDonald’s.
This thread is making my hungry. And the nearest Big Mac is 10 miles away.
Guess I’ll just have to settle for a pickle.
From the kitchen.
I know taste is individual and all, but do people actually like McDonalds? I mean I understand it is fast, it is convenient, it is cheap(ish), but those are reasons totally separate from liking it.
I’ve eaten it when forced (taking the Virginia Bar, there is literally nothing else you can see in a range that you can get there, eat, and get back to take the afternoon exams); when with my six year old; or when driving and starving and fast food is the only option. But I have never sat there and though “I could kill for some McD’s right now.”
It’s why it surprises me the pickles are there in the first place. Lots of people don’t like them. But in a business model like McD’s it seems the basis is standardization and speed. And that would seem to suggest you go for the broadest taste range. You don’t as such give people what they like, but instead avoid giving them what they don’t like. It would seem to be more sensible in that not to put the pickles in, but they have market tested this I am sure and made their decision.
It’s a sad reflection, but given that they base themselves on speed, standard products, and low cost inputs (in particular labor, though I am sure their buying power allows them to strike a pretty good deal for the foods they buy), special requests are going to cost them both money and aggravation. And while they can trumpet customer service as much as they like, I can’t see them making special orders a huge priority.
It’s also made worse by people with my attitude. As I said, I don’t like the food, so if they give me one thing when I order another, as long as the two things are reasonably close, I don’t feel much aggrieved. I wasn’t looking forward to the McChicken Club or whatever, so I sure as hell am not going to stand in line to complain that I got the McChicken Parmesan
Me. Well, it’s not so much like as it serves as my comfort food. Some people want mac & cheese (which I mostly loathe) some people want tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (okay) but I want a big Mac. Or maybe a Quarter Pounder. Even a Fishwich will do in a pinch.
Which is why I’d never dream of special ordering a burger there. It’s not that I particularly like dill pickles or mustard – I never put either on a burger I make myself – but they are part of the gestalt that is a McDonald’s burger.
It just wouldn’t taste right without them.