I swear on my mother’s grave that I saw this tonight while at work (I have a little part time gig at a gym):
Bottled water labelled Fat Free Water.
Oy.
Instead of ordering “without mayo and tomatoes” what I do is list the things I want.
“Give me a whopper with ketchup pickles and onions only” It usually works out better.
Of course, it backfires if I want to have extra pickles. They don’t seem to have the hang of putting “only extra pickles”.
Anyway as for the OP, I put the asking if I want cheese in the same catagory as asking if I want fries. I understand exactly why they do it, I’ve dealt with the public.
slight hijack - my ex hated onions so much that she wouldn’t kiss me when I’d eaten them. When we broke up, I went to Burger King and ordered a whopper with extra onions. It was my declaration of freedom.
I was an assistant manager at a Wendy’s in a previous life. It may enlighten you to know that the slice of cheese holds the two beef patties together. Order it without and the double burger doesn’t stay together.
Or maybe not. That’s just how we 'uz told to make 'em.
Even at a restaurant that’s made-to-order have-it-your-way, those people are expected to make a burger in about 6 to 10 seconds. It’s not surprising that after making 100 of them during a lunch rush every day for the last week, it’s hard to break the habit of reaching for the pickles (or onions or whatever) when the customer doesn’t want 'em. For me, it’s like getting in my car and not putting on a seatbelt, or sitting down at a piano and not putting my foot on the sustain pedal. It’s habit. Well, habit combined with expectations of high speed and low pay and a glowering manager.
I’ve worked in fast food (for as short a time as I could) and I hear what all the FF employees and former employees are saying. On the other hand…
Picture a vegetarian in the drive thru at Taco Bell. (One of the reasons I like to go there is that it’s easy to have most of their menu made without any cow or chicken in it.)
Dogzilla: I’d like a burrito supreme without meat, nachos and a medium diet. (Taco Bell offers Pepsi products, other places offer Coke products and I can’t be bothered to remember who carries what. I just order “diet” which seems to be clear enough.)
TB Employee: That’s a burrito supreme without beans, nachos and a Dr. Pepper.
Dogzilla: [smacks forehead]. No that’s a burrito supreme without beef. B - E - E - F. No Cow! No Moo Moo! Got that?
TBE: Okay, a beef burrito with extra beans…
Dogzilla: GAHHHHH! [drives home to make a proper burrito]
My wife drinks her coffee black. So, at restaraunts and fast food joints, she orders black coffee.
The counterperson ALWAYS asks “Do you want cream or sugar with that?”
We have even heard “Do you want cream or sugar with your black coffee?”
We first noticed this oddity at Dunkin’ Donuts, but it seems to have spread to be a universal.
On the very rare occasion I go to a fast food place, I even more rarely want fries. And I don’t drink soda.
This really throws the people behind the counter for a loop.
“Bacon double cheeseburger, please”
- “Bacon double cheeseburger meal? What drink do you want?”
“No, just a bacon double cheeseburger.”
- “Large fries or supersize?”
“No fries.”
- “No fries?” Perplexed look. “No drink?” Possible rolling of eyes.
When I get the burger (which only costs €2), I go to a table, produce the plastic knife and fork that I have secreted about my person, throw the bun away and eat it like that. I have to do this in a corner because it also weirds out the customers.
I don’t intentionally intend to confuse FF workers, but it seems to happen. A lot.
Let’s start with Subway. I personally don’t like Subway, but LilMiss does. Her sammich is always tuna, on white, with lettuce, no cheese, no extra mayo, pickles on the side. They never know what to do with the ‘no cheese’ concept. “You mean you want a different cheese?” No, I mean NO cheese. This usually leads to the “sandwich artist’ standing with slices of that white-ish cheese product drooping sadly from his/her gloved hands with a befuddled expression pasted on his/her face. “You want onions/pickles/green peppers/olives on this?” No, only lettuce. Pickles on the side, please. Wait, I said pickles on the SIDE. Not ON. On the S-I-D-E. “Do you want the meal deal?” No thanks, I’ll just get a bag of chips. “So, we have one 6” tuna meal deal”. Nooooo… we have a sammich and a bag of chips. That’s it.
How about Taco Bell? I like onions. Just not in bean burritos. The whole crunchy texture of onions doesn’t work for me. I DO like onions in cheesearitos and tacos. I have learned to order the bean burrito last, specifying no onions ONLY in the bean burrito. Maybe 1/2 the time they get it right. No, I do not want sauce. Why look! At least a dozen packets of sauce!
No freaking kidding. I don’t drink soda, either. At Burger King, they at least have the self-serve soda bar, and I can just fill my cup with ice water.
At other places, however, I have to ask for bottled water, and some places have started charging MORE if you get a bottle of water instead of a soda. :rolleyes:
I may be close to you. This weekend in my girlfriend’s paper I saw an ad for Zero Carb Bottled Water!
These happen to me all the time, because my business partenr is a picky eater when it comes to burgers. He wants a burger with nothing on it except lettuce. You shoud hear the long puase after that one. I on the other had have only one request, no pickles. Appaerntly though I am the only person n the whole wie world that doesn’t like pickles. Both orders are wrong at least 25% of the time. I also don’t like whatever those pickled 9looks like a pepper) things delis insist on throwing on sandwiches.
What is the strange McMuffin “sauce” of which you speak? Ingredients for a Sausage McMuffin listed on the evil empire’s website are English Muffin, Sausage Patty, Sharp Pasteurized Processed American Cheese, Butter or Margarine.
What I hate is the mustard(or ‘special sauce’) that they put on my sandwich. I have to ask at every store I go to what they call it and then ask to not have that.
This is the perfect thread for my “Brazilian Hamburger Story”, but its long and I’m going home and don’t feel like typing it. Its better in oral form anyway.
Its really funny though.
Boy, I’m with you there too!! American cheese. Humph, they have some nerve calling it cheese.
It’s processed cheese FOOD. And it’s disgusting. It’s cheddar/mozz/swiss (real swiss, not the fake Kraft swiss slices), on a burger or no cheese at all.
Why eat an extra 100 calories when it tastes like plastic?
Good points. I had somehow forgotten (thought with evidence all around, HOW I forgot is a mystery), how stupid people can be.
And thanks for alleviating my confusion (not a real word), it’s not really an annoyance, more of a “why do they do that”?
I barely remember fast food hell, I DID work at Mcdonalds as a teen, but the only really bad customer I remember, was some guy who was a jerk because the cooks weren’t fast enough getting his pancakes ready.
Luckily for me, he turned out to be one of my friends’ dad, and my friend gave him a hard time for being mean to me.
I do feel for fast food workers, and try to be really nice to them, unless they’re complete moron’s as someone described earlier about their pizza ordering adventures.
The people around here must be good because I rarely have any of these problems.
At Subway they always ask me if I want cheese, I havn’t got a special order burger wrong in a long time… and if I just want a burger they never think I want the meal without asking (actually if I just want the burger, I’ll say {insert name of burger} sandwhich only)
Pickles should not be the default for burgers. They are just nasty when cooked.
Same thing with onions, they are only good when they are cold, or uncooked.
They have no business being on a burger.
Same thing with a patty melt. Just the sight of onions on it make me want to hurl. All nasty and slimey looking. Although I love them with Gyros because they are uncooked, raw, that is how they should be served. It’s all about texture.
About a year ago I was frequenting the drive-through at Cousin’s Subs for lunch fairly often. My standard order was “a half club, on italian, no lettuce.” For some reason, to them, “no lettuce” meant “no lettuce and no mayo”, or it meant “extra lettuce”, or “extra lettuce no mayo”, or “no onion.” So I started ordering “a half club, on italian, no lettuce, but make sure it has mayo/tomato/onion on it.” And sometimes they’d forget the cheese.
One day, after a string of incorrect combinations on previous visits, I checked my sandwich before I left the parking lot. Sure enough, it had a big pile of lettuce on it. I hate, hate, hate lettuce on sandwiches. So I parked and went into the restaurant and calmly explained what was wrong to a guy who, from things I’d seen on other visits, I believed was the manager of that location.
He took my reciept and began making a new sandwich, all the while shouting to me from the sandwich making area about how it wasn’t the guy’s fault who took the order but the person who had made the sandwich, blah, blah, blah. Like I care. I just want my sandwich. And, as he was working away on my new sandwich I had to interrupt him to say “um…you’re putting lettuce on it.” Geez.