In all fairness, they may have them somewhere - it just doesn’t appear to be the norm. I think whichever chain started the first ad kick about having customized burgers, or about not preparing them until you order them, caused the others to have to fall in line.
The only reason I remembered that they ever had premade sandwiches was I recall my Mom telling me that whenever my Grandmother would take me to McDonald’s as a wee lad, my Grandmother would order a fish sandwich with no mayo - even though she liked mayo - so they’d have to make her a fresh sandwich.
The thing is, the “cheese” in question is often NOT the real thing, but “cheese food”, that vile crap they sell in the dairy section of the grocery store. If it was, say, a nice healthy slice of pure unadulterated Swiss, then yeah I’d go for that. Not something which isn’t real food.
I feel the OP’s pain, even all these years later. I order my burgers without cheese, and I estimate that they still put cheese on them 10-20% of the time. Even a Whopper, which isn’t supposed to come with cheese, still gets cheese on it sometimes. I’m not allergic or intolerant, and I don’t despise cheese, I just prefer most burgers without it. Only once have I made a fuss and asked for a new burger. All I can think is that it’s just force of habit for the cooks to just slap a slice of two of cheese on every burger that passes before them.
My standard order for a “premium” burger (Whopper, Jumbo Jack &c) is tomato and pickle only. Then one time I got my order and found lettuce and pickle … but no burger.
Fortunately I was eating in so I could take it back to the counter. The counterperson was horrified; I thought it was kind of funny.
I had a McDonald’s burger once, when I was eleven years old. It came with some yellow plastic stuff on top of the burger patty. I assume this is the “cheese” or “cheese-like substance” that is the topic of many of the gripes in this thread.
It was meant to be a treat, paid for by my aunt.
I have never been back to McDonalds.
She is, though, still my favorite aunt. Can’t judge a person for one lapse.
It’s American cheese. All that “cheese food” means is that it’s cheese that’s been melted and re-solidified. Purists might decree that that doesn’t count as cheese any more, but it’s still the same stuff.
Processed cheese food is real food, even if it is arguably not “real” cheese; it is usually about 50% cheese and 50% other dairy products, generally designed so that it will melt evenly and quickly. Also, the dairy section in my supermarket includes many real cheeses. They are not imported artisanal sheep’s-milk cheeses sprinkled with truffles and gold leaf, but they are real cheese, some of them quite delicious.
My favorite McRonalds breakfast item is the sausage muffin. Not the sausage muffin with egg, but the simple and elegant and almost perfect sausage muffin. I get it without cheese. The sausage patty and the buttered english muffin are a perfect sandwich in my opinion. But it comes with cheese, so I order it without cheese. Too often they can’t handle the “without cheese” aspect of the order. They’ve gone so deceptively far as to scrape the cheese off of an already prepared one, and rewrap it for me. (Richton Park, Il McRonalds on Cicero and Sauk Trail!) Try getting the cheese remnants out of all those little sausage surface pockets. Not without a hose, I tell you.
So I order the sausage biscuit, because it naturally comes without cheese. But I really wanted the one on the buttered muffin.
Huh. I’m surprised I didn’t post in this thread when it was first active, because unwanted cheese on burgers has been the bane of my existence my entire life. Any time I order a burger at a fast food place, I won’t walk away from the counter until I’ve taken it out of the bag and unwrapped it to confirm it’s cheeseless.
I’ve even encountered this problem ordering burgers on Doordash, where the burger is customizable, toppings are a long list of boxes to check off, and cheese often explicitly costs extra. Doordash is at least hyper-responsive to mistakes and will instantly offer a generous credit or refund. Still, I’ll put in the notes to the driver that I’d like them to visually inspect the burger and they have my permission to break the little seal on the bag if the restaurant puts one on there, and sometimes they actually do that.
You know, I’ve tried to do the special order thing, but I’ve found that with even the most basic, one thing to think of request, like “no cheese”, comma, even that gets screwed up.
I can totally empathize with the OP here, who simply wanted no cheese.
Here’s a helpful suggestion: try asking for the cheese on the side. Cheese is expensive, and managers do not want to give you extra cheese if they can avoid it. So there’s a chance they will give you your cheese on the side instead of on the burger, then you can just throw it away.
I have a similar problem with Wendy’s, but with mustard. They can’t stop themselves from putting mustard on a burger. They also have salads that are nice if they have all of the special toppings, but they can’t handle putting all of the little packets of candied nuts and things in the bag. I don’t even try to go there anymore. I don’t mind an occasional mixup, but I don’t feel like dealing with fixing mistakes every time I go there. And now it turns out that I might have that weird meat allergy, so I might be burgerless for a while.
I am that customer. I will dig through my bag to get my sandwich to make sure it is made correctly while holding up the line. I have complained through the customer service number and got a personal apology from the manager the next time I was in. I like Wendy’s grilled chicken but hate the honey mustard sauce.
So I order with just tomato. They still screw that up occasionally usually when I am in a hurry to get back to my desk and forget to check. I one time got my grilled chicken with cheese, mustard, onion and ketchup like it was a hamburger. I also one time had ordered my chicken sandwich and some nuggets and got home and didn’t have my sandwich. Got back and they said “We knew you would be back for that.”
Why do I keep going back to them? Wendy’s has good grilled chicken sandwiches and near where I work the options are very limited. Wendy’s, MacDonald’s and Subway are it unless you want an additional 10 minute drive each way.
