I’ve had the same problem at McDonald’s trying to order a sausage egg and cheese biscuit. They have a bacon egg and cheese biscuit, and they have a sausage and egg biscuit, but the idea of putting a slice of cheese on a sausage and egg biscuit just makes their brains implode. I would even order a sausage and egg biscuit, then ask if they could put cheese on it, and I’d get charged for the cheese, but there was no cheese on the biscuit when I got home - and sometimes, no egg either! I just eventually gave up trying.
We had a whole thread a few years ago about how the person behind the counter at McDonald’s claimed they didn’t have a “bacon cheeseburger”. Apparently they can add bacon to any of their burgers, but if you just ask for a bacon cheeseburger it throws them into a tizzy because there’s no specific menu item with that name. You have to order a McDouble, or a Quarter Pounder, or a regular cheeseburger, and then ask them to add bacon.
Actually I kind of get that one, because McD’s has multiple cheeseburgers on the menu with different size and number of patties, so just saying “bacon cheeseburger” is too ambiguous. But the cashier should ask for clarification, “which burger would you like to add bacon to?”, rather than just saying “we don’t have that”.
Yeah, I get it to, it’s not on their screen, so it does not exist. But they are wasting everyone’s. time.
This reminds me of another mildly infuriating moment I once had while ordering lunch to go:
Me: I’ll have a Number Four, and I want to substitute chicken for beef.
Cashier: It comes with beef.
Me: Yes, and I want to substitute chicken for beef.
Cashier: …so you want beef?
Me [as patiently as possible] No…I want to SUBSTITUTE…CHICKEN…for BEEF.
Five minutes later, my order arrived…made with beef. And that’s how I learned about the use of “substitute X for Y” to mean “replace X with Y” instead of “replace Y with X.”
I probably wouldn’t ask for substitutions at a fast food restaurant. Or at least if I did, I’d be prepared to be turned down.
If you can place an order through an app or electronic kiosk, it might allow you to make substitutions or alterations, but if it doesn’t, there may not be a way for the cashier who takes your order to handle special requests either.
I always ask for shredded cheese instead of that nacho cheese sauce crap at taco Bell, and they are happy to do so.
But yes, you can easily ask for “no onions” - taking things off, there are even buttons for that in many cases- but substitutions are harder to get.
I can usually substitute cheese curds for fries in the combo meals at Dairy Queen, but I suppose that’s not quite the same thing as substituting burger ingredients.
Here’s my contribution to the topic.
I get really annoyed when I’m driving along and I see a business that has a banner alongside the road or a visible sign or a neon light that says the business is open - but then when I pull in and park and walk up to the door, I find it locked and the business is closed.
If you’re not going to commit to turning off or taking down the open sign when you’re closed then don’t put it out in the first place.
That’s why my username is in caps. I signed up on my computer at work and some things we did were required to be in caps. When I realized it, I just let it be, since Buckwheat is kind of loud.
My latest gripe is the term “presser”. I don’t recall Americans using that term until recently and they all seemed to start on the same day. It just sounds stupid coming out of an American mouth. Now Australians, …seems like something they would say, and sound cool doing it.
YES! I concur.
No. It’s not like I’m going to call myself…
When I do, it’s because my finger is a little too far to the left and I hit Caps when I type an ‘A’.
So when you’re at a medical office, filling out a form which asks for your phone number, what do you do?
Give them my wife’s number, because she a) always has her phone with her (when I plug mine in to recharge it, it usually stays plugged in for several days before I remember it), and b) is willing to answer calls from an unidentified number.
Why do certain aspects of our technology still suck so bad after decades?
I’m looking straight at YOU, Bluetooth.
It’s 2025 and still Bluetooth connections are notoriously flaky. Yesterday at the gym I realized that my headphone volume controls could only go up now…that’s a feature. I pulled out my phone to dial things back down. But that’s not because the headphones are bad–it will be normal today.
Last week I was listening to some loud rock at the office when I put my Air Pods in their case. Normally this causes the phone to pause; this time it just started blaring out full volume in cubeland.
My truck? About 1 in 10 days I don’t get audio coming through. Happily, I have old-school satellite radio to bridge the gap.
Honorable mention goes to touch screen interfaces (I have mentioned these before). Why does every touch screen interface not made by Apple suck so bad? Those giant kiosks at fast food restaurants are just as unresponsive as my wife’s old touch-screen phone was in the mid 2000s–the buttons are two inches wide, and they still don’t register my touch the first time around. Heck, the Palm Pilot in the mid 90s was more responsive to touch.
Advances in technology have solved far greater problems: when was the last time you had to reboot your computer because it was wonky? Probably not recently. Early Windows was so flaky that a daily reboot was a requirement, and you knew things were about to go south when the mouse cursor started looking pixelated. These days, Windows is rock solid. So why haven’t touch screens and Bluetooth improved?
Yeah I hear ya, but the cashier was just looking for the magic word ‘substitute’. Asking for bacon instead of sausage does not cut it. You must say substitute.
This is just kinda sad. We bought a new house, the relator had a nice cutting board made for us. But it’s engraved. Laser engraved would be my guess. It’s about 1mm deep. ‘Welcome Home The Enipla Family’ and an old timey skeleton key. Nice looking, but the engraving makes it useless as a cutting board. It’s a nice one too. One I could see buying for myself.
I wonder if they realize they are destroying the gift they are giving.
Although I don’t remember that happening to me, something similar must have because I always say “instead of”. But upon looking around, I see there are two slightly different phrases that seem to get mixed up .
“Substitute X for Y” means the X will replace Y.
“Substitute X with Y”, means Y will replace X.
OK, dumb question here, but why can’t you use the other side of the cutting board for cutting?
If I really liked it and wanted it to be functional, I’d be looking at those epoxy resins that folks use to fill the knot holes in fancy live-edge wood tables and the like. There surely must be a food safe version, and it might just be a matter of squeegeeing it into the letters with a credit card and doing some sanding afterwards.
Of course, it might not be worth the hassle, but there’s another option.
I would treat it as a decoration, and hang it on the wall.