# Water at fast food restaurants **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 13, 2008, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-at-fast-food-restaurants/463425 "2008-09-13T10:47:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![vandal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/858c86/32.png) [@vandal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vandal)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-at-fast-food-restaurants/463425/21 "2008-09-14T19:48:59Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > For inventory purposes they count cups to determine how many drinks were sold. If they give them away for water it screws up the count. It would appear there is money missing. I’ve worked at two different fast food restaurants (both major franchises), and we never counted cups for inventory purposes, or any purpose for that matter. That would seem like a very arduous and laborious task. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-at-fast-food-restaurants/463425/22 "2008-09-14T21:18:47Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Inventory of Medium Cups - Medium drinks rung at the register = Stolen cups. No, this misses all the cups that are wasted or used for other things. That happens a lot. When filling the cup holders, the employee drops the column of cups, and the bottom 2 or 3 get crumpled – those get thrown away. And if an employee happens to drop an empty cup, and the top (inside edge) touches the floor, food hygiene policy is that it should be thrown away. And in general, cups are cheap and real handy containers for workers to use for anything. > [@WhyNot](#): > > Inventory in fast food isn’t so much about finding customer theft (since they’re not the ones with access to the goods) but “internal shrink” (ie. employee theft) Quite true. Keeping track of a count of cups would commonly be off by a few dozen cups, just because of the above reasons. What they are looking for in inventory is thousands of cups missing – that’s an employee or manager carrying a few cases out the back door, or a purchasing scam arranged with the delivery driver. And taking the inventory isn’t as arduous and laborious as Vandal seems to think. You don’t actually count individual cups. They come in columns of a few hundred cups, with about 48 of those columns in a case. So you just count the cases, then the full columns in the opened cases. Don’t bother counting the partially used columns, or the cups in the cupholders out front – you’re not going for an exact count, to the nearest thousand is close enough. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-at-fast-food-restaurants/463425/23 "2008-09-14T22:27:57Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > No, this misses all the cups that are wasted or used for other things. That happens a lot. When filling the cup holders, the employee drops the column of cups, and the bottom 2 or 3 get crumpled – those get thrown away. And if an employee happens to drop an empty cup, and the top (inside edge) touches the floor, food hygiene policy is that it should be thrown away. And in general, cups are cheap and real handy containers for workers to use for anything. Would you believe that the last time I worked fast food, we had to save the “oops!” cups? We weren’t allowed to use the counted cups for anything but paid drinks - water, change, crayons, whatever, all had to go in the small clear water cups. Any spilled, leaking or crumpled cups had to go in a special box marked “Errors” for counting. Our miserly asshole of a boss made us inventory the cups _nightly_. Weirdo. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2008, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-at-fast-food-restaurants/463425/24 "2008-09-15T00:09:22Z")
> [@vandal](#): > > I’ve worked at two different fast food restaurants (both major franchises), and we never counted cups for inventory purposes, or any purpose for that matter. That would seem like a very arduous and laborious task. I would assume that they could just measure a stack. X inches high means there are Y cups. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Silophant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a698b9/32.png) [@Silophant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silophant)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2008, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-at-fast-food-restaurants/463425/25 "2008-09-15T00:51:05Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Would you believe that the last time I worked fast food, we had to save the “oops!” cups? We weren’t allowed to use the counted cups for anything but paid drinks - water, change, crayons, whatever, all had to go in the small clear water cups. Any spilled, leaking or crumpled cups had to go in a special box marked “Errors” for counting. Our miserly asshole of a boss made us inventory the cups _nightly_. Weirdo. Cinemark does this too. Anything branded (drink cups, popcorn bags, candy bags, etc.) is inventoried. We’re allowed to waste 1% of our stuff a month before corporate gets all up ons. Luckily, all that’s the managers’ job. The peons just have to deal with customers throwing a fit when we won’t give them an extra fullsize cup for their kid. (We do have small cups to give out.) ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2008, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-at-fast-food-restaurants/463425/26 "2008-09-15T04:09:06Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > This is the case at all the McDonalds, Burger King, & Arby’s that I have been at in the upper midwest area. Have things changed that quickly? It’s only been a month since I left Arby’s and they were just using the smallest sized cups for water. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2008, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-at-fast-food-restaurants/463425/27 "2008-09-15T17:39:00Z")
I just flew from Myrtle Beach to Montreal via Charlotte and in neither airport could I get tap water with a meal (nor in the Tanger Mall in Myrtle Beach). Moreover, you can no longer get a free cup of water on US Airways. Water and soft drinks are $2 and coffee and tea are $1. (Give me a cup of coffee and hold the coffee.) I brought an empty bottle through security (perfectly legal they told me) and filled it at a water fountain. ---
**Author:** ![Rodd\_Hill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3ab097/32.png) [@Rodd\_Hill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodd_Hill)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2008, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-at-fast-food-restaurants/463425/28 "2008-09-16T00:45:24Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Would you believe that the last time I worked fast food, we had to save the “oops!” cups? We weren’t allowed to use the counted cups for anything but paid drinks - water, change, crayons, whatever, all had to go in the small clear water cups. Any spilled, leaking or crumpled cups had to go in a special box marked “Errors” for counting. Our miserly asshole of a boss made us inventory the cups _nightly_. Weirdo. When I was a crew chief and later manager (1979-84), you had to do a medium inventory every night–buns, meat, frozen goods (fish, fries), drink syrup, and all cups. **Including** those in the food prep area garbage cans (“waste count”). This would be done a good 5-6 times a day, with the bin liner being changed immediately after, and the bag taken outside to the big bin. It was not a pleasant job, with everything from coffee grounds to melted raw fish patties, lettuce, etc. in there. At night, we would have to work out all the big ticket item “yields;” that is, how many pounds of fires you had used vs. how many fry bags & boxes, how many shake cups vs. shake mix, etc. There were very tight variences allowed on all these things. Most McDonald’s stores in those days operated on about a 5% profit margin overall (sandwiches made the least; fries and drinks were the moneymakers). Come to think of it, Ray Croc himself told me once: “Dave, ya gotta remember, we’re not a hamburger store, we’re a fry store!” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/water-at-fast-food-restaurants/463425.md?page=1)