I’m sure this has been brought up before, but anyway…had a fit of McPica yesterday, and at the drive thru ordered a #1 with a small Coke. When the display said “M”, I reiterated that I wanted a small. “All we have is large and medium.” I guess I just don’t understand how business works.
‘Small or Tiny’ wasn’t a great selling-point.
In cases like this, “Medium” is a synonym for “Regular”. This is likely how Starbucks ended up with a Medium, Large, and Extra Large on their menu board.
Drink cups usually come in 12, 16 and 20 oz sizes, plus mega-cups. Since very few customers order the smallest size, the middle size becomes the de facto “Small.” Especially if the business has limited storage space for cups.
There is a small, they just don’t sell it anymore.
It’s silly, but we actually do this at work where the lowest priority level is medium.
They meant, we only offer it in large and medium. Medium is the smaller of the two.
Also the registers are set up like that as a default. The minimum wage worker you spoke to has no control over such matters.
Finally it’s not surprising, that language. The business world is rife with it. I’m surprised it’s escaped you until now.
These go to eleven.
Regards,
Shodan
One of them communicates with the Dead
You mean the medium wage worker.
Sometimes illegally, resulting in their arrest - and if they escape, the possible headline “SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE”.
My assumption would be that at one point they had a small and discontinued it, so for purposes of consistency, left the names the same on the other sizes. It would seem to me to be less confusing to do it that way if I were a regular customer than redefining the amount of coffee in a small.
That might have been how it started. Don’t confuse the customers with a change in size or price. Then at some point there was no compelling reason to reclassify the drinks even if they had changed in size or price.
Quoted for excellence.
A #1 at Mickey D’s isn’t a sandwich. It’s a meal (sandwich, fries, and drink). I suspect that what the worker meant to say was: “I can’t ring up a Value Meal with any drink smaller than the medium size.” A small Coke by itself, no problem.
Stopped at Dairy Queen and they had 4 prices for Blizzards on the board with no descriptors. I had to ask which of those was considered “medium”.
Theirs were actually “Mini, Small, Medium, Large”
It’s a bit like having a list with only two …oh, nevermind.
Back when The Apprentice ran just before Patricia Arquette’s show, NBC ran commercials with Trump saying, “You can go from ‘Huge’ to Medium!”
I’m just gonna leavethis here 
Well played.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some brand person also wasn’t concerned that “small” might conjure mental images in customers of a size that was even smaller than what is actually the smallest size.
Ease up already. He’s just Ventiing.