I worked at McDonald’s in the late 1970s-early 1980s, and they allowed custom orders. The places I worked referred to them as ‘hustles’ - the cook would call out “Filet hustle up” when delivering a Filet-O-Fish without, say, sauce.
Although I haven’t eaten at McDonald’s in decades, my experience as a customer was that they batted about .500 at getting custom orders right. Their system was built for speed, not adaptability.
Try ordering a cheeseburger no bun sometime! (Daughter’s gluten intolerant but not gluten allergic.) About 80% of the time they get it right, and it’s even served in a nice little plastic salad dish with a lid and plated with leaf lettuce (oohhh…fancy!) and other times…it’s a total crapshoot. We’ve gotten cheeseburger-no-cheese (yes, yellow wrapper, hamburger inside), cheeseburger no condiments and, on one memorable occasion, a cheese no-burger (cheese slice, condiments, bun). :smack:
One area I expected to find some resistance but didn’t at all was recently when they started promoting their new fancy Quarter Pounders. I love the Deluxe, with the real(ish) tomato slice and leaf lettuce and onion slices, but I hate the new buns - they taste stale to me, even when fresh. Turns out that yes, you can order any of the new Quarter Pounders on the old Quarter Pounder bun. Perfect! Almost a Whopper, but with McDonald’s fries.
I worked at a McD’s in 1980-81. In my day at my shop you could have anything removed and extra anything that it already had but not add something that didn’t come standard. So a cheeseburger with no onions and extra mustard was fine. You couldn’t get a cheeseburger with Big Mac sauce. I had one customer throw a tantrum because I couldn’t give him a Big Mac with ketchup. A Big Mac with a few ketchup packets wasn’t acceptable to him.
We called special orders “grills”.
The American version of this is the aforementioned “Five Guys”, and they are one of the best fast food burgers around.
Sometimes at BK I ask for a cheeseburger with just pickles. Sometimes I add “and cheese” just to be safe, because multiple times I’ve gotten a sandwich with just bread, meat, and pickles despite the fact that I clearly ordered a cheeseburger.
blink blink
For certain values of best, I suppose.
Pistols at dawn, sir!
No seriously, what do you think they are worse than? They beat the hell out of McD’s, BK, Wendy’s, and especially the overrated and actually pretty gross In-N-Out (which I think describes their passage through your digestive system pretty accurately).
For me, it’s for certain values of “fast food”. They’re certainly better than all burgers I’ve had from chains that are pre cooked. I actually prefer Steak n Shake, but I wouldn’t count either of those as fast food, since it takes several minutes for the burgers to cook.
I suppose the Atkin’s craze is over but ten years ago I imagine this would have been pretty par for the course. I used to work with a guy who’d return from Wendy’s three times a week with a triple stack & cheese with no bun.
Wanna know what looks disgusting? A Wendy’s triple stack & cheese with no bun.
We now have a limited number of Five Guys in Canada and I’ve got to say they beat the hell out of Harveys.
When we eat at McDonalds I always order no onions extra pickles on whatever burger I’m having. It used to be a method of ensuring fresh burgers, now it’s just habit.
I’ve never had In-N-Out. McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s patties all taste very similar and very plain to me. 5 Guys (and Smashburger which cooks a similar style) taste better but then they have so much more greasiness it ruins the better-cooked meat. In my opinion.
My standard McDonald’s order is a Big Mac, no lettuce, extra cheese and sauce. I’ve always been charged for the extra cheese, but it’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve been charged for the extra sauce.
And when you have that much cheese and sauce on a Big Mac, the middle bun is no longer redundant - you need it for infrastructure. 
The last time I went to Whataburger, the conversation went like this:
“I’ll take a plain bacon cheeseburger.”
“Plain?”
“Yes, just cheese and bacon.”
When I opened it later, there was just cheese and bacon on a bun. It was a little too plain.
At one point in the past there was an anomaly where the double cheeseburger was on the dollar menu, but a double hamburger cost more than a dollar. People often talked about ordering a double cheeseburger without the cheese in order to get a cheap double hamburger, but I never heard of anyone who actually did it.
In-n-Out Burger has what they call “protein-style.” You can order any of their burgers “protein-style” and instead of a bun, it will come wrapped in lettuce.
Agreed - much better than Harvey’s, but Harvey’s is up against McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King. Five Guys is sort of the next tier - the burger alone at FG’s costs more than my burger, frings (remember those?), and shake at Harvey’s.
Also, at FG’s, you tell them what you want on it at the cash. At Harvey’s, you are face to face with a burger artist at a topping station. Smiley face of ketchup? Yes please. Two pickles in parallel? Don’t mind if I do. A tomato slice - but not that one, THAT one? No problem.
I once ordered “a burger and fries” at a bar. They served me a burger with fries on the side…and a plate of fries.
Forgive me but I have to mention the time Jack Nicholson tried to order a meat sandwich with no meat.
Damn, S & S is the greasiest here in Cowtown tho! Like that grey nasty bubbly stuff dripping off the sides (boiled blood I call it) and the bun soaked in grease. Diarrhea Burgers.
Former McDonald’s corporate employee. A few years back the entire ordering system was overhauled (to the wonderfully named NewPOS). Fancy touchscreens wiht colorful pictures to make it easier to take orders. And it made it a lot easier to add all the ingredients you want. The downside for the customers is that everything gets it’s own price. Before, say you wanted to add cheese to a McChicken. The cashier would punch in McChicken, then punch in add cheese. But if they wanted to charge you for it, she would have to go select cheese in a separate menu to add the cost. Now, when the cashier selects “add cheese” it automatically charges you.
Of course, it’s all up to the owner as to whether or not they want to charge (most do). Way back when I worked in an actual store, the Big N’ Tasty was on sale, which is basically just a quarter pounder with different ingredients. So people would order a quarter pounder and ask for all the BnT ingredients. Or if the BnT was on sale do the opposite. Eventually the owner decided that he would keep the BnT and the Quarter Pounder at the same price because it was too much trouble otherwise.