New Blog Feature: Fast Food Follies

I cannot remember the last time we ate out and got everything we asked for, got good quality food, and/or didn't wait a week and a half for it. The gene pool is getting so damn shallow that apparently finding people who are smart enough to serve food without botching the job is becoming next to impossible. How it's possible to be incapable of performing such simple duties, I do not know. This is the first in what I am SURE will be a series, because I don't see it improving any time soon.

Having done my time in the job trenches at McDonalds (where I met my fabulous, then crew-chief husband, BTW - see, there ARE good things under the Golden Arches), I know this one thing to be true of the fast food industry: It's NOT THAT HARD to get it right. It's just not. Read the order, fill the order, move your ass. Those are the three requirements. That's it.

And yet, Greg and I seem to be cursed in this area, as if our past hard work in the food service industry has been karmically turned around on us and the fast food gods are now shitting on us for kicks. We do not EVER seem to have an entirely pleasant experience encompassing the whole package one desires when dining out.

Today it was Sonic. A rare treat these days, we ate out during the week, and Samantha wanted Sonic, declaring "It's the BEST place to go eat." So we went. We placed our order, spoken to a girl who interrupted me approximately 412 times. Two plain cheeseburger kids' meals, one combo with fries, one salad, one dessert - that was our order. She read it back, and said our food would be out "shortly". We paid using the automatic debit card reader.

And we waited.

And we waited.

Two cars who arrived after us, plus countless drive-thru customers, came and went.

And still we waited.

Finally, as I was putting on my mad face and getting ready to make Greg push the button again, the LCD screen flashed "your food is being delivered". And several minutes later, out it came. Three bags, one salad, five cups. Looked OK. They apologized for the wait, we accepted, and came on home.

But the fun's just beginning. We get home and settle in at the table to enjoy our long-awaited meal together.

Greg took his cheeseburger out of his bag, and reached for his fr...wait...what the....

Do YOU see any fries?



No fries. And the kids ordered tots, which Greg does not care for, so no spuds for Greg. That's strike 2 (strike 1 was us waiting 19 weeks for it to begin with).

So Greg gets the kids' cheeseburgers out, halves them as is our method of serving to the kids, and notices that, uh...hmmmm...these aren't .....

Do these cheeseburgers look plain to YOU? Strike 3.



Sigh. Now we're just irritated, verging on pissed off. To top it off, THIS is the kind of lettuce that they saw fit to put in my salad - how about Strike Four:



Slimy and/or actually rotting? No. But good and "rusty", a quality which may not affect the taste, but it speaks to the age, and air exposure time this lettuce has seen. Grosses me out. Oh, and the chicken (already gone in this pic) was nice and grissly on three sides. Mmmm. Grissle.

I have given up on calling and complaining by now. The idiot managers who answer the phone aren't any smarter than the jackasses they manage, NOR do they care any more than said jackasses. Mostly we are just reminded by these experiences of why we generally eat at HOME.

So Sonic Drive-Inn at 72nd and Military, you sucked ASS today. That it took you THAT long to then SCREW up our food ANYWAY is mind-boggling. Thanks for nothing.