Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 4:55 PM

Subject: Three Sided Octagon

So there I was at some generic burger shack, stuck in the drive through trying to order a cheeseburger and a Coke. Did I want the Star, Famous Star, All Star, Super Deluxe Chunk Burger stuffed with onion rings, or some other mystical creation of the burger multi-national conglomerate syndicate? No. I wanted a damn cheeseburger. And on the off chance they happen to have hamburger or cheeseburger on the menu, you are lucky if it is the size of a half-dollar. Why do they have to call it some goofy crap?

It started back in the fifties when an upstart named McDonalds came up with a Quarter Pounder With Cheese. Burger, Pounder, close but still different. Then came the Big Mac. Not even close to burger. Now we got a Whopper, Single, Double, Triple, Whopper Junior, Rufus, the whole All Star series, Sonicburger 1, Sonicburger 2, Big K Burger, Whattaburger, Monster Burger, Mc DLT, Big King, Little King, and a whole buttload of other stupidly named burgers.

And it does not stop there. There is the whole bit of additional modifiers, like deluxe. Deluxe apparently means: "with a slice of tomato". Now correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm not; but shouldn't a burger have a tomato slice on it anyway? They make it sound as if you are getting something fresh from the gods' own garden. It ain't a manna-burger, it a ham-burger. Burgers are supposed to have tomatoes on them. It's not as if we are getting a special deluxe treat with the food. A slab of cow with some vegetable accoutrements slapped on a bun. That is a hamburger.

But the burger may not be normal. They are now trying to slip onion rings into the burger as if it's some grand improvement. Why the heck would you want that? If you want more bread in you burger, order extra bun. Don't waste my taste buds and brain cells on trying to figure out what the hell I am eating. I have had several of these monstrosities and they all suck. Now don't get me wrong, I did not know that they were putting fried, breaded onions on my burger. They don't really advertise that they are loading your food down with extra grease and fat. And when you try to get it without the onion rings, it causes multiple brain aneurysms in the window jockey. They don't understand that you want something other than the generic menu item.

And they go further. The bastards have changed most everything on the menu. They bumped small down to kiddie, replaced the medium with large, and made the large a super half-gallon sized bucket of drink. Now this formula only works at one place. Every single place has their own version. You have to have a Masters of Obfuscation and Misrepresentation to understand it all. So now when you go into a place and want a small drink, you get a kiddie-sized one. Then they bring you a thimble of coke and don't understand why you are upset about not getting what you wanted.

All I wanted was a damn burger and a coke, not some misadventure in ordering food. Screw 'em all, eat from the fridge. Anyway, Lecki makes better burgers.

-Dave at the SSC Call Center