The Economy in a Cardboard Box

Erica’s post set me to thinking this afternoon about Customer Service. After all, Kalbfleisch’s Economic Razor states: The strength of the economy is inversely proportional to the quality of service in any fast food restaurant. This is because when the economy is good, all the good workers have good jobs and the fast food places have to scrape the barrel to meet their staffing needs. When the economy is bad, you end up with rocket scientists working the cash register at McDonalds, and except for the guys in the O-ring division at Morton-Thiokol, you can pretty much count on an engineer to give you a Perfect Sandwich. For several years, I’ve joked that if I ever decide to become a doctoral candidate in Economics, that will be my thesis. Until recently, I thought of this as an immutable law, cast in stone as much as any economic theory could be, and would someone please nominate me for a Nobel Prize in Economics? Armed with this understanding, Alan Greenspan could get caught up on years of back episodes of “The West Wing” simply by stopping at Burger King on his way to testify before Congress.

(Please permit me to digress for a moment on the subject of Nobel nominations. It seems that Stanley Tookie Williams, co-founder of the Crips gang, has been nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize while he was on death row. I didn’t know this, but apparently you can go to any US Post Office and ask for a Nobel nomination form, and they’ll give it to you. All you have to do is fill it in, and they’ll do the rest! They used to have those forms at 7-11, but it got to be like a whole gang initiation thing, you know, to, like send in some upstart, punk-ass, wannabe gang-bangin’, glock-passin’ dogg, so he be, like, “Yo, muthafucka, gimme one o’ yo N-to-tha-izzobel Prizzize forms, NOW, muthafucka, befo I put tha fo’-fo Desert Eagle to yo muthafuckin’ dome, Cuz.”)

Word.

So, where was I? Oh, yeah. Economics.

So, last week, my daughter got a job at McDonalds. I like this job. It’s a block from our house (let’s not talk about the weird zoning laws that put a McDonald’s just four blocks from a neighborhood filled with five and ten million dollar homes), so she doesn’t have to go from newbie driver to Mario Friggin’ Andretti the day she gets her license.

On Thursday, after a terribly long day at work, I headed over to Mickey D’s to grind my sizzelf a burga…sorry, to get a burger. I order my usual: quarter pounder with cheese combo, hold the onions. My daughter is in the dining area, doing paperwork, and after I said hello, I headed home with my prize. Yyyyummyyyy. Burger.

I had checked the bag before I left. Yes, the custom order slip was taped to the outside of the excessive packaging box, and it said, “QTR PDR W/O ONION”. No worries. I had even observed the manager open the box containing another customer’s burger, check to make sure it was correctly assembled, and send it back to be remade when it turned out to be non-compliant burgage.

I assumed, given all of this evidence, that I could safely take my burger home and eat it there. I assumed that when I got it there, it would be The Burger As I Ordered It.

Big mistake. Big.

No, it had onions. Not only did it have onions, it apparently had been covered in onions. It had, where do they grow onions? Wisconsin? Roughly all of the onions grown in Wisconsin this year were on my quarter pounder.

Now, I like onions on my burger. Grilled onions, thank you…not the big, honkin’, chunk-o-onion pieces they put on burgers at Mickey D’s these days.

I just snarfed the burger, cursing the air between mouthfuls, while silently thanking the Great and Benevolent Oz for the strength of our economy. I took consolation in the fact that I had sent Mickey my revenge for years of bad service: my sixteen year old daughter. I rolled my eyes with glee, even as I washed the putrid taste of onion out of my mouth with Mr. Pibb. Yes! I will soon get exactly what I order at McDonalds! My daughter will make sure I do! Ha-a-a-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

When she got home, I told her about the Onion Burger From Hell and said that if I hadn’t already dumped my fries into the top half of the over-packaging box, I’d have taken it back and asked them to fix it.

Because clearly, they’d heard my order correctly.

“Oh God, Dad,” said my daughter, “then they’ll remember you, and when you come in, they’ll ask me, so is that, like, your dad?”

So, there you have it. I have been spared the ignominy of sharing a Nobel Prize with a guy named Tookie. My ironclad theory of economics has been dashed on the rocks at the base of the Cliffs of Insanity.

You see, the quality of service at a fast food restaurant isn’t based on the strength of the economy. It’s much more personal than that.

Apparently, it’s embarrassing to provide good service.

Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce,
Special orders WILL upset us,
All we ask is that you let us
Serve it our way…