McDonald’s, It’s Over

When I was a child I loved McDonald’s. Mostly because I didn’t know any better. The fries were better then, because that’s when they still fried them in their burger grease. But the toys in the Happy Meals were all I cared about. As soon as I stopped getting those, I really didn’t care much for McDonald’s. I only ate there because it was convenient.

The one where I grew up was one of the worst in the county. It still is. But all of them have the DNA of failure.

My biggest issue with McDonald’s, beyond serving terrible food, is that when they actually come out with something I like, they get rid of it. I’ve been over this before, but they got rid of the McSalad Shakers, the McSkillet breakfast burrito, the Mac Snack Wrap, the Southern Chicken sandwich, the cheese sticks… and in the news today I saw that they’re going to get rid of their Hi-C Orange drink. They’re replacing it with something called Sprite TropicBerry. Apparently the lack of a space between tropic and berry was intentional. Sounds terrible.

All these years I’ve put up with their shit. For whatever reason, I’ve kept eating their food, despite being dissatisfied with it almost constantly. Just because it was convenient. Just because they’re everywhere. Just because most of them are now open 24 hours.

I thought the Hi-C news was going to be the end of it for me, but I was wrong. Tonight Jen and I went to one. Not because we wanted to, but because our first two choices were extremely busy in the drive thru and we were kind of in a hurry.

It actually pained me to pull into McDonald’s.

We had one car in front of us at the window, for 20 minutes. By that time, our second option, which was right across the street, now had an empty drive thru. That’s what I get.

After that guy got his food and left, we got to the window to discover our order wasn’t immediately ready. Seriously? If it’s taking that long it better be the freshest, hottest, tastiest food I’ve ever got from anywhere. Except I’m at McDonald’s, where waiting a long time for your food doesn’t mean it’s going to be good, or right, or fresh. It just means they’re fucking slow.

Finally got our food and left. I took Jen to work, where she was right on time instead of fifteen minutes early. At least she wasn’t late. I started on my way home and took a bite into one of my two burgers. While I do believe it was cooked some time today, it was probably just after midnight this morning when today officially started. And it was, at this point, 11 PM.

If those burgers had spent another ten minutes in the heater box, they would’ve been jerky. The driest, toughest, nastiest burgers I’ve ever had. The edges tasted burnt. But not in that good Steak n Shake way, in that they’ve been left on the grill for too long on the top rack after the coals had died and dried out kind of way.

I ate it because I paid for it. When I was a kid we didn’t always have a lot of food or money, so we learned to eat what we had. That’s an entire blog post for later, but I’ve come all through life “dealing with it.” I ate bad food because if I didn’t, I went hungry. If money was spent on the food, no matter by who or when, it should be consumed. Let nothing go to waste. I might throw edible food away once every five years. And I always feel terrible for doing it.

Believe me, these burgers were so bad even I couldn’t finish them. I got half way through the second and couldn’t choke down another bite. I threw it away, and I didn’t feel bad about it.

McDonald’s, I’m done with your shit. It’s over. It’s not me, it’s you. GTFO of my life. If I never see another one of you, it’ll be too soon.