Is This You? Fast Food Menu Friends

In the “out to dinner” world, I have no real favorites or non-favorites. I go with the crowd. Reading the menu I usually just go with what I can identify. Staying away from what I don’t like, like anything with brown gravy. Or things I cannot pronounce or identify. Happily I have been a “plain Jane” eater. But. Yes, a country gravy “but.” Why is there, about half the time, someone who tries to talk me into “just trying” something different? No, I don’t want the raw oysters on the half shell served with a dot of hot sauce.

As an example. That’s why all Fast-Food Menus and the choice to eat at those fast-food eateries is a happy experience. Every time. Each and every time. Sure there are taco places, and fish places, and chicken places, and where’s the cow places. For the most part though fast-food menus say the same thing. Just different fluff is added. If every menu just said hamburger or cheeseburger, how fulfilled could you get from that.

The other day my friend and I zipped through a drive through fast-food place. One that she hadn’t been to in a while, so she was unfamiliar with the 6’ by 10’ size menu we drove up to. It was covered with 12 different meal options and more sides and drinks and kids’ meals and desserts and special deals that even a speed reader couldn’t read in twenty minutes. She says to me she just wants a cheeseburger and a soda.

HA! That’s just a starting point.

The guy in the order box relays for me to begin to order when ready. Oh I was so ready. I say to the box guy, a cheeseburger and a small soda. Back he comes with the questions. “Just a cheeseburger?” “Yes,” I replied, knowing there would be more. The guy in the box comes back with, “Do you mean a child or a big or a double or the special with bacon and the special pretzel bun?” I turn to my friend and she had this look of terror and confusion. I think she thought that if we didn’t answer quick, within a certain amount of time something drastic would happen. What? Will our vehicle be dropped through a trap door in the asphalt? Will we be refused service because we did not have our order ready when the guy in the box said to “order when ready”? Maybe the people in the three cars behind us will attack us with pitchforks and torches.

I said to her not to worry I got this. I am a great Fast-food Menu friend. I finish her order with a big cheeseburger, adding no onions as she has tried to add that as I was talking to the box. I added my want to the order, got the total and moved to the second window. Bing. Bang. Boom. We all need a Fast-food Friend. Someone that may not have the entire menu embedded in our gray matter. But at least know what the box will ask and what we will need to know to complete the order. I have a DEL-ightful taco place I like, (Wink-Wink) but I have a friend that goes to one that I don’t go to as much. We stopped once at her choice, and I am sure I looked like a deer in the menu headlights. There was sooooo much to choose from that I was at a loss. My friend picked up the order gauntlet and ordered just what her Plain Jane Friend would like. She too is a Fast-food Friend.

I will admit I draw the line at ordering a dessert for my friends. Ordering dessert for your friend from an ice cream place or other sweet shoppe and you risk your Food Menu credentials forever-more. Sweets. Well, you just don’t mess with a dessert choice. Why? Because it triggers the release of dopamine,  a neurotransmitter in your brain that creates feelings of pleasure and reward.  In other words, sugar and sweet make us happy and after many, many years of eating them, our brain knows what we like, want and strongly desire in a dessert.

You know that saying, “Don’t mess with Texas?” Well, it’s possible that before it was Texas it was “Don’t mess with my dessert!” Lesson learned.