The Fast Food Blues

Photo Credit: Christina Rausch

It’s lunch time, you’re in the car and you search for sustenance satisfaction in the one hour that you are given from your job to accomplish such a feat.  You drive through the gauntlet of elevated electric signs that attempt to separate you from your hard-earned dollar.  In an instant, you whiplash yourself with a hard turn into the fast food establishment that you suddenly crave.  Then you wait behind 20 other cars who had the same craving!

Now, I am no longer in the rat race and can take more than an hour lunch if I so desire.  So, I have plenty of time to make my choice and have a comfortably paced lunch.  Yesterday I decided to try the fast food circuit (something, I really shouldn’t do at my age), I drove the gauntlet of elevated electronic signs looking for the place that tickled my taste buds and decided on the place that is golden and no longer clowns around (get the hint?).

I pulled into the drive-up lane and of course there are 20 other cars waiting.  This is not a problem right, it is fast food, right?  Well, 20 minutes later I am finally at the window to pay for my delicious meal and the person who takes my money doesn’t even say thank you.  This may not seem like a big deal to most but let’s face it, this “food” is not cheap, and I don’t know about the rest of you all, but I am not necessarily wealthy.  It is always nice to be thanked for spending your hard-earned money.

To make matters worse, I set down at home to enjoy my meal only to discover that the burgers that I ordered resembled squashed hockey pucks.  They had all the flavor and juiciness of dried out cardboard.  I basically could have picked-up a 99-cent package of bologna, let it dry out then put a couple slices of it on some dried-out bread and had a better sandwich.  The burger that I bought was over $3.00 and that was without the fries and soda.

I blame corporations for this, growing up there were numerous mom and pop burger joints that had excellent burgers usually for 99-cents or less. The burgers were always fresh, real beef and grilled when you order them.  Most all those businesses are gone and what we are left with is corporate stores with pre-processed, chemically laden and antibiotic-rich protein (of some variety).

In addition, corporations have a terrible tendency of not paying much to their employees and not providing benefits.  Now before you say; “these jobs were typically for young people and not permanent”, you must realize that in today’s economy many 50+ year old people work as many as three of these jobs just to make ends meet.  So, I guess not receiving a “thank you” is probably forgivable.

When corporations were in the process of driving mom and pop stores out of business their offerings were at a very cheap price. Small stores could not compete since they did not have the buying power of the large corporations and were soon driven out of business.  However, today these corporate behemoths have raised their prices to a ridiculous level, especially when you consider the poor quality.

Furthermore, to call this garbage “fast-food” should be illegal under the truth in advertising laws.  There are times when I have had faster service from sit-down restaurants.  The concept of customer service here is virtually dead, just get in line, shut up and wait your turn!

Talk to Ya Later!

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2018 All Rights Reserved