We took a trip to San Francisco the other day. This is not my favorite city, but we were meeting some folks from Denmark who wanted to experience a little of the flavor of this city by the bay, made famous in history and in song. We decided to get an early start and take a different route from the one we normally use when heading to the airport. So, we stopped at a Burger King to get a little breakfast snack.
I am sure you are familiar with the marketing gimmick of packaging various items together at an overall reduced price in an effort to get consumers to purchase items they would normally not order. At Subway, they call this “The Meal Deal.” Burger King has the “Value Meal.” Here is how it works. Let us assume you would like to purchase a sandwich with one of those fancy French bread things (Trust me, don’t. But let’s just say you do.), a side of potatoes that have been smashed and deep-fried, and a small cup of Seattle’s Best coffee. Purchased separately these items would cost $2.99, $1.19 and $1, for a total of $5.18. However, you don’t have to pay that amount. You can get the Value Meal deal. All of these items will be bundled together and only cost you a total of $4.69, a savings of $.49. Sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it? Ah, but if you want to make a seemingly simple change to the order, you will have to pay. Let me explain.
Suppose you are not a coffee drinker. This is a difficult stretch of the imagination for some of us. After 40 years, I still do not understand how a woman, whose ancestors were all coffee-addicted Norwegians, can have such an aversion to the sacred bean. However, I have come to accept it. Now, back to your imagination. You have ordered the Burger King French Bread Thing Value Meal, but you would like to substitute a cup of tea for the coffee included in the deal. Allow me to relate to you how this conversation will proceed. I will type all spoken words plainly, even though many of them coming through the PlaySkool speaker just below the menu board were something less than intelligible.
“Welcome to Burger King. How may I help you?”
“We’d like a number 7 and a number 1. The number 7 with a coffee and the number 1 with a tea, please (I am always polite to these disembodied garbled voices).”
“That’ll be a number 7 with coffee and a number 1 with iced tea?”
“No, we want hot tea.”
“Okay, a hot tea.”
It is at this point that I notice the blue screen with an itemized list of my order. This, I assume, was placed here after some corporate executive got tired of the complaints from around the world concerning the quality of the inaudible PlaySkool speakers and the accompanying grievances regarding incorrect orders. It apparently never occurred to him that an upgrade to the PlaySkool speakers might solve the problem for less money than the installation of computer screens. I noticed on the blue screen that, in addition to the cost of the two Value Meals, a $.19 charge appeared for “hot tea.”
“Are you charging me an extra $.19 for hot tea?” I enquired.
“Yes.”
“It’s not included in the Value Meal?”
“Coffee is included. There’s a charge for the tea.”
On the way to the window, my tea-drinking Norwegian-descendent wife and I had a conversation about the actual value of a hot cup of water and a Lipton tea bag. We estimated it to be about $.06. My mind, however, was working on another idea.
After receiving the bag with the “Value” Meals and the obligatory and completely insincere, “Thank you. Have a nice day,” I asked, “Don’t you owe me another coffee?”
“Did you order two coffees?” A physical reaction betrayed the nervous state of this teenage young man as he considered the possibility that he had made a mistake in the order.
“Doesn’t each meal come with a hot coffee?” I asked.
At this point, another teen, a year or two older, who seemed to be the morning manager, arrived to take over. “Sir, you ordered a tea with the one meal.”
“Yes, but I was charged an extra $.19 for the tea. Doesn’t the meal include a coffee?”
Of course, I was not interested in drinking a second cup of Seattle’s Best, and I was not really concerned about the $.19. I just wanted someone to justify this ridiculous policy. She explained that the tea took the place of the coffee. I asked, displaying my best facial expression of incredulity, if this didn’t make the price of a cup of hot water and a tea bag more than $.19, since it also included the price of a cup of coffee normally included in the “deal.” By my estimation, this cup of hot water and the tea bag were actually costing me about $.70. She understood, and seemed to agree this was true and ridiculous. What choice did I have? I let her have it her way.
Maybe I should have ordered the sandwich and a “senior coffee.” I would have liked to have seen how that would have appeared on the blue screen.
We asked for some sweetener (included if requested) and headed for the little cable cars climbing half way to the stars. Did you know a round trip ticket (one-day pass) costs $14, but two one-ride tickets only cost $6/each?
Push-up update: I am back with the program, but had to begin at 25. I have decided to save my joints by only doing one set of as many as I can physically and volitionally muster every day, instead of the three sets every other day. We’ll see how it works out.
One other pet peeve. I was watching the local Fox TV channel (not the national folks) while on the elliptical this morning. It seems like more and more often I am discouraged about the reliability of the Fourth Estate when I tune in any random news program. This morning I listened to a pretty face demonstrate her inability to distinguish between an adjective and an adverb (“slow” v. “slowly” for example). Then I watched as another cute gal tried to demonstrate a shortcut computer function. It would not work, and she apparently could not figure out that there is a difference between the letter “o” and the number “zero.” Is it any wonder I trust very little of what I hear on the news?
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