No Cheese Please!

So I went to my favourite Wendy's last night and decided to use the Drive-thru. As an aside, do you ever notice when you use the Drive-thru, you may be the only one in line, yet by the time you get to the cashier, there are 5 or 6 cars behind you. Makes me feel like the Pied Piper sometimes, leading the people to the restaurant for a square burger and a Frosty. I should get a commission or something.

Also, given they have not used Wendy's on the TV Show Undercover Boss yet, I have not been grossed out watching how the burgers are made, so its still a safe place to me. I trust my reader(s) who may have worked at Wendy's in the past may disagree but whatever, I'm down with Wendy's for now.

So I'm in the Drive-thru buying my Baconator combo (heck, if you're going to kill your arteries, might as well enjoy it, right?). Anyone who has ever dined with me knows there are a few things I tend not to like on my food. One of the biggest is cheese. While I love cheese on some things like pizza, French Onion soup, or even nachos, cheese is not my thing for most foods. Maybe I was traumatized as a kid being chased by the Cheeseburglar at the McDonalds Playpen or ate too much Cheez-Wiz on my celery sticks or something (OK, yes, I am showing my age). I dunno. I just don't like it, especially on my burgers.

Now let me preface my cheese issue with the simple fact I know we're not talking about Harvard Graduates working in fast food, and it tends to happen at most every fast food place I go to. This time, I actually watched the "Chef" making my burger grab not one, but two slices of cheese (since I was clearly a special customer, worthy of double the cheese slice pleasure) to put on my burger. So here I am screaming through the Drive-thru window at some lady with a headset and a hairnet "No Cheese, No Cheese". Too late. Cheese on meat, meat on bun, bun in foil, foil in bag.

So I politely tell the order taker person, the same order taker person I told the first time, that I think they just put cheese on my burger, and I asked for no cheese. Now at this point, that same little thought went through my mind as yours, anytime you need to send food back. Some vengeful clerk having a meltdown in the back, chanting "I'll show you no cheese, beeeyaattcch", and perhaps adding a few 'special' ingredients to offset the lack of cheese. Not for a second am I suggesting Wendy's is like that, but as mentioned above, we're not talking about NASA employees here. So the order taker in her snarky voice to the Burger Chef says "No cheese", as if it was the chef's fault she could not take an order properly.

Sadly, this happens more often than not. Now I am not a rude person, and having worked in restaurants before, I know how difficult some customers can be. I don't want to be that guy speaking into the Drive-thru speaker like the person on the other end is deaf and has some kind of mental challenge, saying "Nooooooooooo Chhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzeeee ppppppuuuuuullllllleeeeeeeeeeezzzzzz" I'm just not that guy. But at the same time, I don't want to continuously suffer with eating a burger I no longer like. Forget fixing Health Care reform. Can someone focus on figuring out how to better educate fast food people on listening to what the person is ordering? Starving children in Africa would love that slice of cheese I just rejected you know. Or at least thats what my mother would say to me.

Did I mention, the concession stand guy at the arena always overfills my pop, and I wind up carrying a sticky cup of soda to my seat every time? I'll save that vent for a different time.

By the way, the Frosty was great!

I need to be quiet now.