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We live in a society where words are often misused. Today's examples come to us courtesy of the fast food industry. I am speaking of drink sizes.
For example, small no longer means small; it means tiny, so tiny that you can get dehydrated while drinking it. Medium no longer means medium; it means "bigger than a house." Your options are to either get a shot glass full of Coke or a Sparkletts water bottle full of Coke. It's your choice. To say it a more colorful way, a guy can either get enough liquid to enable him to write his name in the snow or he can get enough liquid to enable him to write the names of everyone in his area code in the snow - a virtual Yellow Pages, if you will. Nor is the price difference proportional. There is a ten-cent difference between the two. I mentioned this to a guy at the fast food restaurant I went to recently, but he was too busy trying to get the phone number of the girl who worked the french fry machine to even take my order. Standing there with nothing to do, I ruminated on the fact that I couldn't get a medium if I wanted to, because medium meant extra large, extra large meant gigantic, and small meant "barely enough to be detected by an electron microscope." The guy who was supposed to be serving me went on break, and the girl at the french fry machine went to the lobby to rub a dirty rag on some clean tables. I went next door. At this second restaurant, they offered a regular drink and a large drink, but I failed to look at the menu and ordered a small. "We don't have a small," the lady said. "But I'd like a small." "You can get a small next door, sir." "No, I can't." I said, "I tried. Uh... I guess I'll take a medium." "Do you mean a regular, sir?" I ordered a regular, but thought to myself that "regular" is a meaningless term in a world where none of the drink sizes are standard. The regular turned out to be extra large. After a survey of various restaurants I discovered the following: A store that has medium drinks is in no way required to have small drinks. Some places have a "mystery" medium drink that is only available in certain meals, but not separately. If you supersize your meal you will get what they call a "medium" drink, but which is actually a huge-jumbo-mega-large-bonus drink. Also when you get a small drink, it usually comes with the straw from the huge-jumbo-mega-large-bonus drink, which will make you look like you are trying to suck the life out of a marshmallow. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) A similar problem, which can cause even further long-range difficulties, occurs with hot sauce. Some of the varieties available include Mild, Regular, Spicy, Hot, Extra Spicy, Burn Your Lips Off, Burn Your Neighbor's Lips Off, and Fry Your Hypothalamus. Or, just to confuse you, they will use colors like green and red. I personally recommend that you avoid the "blue" variety. The problem is further complicated by that fact that after you make any of these choices, you are usually required to choose some sort of drink. Either you end up trying to put out a match with a fire hose, or trying to stop a forest fire with a squirt gun, if you want to get metaphorical about it. Normally I just like to complain about things without proposing a solution, but this time an answer occurred to me after the nurse read me my bedtime story. I'd like to suggest the Goldilocks labeling system, to be implemented by all fast food restaurants immediately under threat of martial law. All restaurants, from this point forward, shall only have the following drink sizes that will actually correlate with what is being served: Too Big, Too Small, and Just Right. A similar system will be used for hot sauce. So there it is. I hope this hasn't been too much for you. If you wanted less, you should have ordered the regular, whatever that is. |
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