(Previously published in The Blade)
Where was I?
Did I slack off on my reading? Miss a meeting? A memo? Or did they do away with the medium order of french fries when I was on vacation?
Maybe there never was a medium order of fries, I used to wonder. Maybe the good people at McDonald's have been humoring me all these years.
But now I see it for what it really is - a cruel hoax perpetrated on the American people.
Sometime during the first Clinton Administration fast food restaurants secretly removed "medium" from their menus. It might have been part of NAFTA.
Exhibit A: McDonalds still has three sizes of fries, but medium isn't one of them. There's "small," which is a little envelope containing approximately six fries; "large," which is, well, large; and "Super Size," a cardboard packing crate stuffed with enough deep-fried potatoes to feed both houses of the Idaho state legislature.
Exhibit B: It isn't just the fries. Order a large Diet Coke and you'll get something resembling a paint bucket with a straw hole in the lid.
It's the same at Wendy's, which even came up with a slick, Madison Avenue name to sell its larger than large portion. They call it a "Biggie."
You can see what's going on here. Fast food franchises are systematically reducing the menu options until one size fits all and that size is extra large. It's the same marketing strategy used by the women's apparel industry, only in reverse.
Exhibit 3: Drive-thru jockeys are a little too defensive when confronted about the matter.
"We don't have medium fries," they scold through the speaker, leaving you twisting in the wind, searching for the right reply as the lineup of cars behind you wraps around the building, spilling out into rush hour traffic.
Apparently, it's written in the McDonald's training manual: "Patrons failing to utilize the correct vernacular when requesting the portion of french fried potatoes they desire should be instructed to rephrase their order and ask again, nicely."
The kindly drive-thru attendant usually puts it more succinctly: "Do you see medium fries on the menu, Einstein?"
"I'll take the middle one," I like to say, refusing to bow to their arrogance.
Obviously, some consumer protection legislation is called for here. We have laws defining what constitutes a loaf of bread, a cord of firewood and the cubic yards of mulch sold at corner gas stations, but you won't find a county auditor's seal on french fries. No sir. The french fry lobby is much too powerful.
Get "Dateline NBC" on the phone! ("French fries: They're America's Side Dish. But is someone playing fast and loose with your fast food? Stone Phillips uncovers the greasy details in this story we call, `You Want Fries With That?'")
If they dig deep enough, I think they'll prove another theory I have about the fast food industry. I suspect the voice on the drive-thru speaker is actually an operator at a switchboard in Oak Brook, Ill., who takes your order, types it into a master computer, then forwards the message via the Internet to the lady at the next window.
How else do you explain the indifferent teen in the headphones trying to serve you a piece of pie and a vanilla shake for breakfast? One wrong keystroke at Mission Control and some guy in Appleton, Wisconsin is pulling away with your McNuggets and Sprite.
If that sounds too bizarre to be true I've got two words for you: "Breakfast Burrito."