Final Draft

Lazy Dining

Everyday when we are out at work or school, we are faced with a decision: What to do for lunch? Do we pack our own lunch? No— that’s too much work. Do we eat out at a nice restaurant? No— that takes too much time and costs too much money, not to mention the long drive to get to one. It seems like getting lunch is becoming a near-impossible task. But right before we abandon all hope, there shines a ray of light at the end of the tunnel: fast food! It’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s fast, and there’s a restaurant on every corner. And above all, it tastes delicious! Why wouldn’t we indulge in such a flight of fancy?

I worked at a Mickey D’s all throughout high school. To say the least, it was highly unpleasant. This was for a large variety of reasons, which seemed to get increasingly worse as my time there droned on.The bathroom was almost never cleaned; and why would it be? The people working there were comprised of teenage kids getting paid minimum wage and managers that were only biding their time until they could get out of this aptly deemed “hellhole.” There were constantly flies buzzing around in the kitchen, somehow even in the heart of winter. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy the onions, constantly landing on them and sitting there until someone needed to use them on a double-cheeseburger.

“Put the fly traps up so the customers can’t see them,” my hefty manager Jodie snarled at me, when she was finally forced to address the matter.

Somewhere halfway into my enlightening McDonald’s employment, mice were discovered living in the back room by my fellow crew member, Duane, as he was picking up a fresh box of buns. When he went to throw them out, realizing that the mice had gotten to some of the buns, Jodie stopped him.

“That is worth money!” Jodie snapped. She looked at him like he was a guilty ten-year-old boy caught red-handed trying to hide a precious family heirloom he had just broken.

The mice ended up staying for a few months (Jodie didn’t feel like dealing with them. She even ended up naming a few of them) until an enraged family stormed in, their kid having opened a mouse in his “happy” meal. Of course, being the one working the front counter, I had to be yelled at for this. These people were devastated. A flood of tears and a lot of excess wailing was emitted from their child, while the whole restaurant stared. Eventually, a manager came out. To make up for their confounding and possibly threatening experience, we gave them a free meal! Oddly and to my immense surprise, this was enough to satisfy them, and they left happy.

Why would anyone possibly know that something is bad, unpleasant, or foul, but yet partake in it anyway? Why would we as intelligent beings open the doors to our own torture? Do people pave the way to their own regret?

McDonald’s is already famous for being some of the unhealthiest food in the world. They even show us (very secretively I might add) on the bottom of the little piece of paper that we get on the “eating in” tray, all the nutrition information of everything on the menu. I still can recall by heart to this day, one the healthiest sandwiches on that menu was the McChicken at a "miniscule" 360 calories. This is a whopping 11 percent of our calories for the day. Add a small coke and small fry for a grand total of 990 calories; nearly half of our suggested daily intake for a meal that’s somewhat less than satisfying. For a larger meal, take the number three value meal for example: the mouth-watering Double Quarter-Pounder with Cheese. Add a medium fry and a drink and we get roughly 1500 calories. Even the salads contain more calories than the hamburgers if one adds cheese and dressing before consumption. More and more Americans are becoming well aware of this fact. It’s been spelled out in front of many people again and again. People know that McDonald’s is unhealthy, but yet millions of people a day choose McDonald’s for lunch.

The fact of the matter is, McDonald’s food is in no way satisfying. The reason we choose the nearest McDonald’s over packing a lunch or finding a sit down restaurant is simple. It’s cheap, easy, and fast. That’s it. In this respect, we put a price on our own health and even our contentment. Can the few bucks we saved be used to buy us happiness later on? Where will those few dollars be the day we get diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes? They will be paying our health bill as we look with suppressed angst back on what we could have done differently. It is the simple bad choices in the present that lead to regret in the future.