This morning I was supervising my teenage daughter’s driving as we proceeded around town picking up vegetables, second hand video games from the distant past, and a bulk lot of pot noodles with suspicious warnings in a language I can’t read.
As we neared home one kid told me they were dying of hunger, and the other was totally dying of thirst. Obviouly, I was wanting to maintain my position in the top 98% of parents, and losing a kid on my watch was going to seriously mess with my stats.
After carefully evaluating all of the healthy options available, and discussing how important fresh and nutritious eating was, we went to Maccas anyway.
We ordered up a shared meal and went and sat at a table coincidentally located under the blast chiller. I figured it was just character building, and that kids dying of malnutrition could handle some arctic temperatures for ten minutes or so.
In between all the teeth chattering I struck up some table talk. My 12 year old son filled me in about a new game called Minecraft that just came out for the Game Boy, which he plays every Fortnight with a friend named Roblox. I haven’t met that kid yet so I made a mental note to be in better touch with the people my offspring hang out with. My 18 year old daughter told me about all the places she was going to go to when she gets her license, and how fast she would be able to get there. I decided to increase our car insurance.
Our food arrived fairly quickly. Up until that time I wasn’t aware of the new technique for building hamburgers. Apparently, one kid holds the burger bun at one end of the room, and another kid who is the same age but wearing a managers badge stands at the other end of the room and hurls burger ingredients at high speed towards the buns. After three rounds anything that sticks to the burger is jammed into a box and sent off to the waiters. The customer is never informed of the scoring system, or who the winner is, which is a shame actually.
The chips were good and I believe that if you’re in the lucky minority to get fresh McDonalds chips then you should not only be appreciative, but should also go and buy a lotto ticket.
I found the nuggets to be pretty good, and they came with some sweet and sour sauce which was nice of them. However, I’m relatively certain that my local Gracemere store has served the same sweet and sour sauce repeatedly for the last four or five years. I probably messed up their winning streak by managing to open one of the packages through a combination of using my fingertips, teeth, one of my feet, and a pocket knife. If science ever has need for a packaged sauce that can survive a direct nuclear blast they should contact McDonalds and ask for the design of their sauce packets.
I bet that after we left a conversation like this happened:
Manager: “Oh great. They OPENED the sauce! Does anyone even know where we get more from?”
Assistant Manager: “I don’t know, let’s ask Old Man Hanrahan.”
Manager: “Hey, old Man Hanrahan! You’ve been here the longest, where do we get the new sauces from? Some jerk came in here and opened up the only one we have.”
Hanrahan: “Stop calling me Old Man Hanrahan!! I’m 15 years old, and I’ve only been working here for 3 months.”
Anyways, all kidding aside, and apart from the sauce packet that can’t be opened without mechanical assistance, and the burgers built blindfolded, my kids were happy enough with their lunch.
9/10, would recommend.
But remember: If you eat the pickles then some poor kid is going to have to figure out how to order more of them.
Note: This article originally appeared on the Rockhampton Food Rater Facebook page, and was written by me on 20 July, 2019.