Imagine getting Big Macs for eighty two cents each! Such a bargain can be tempting even if you rarely eat a Big Mac, as is true with Mr. Wonderful and me when someone like a grandchild buys us one. We were going to be in the neighborhood of the new MacDonald’s Grand Opening where the offer was advertised in the local paper. We decided we could pick up Big Macs for dinner.
We weren’t tempted by the opportunity to see Ronald McDonald nor the free balloons. Okay, a little tempted by the balloons. We saw in the ad we would get there too late for the main festivities, but the special prices of 82 cents for the Big Macs and $1.82 for kids’ meals were in effect all day. The special prices were obviously set because the location of the new facility is on Route 82. Cute!
I rarely experience a mental avalanche that can bring on a pile of unintended consequences, but in this story I had one on the way to McDonald’s. I said, “Let’s buy more than two Big Macs at this price!” Sounded logical to me. And to Mr. Wonderful.
He replied, “We could freeze the extras and use them later!” That, too, sounded logical to both of us. Logic and rational thought are replaced with sheer madness in a mental avalanche.
The maximum Big Macs any one person could buy at 82 cents each was nine. I said, “We could buy eight!”
Considering we eat about one Big Mac a year each, eight is a four-year supply of Big Macs. Considering we sometimes split a Big Mac because we are accustomed to purchasing the junior hamburgers at one dollar each, one might say we were considering buying an eight year supply of Big Macs. And we were scheduled to be in Florida for just another couple of months.
When Mr Wonderful drove up to the window and ordered eight Big Macs, the price came onto the screen as $31.92. It had taken us about ten seconds to compute in our head that eight Big Macs would cost $6.56, with 8x8=64 ($6.40 in this case) and 2x8=16 ($0.16) and adding the sixteen cents to six dollars and forty cents for a total of $6.56. We are dumbfounded when the younger generations do not use this simple system.
Question for all the grandchildren. Did you memorize the times tables in grade school? Could you have made the simple calculation in your head and known almost instantly that 8x.82 is 6.56? Answering this question is not obligatory but I am curious about what you learned, or didn’t learn, in arithmetic classes.
When Mr Wonderful told the electronic voice at the order station we had an ad that listed the price of a Big Mac at 82 cents, he was told to work that out at the window. The young man at the window did not recognize the validity of the ad. He went to get the manager. She told us the grand opening would be the following weekend. Calling up a smidgen of logic not swept away by the avalanche, I said, “The ad doesn’t have dates for the Grand Opening, only ‘Friday and Saturday’!”
Mr Wonderful played his pity card and said, “I drove all the way from Lehigh Acres for this.” Lehigh Acres is about 10 miles from the new MacDonald’s.
The manager said, “Others have read that ad and come today; I’ll give you the discount but don’t come back for another.” Our going back to a McDonald’s soon was about as likely as snow on Fort Myers Beach.
Then the manager, the young man, and a computer went into a conference to adjust the bill. We wondered what was taking this threesome so long to come up with $6.56 plus tax.
When the young man told us what the eight Big Macs were, he said, “That will be $4.82.”
Mr Wonderful handed him a ten dollar bill and sure enough got back a $5 bill and change. We were too astonished to question their computation and drove away with our eight Big Macs that immediately produced a salivating aroma in the car.
I looked at the receipt and the $31.92 was there with a discount of $27.38 for a subtotal of $4.54 and .28 tax. Okay, engineers in the family—Jason, Chris, and Kevin—can you solve this magic math problem? I don’t know how a simple arithmetic calculation turned into magic math. The Big Macs ended up costing about sixty cents each including tax.
Well, I could end the story here and it would be a story with a happy ending. At least for us. But the complete madness of buying a four-to-eight-year supply of Big Macs to eat in a couple of months is a story with a mildly unhappy ending, the unhappiness brought by a need to eat eight non-freezable, un-reheatable Big Macs in four days.
We were hungry. Our shirts were wet with drool from driving home sniffing the aroma of eight—count them! eight!—Big Macs. We got diet cokes from the fridge and dove in. None of this being sucked in to buying cokes and fries at full price with the Big Macs at below rock bottom price and thereby allowing McDonald’s to get an ultimate profit. We are the type of shoppers who frustrate retail managers by putting the emphasis on “loss” when faced with a loss leader.
I looked inside the Big Mac and saw a white sauce that looked suspiciously like mayonnaise, which cannot be frozen. No big problem; just plan menus for that day and three more days that included Big Macs for lunch or dinner. They would be good reheated.
Well, “No!” The lettuce that was glued down with the white stuff would produce a slimy mass if reheated. On day two, Mr Wonderful said, “I must have eaten a leftover unheated Big Mac in the past; this tastes familiar.”
I replied, “Yeah, it tastes familiar to me, too.”
So, we smiled—okay laughed—as we choked down dry, not very flavorable never-frozen, never-re-heated day-old, two-day-old, and three-day-old Big Macs. We don’t waste food and feel like saints when saving money. Sainthood isn’t just about holding onto saved money but also about spreading it around wisely. So, grandkids, you can just quit calling me crazy for spreading around money. Sometimes I tell about paying my grandchildren to read what I write. My writer friends love this story. People who hear the story volunteer to be my grandchildren. So, be nice to me. You can be replaced by someone waiting in line.
I know now who at McDonald’s makes the big bucks; those nutritionists who went to college to learn how to create a product that has absolutely no shelf life, that has to be eaten before it cools or, heaven forbid, has to be pitched into the garbage.
We survived and were thankful we weren’t due for a blood test soon that might indicate an elevated cholesterol reading. We’re now back on our Mediterranean diet that actually doesn’t include any Big Macs. But we will go occasionally to McDonalds to sneak into our menu a dollar-size hamburger and one of those delicious ice cream cones.
No comments:
Post a Comment