McNugget Meltdown

I'm glad I turned on the news this evening while driving home, because otherwise I would have missed the breaking news story about the woman who called 911 when McDonald's ran out of chicken nuggets.  

Why is this woman in trouble?  It truly is a crime for McDonald's to have a nugget shortage. What happened to the benefits normally gained from "economies of scale" and "global logistics" when they can't get some over-processed chicken chunks to the customers when the customers most desperately need them?  They should have at least rolled something up in flour, deep-fried it with their famous fries, and served 'em up hot!  Anything they could find, as long as it fell into the very broad 'nugget' category.  But no. Instead they humiliated this woman by denying her right to chicken nuggets on demand. And then they called the cops on her.  Oh wait. I guess she called the cops on herself, didn't she?

I think that the woman did the right thing and the cops are over-reacting to her use of 911. Besides, she probably would have called even if the nuggets were in stock. Have you ever really looked closely at one of those things?

This story reminded me of something that happened to me once.  It's a bit tangential, but in my brain it's still on the same plane of absurdity.  I once worked next to a large supermarket that also had a very popular deli contained within.  Besides having a lot of prepared meals (including chicken nuggets), they were also staffed to make sandwiches to order.  

On one particular day, I ordered a sandwich from the menu.  When asked what condiments I wanted, I said mustard.  The store employee promptly informed me that they were all out of mustard.

From where I was standing, I could (and did) lean backwards far enough to see the supermarket aisles over which signs clearly stated their contents.  Aisle 4 read "Condiments".   I reminded the deli dude that he was in a supermarket, you know, where they sell food.  He told me that they weren't allowed to simply get mustard from Aisle 4. It's not that easy, he said. Huh?

Okay, so I realize that he probably did not have the authority, means, or self-confidence to simply pluck supplies off the shelf.  Even in an emergency like this.  But, I probably could have figured out how to make it happen faster than he could. I was pretty annoyed and made it clear that my sandwich was incomplete thanks to corporate protocol.  

Now I realize that I should have called 911.