I don’t eat at Burger King very often– maybe once every three or four months, and generally only when I either have no other options or am sick to death of all other available food options.  Given that the side of town I live on has a multitude of places to eat, this just doesn’t happen very often.  I don’t dislike their food, mind you, but over the last few years the company has sort of taken on this air like they’re padding around in circles and looking for a place to die– the menu has always changed massively every time I go there, they’ve renamed things, added a bunch of food that I don’t recognize, and always, always changed their fries from the last time I was in there.

Luckily, one of the very few things that they haven’t fucked with is the chicken sandwich, or, as they’re calling it now, the Original Chicken Sandwich, perhaps to drive home the whole hey, look, this is actually the same as the last time you came in here back in 2005 thing.  I had a craving tonight, and since I was at OtherJob all day I knew I was on my own for dinner, so I stopped at Burger King on the way home.

(Sidenote:  Subway’s Big Hot Pastrami Melt, on flatbread, with provolone cheese, pickles, and dijon.  Delicious.  This is my new shit.  I love pastrami but unfortunately I live in Indiana and it’s much more difficult than you might imagine to get ahold of– even the couple of delis near my house rarely have it available, so Subway introducing a pastrami sandwich was seriously the good news of the week.  Unfortunately, the Subway on my side of town is a big pain in the ass, or I’d have just had two of these today, one on the way to work and one on the way home.)

Anyway.  Back to Burger King.  (I swear I don’t usually have fast food twice in a day, but Saturdays are annoying for eating right.)  I pulled into the drive thru and rolled down my window.  The aggravation starts immediately, because Burger King is now using some sort of canned introductory message in the drive thru now; some sort of hypercorporatebullshit  robotic cheery “HI HOW MAY I MAKE YOUR LIFE BETTER BY SERVING YOU WITH MY SERVING AND YOUR FOOD AND MY SERVICE” thing.

I do not require service from anyone.  I want you to make me some food and I want to pay you for it.  You are literally serving it to me in the sense that you are handing it to me, but that does not make you my servant.  You are not going to serve me today.  You’re gonna sell me some damn food.  I don’t know why that word bugs me so much but it does.  Also, it would be nice if it was a person talking to me and not a damn robot.  Can we not trust our employees to say “Hi, welcome to Burger King, can I take your order?” anymore?

So there’s that, but it’s a common annoyance so I ignore it.  I request my chicken sandwich and then all hell breaks loose.

“May we have your first name for the receipt, please?”

I was literally shocked into silence for a second.  I seriously couldn’t process what the hell I’d just been asked.  You want my what?  Why the fuck– what–

WHAT?

I lie.  Reflexively, damn near instantly.  Make up the first first name that comes into my head; it’s not my damn name.  Why the fuck do you want my fucking name?  For the RECEIPT?  Why the fuck does the receipt need my goddamn what-the-fuck name?  This isn’t fucking Starbucks, you assholes, I’m in a goddamn drive thru.

I seriously wish I had just refused; I regularly refuse to give my ZIP code or phone number during transactions– it just took me by surprise too much and threw me off my game.  If the drive-thru in question hadn’t been one of the type where there’s no escape once you’re in it I seriously might have left.

And then they’d printed my goddamn name on the receipt, which is a piece of paper I’m never looking at again.  Except it wasn’t my name.  I paid with cash, by the way, entirely on purpose because fuck if I’m giving you assholes any more information about me at all at this point.  I don’t know why this bugs me so damn much but I’ll be damned if I’m handing over any personal information about me of any kind to buy a fucking three dollar sandwich in a drive thru.  In fact, I won’t be handing them three dollars anymore, either; it ain’t like I like Burger King enough to overlook the fact that they’re deliberately freaking me the fuck out in the drive thru now.

Fuck.