Update: This article is satire and comedy. Don’t be this idiot - Iowa man arrested after dipping sauce error leads to bomb threat | State and Regional | journalstar.com
This is the most petty article I’ve ever written. I know this. It is a perk that comes along with owning one’s own website, you can air your grievances no matter how mundane they may seem. But, McDonald’s, you and I need to have a talk.
Do you remember that 2013 documentary History of The Eagles? That was a great documentary. I love The Eagles. It was also wildly entertaining to see just how much they hated one another (at various times). Especially fun was the dripping loath between Glenn Frey and Don Felder. It seemed to strain every muscle in the face of Glenn Frye just to even speak the name of the man who wrote the music for a song that made them millions of dollars- Hotel California.
Probably thinking “Don #&$&% Felder.”
Anyway, that’s how I’m looking at you McDonald’s. Let me explain. This is the Saga of the Hot Mustard Dipping Sauce and Chicken McNuggets. I’m not a big fan of the McDonald’s menu. I hate onions and most of their burgers come with onions by default. Oh, you can order them without onions, but McDonald’s seems to play a perverse game where they simply rake the onions off an existing burger, leaving behind a few disgusting landmines for you to find and wretch over. My wife, for whatever reason, loves McDonald’s. So at least there is the wonderful Chicken McNugget for me to choose.
I’m not sure exactly how a Chicken McNugget is created but they seem to come in four distinct shapes. Officially, I believe they are internally described as the four “B’s”: Bell, Bone, Ball, and Boot. I didn’t know this for most of my life so I’ve always referred to them as the Louisiana, Illinois, Ohio, and rectangle.
Ohio, Illinois, Rectangle, Louisianna.
Chicken McNuggets are meant to be enjoyed with a dipping sauce of your choice. This selection seems to change from time to time but there are some regulars. Most of which I don’t care for. Sweet ‘n Sour is OK but very unremarkable. Tangy BarbeQue would probably be alright on something but not a McNugget. Then there’s Creamy Ranch (sometimes) and habanero ranch (sometimes, and uncapitalized for some reason) but I hate ranch. spicy buffalo (also uncapitalized) is spicy but not really a buffalo sauce (the base for all buffalo sauces is simply hot sauce and butter. I’m not sure what this is but it doesn’t taste like the traditional buffalo sauce flavor.)
Then there are the two sauces at the center of this debate and article: hOney mustard (with a capital “O” this time) and hot mustard. hOney mustard is (in my opinion) disgusting. A warm, icky sauce with not even the slightest taste of honey (or hOney for that matter) that I can discern. Then there is hot mustard, a delicious dipping sauce with just the right amount of hot and the right amount of mustard. A perfect dipping sauce if ever there was one.
One of these things is not like the other.
For reasons unknown, McDonald’s ignorantly discontinued hot mustard sauce a few years ago, though they did eventually bring it back. In modern times (ie: 2021), you pull up to the drive-thru menu and order your Chicken McNuggets. The helpful employee on the other end then dutifully asks you, “What sauce would you like with your McNuggets?” to which I reply, “hot mustard sauce, thank you.”
I then stare at the digital screen and about 50% of the time I see the clerk type in “HONEY MUSTARD”. So, already, my trips to McDonald’s go wrong about half the time right out of the gate. I then drive to the first window where I pay for my Chicken McNugget meal and tell the helpful clerk, “I wanted HOT mustard with that and I believe you typed in HONEY mustard.” Most of the time the clerk says, “Oh, I’m sorry I’ll fix that for you.” Then I pull up to the second window and get… you guessed it- honey mustard anyway.
So, as I have already explained I find hOney mustard disgusting. I would not have ordered Chicken McNuggets to begin with if I didn’t get hot mustard. But still, half the time, hOney mustard it is.
I know the condiment “honey mustard” is more commonly available in stores than the very McDonaldish “hot mustard”. Honey mustard is often served on a variety of sandwiches and so, I expect that it is, in most people’s lexicon, more readily on their mind than “hot mustard”. I say, “hot mustard” and most people’s brains hear “honey mustard”. I get it, but it’s still terrible and I want hot mustard with my Chicken McNuggets.
Another smaller percentage of the time, but not insignificantly so, the order-taking clerk hears me right, types it in right, but I still end up with hOney mustard. I chalk this up to the fact that both packs are somewhere in the brown-yellow spectrum and a worker, probably in a hurry, grabs the wrong one. Mistakes happen. But we are now up to, I would guess 60% of the time I end up with disgusting hOney mustard.
But that’s not the end of it. Another percentage of the time, like the last trip I made to McDonalds, the order-taking clerk gets it right, the pick-up window gets it right, but wait… “Um, sir, it appears we are out of hot mustard… would you like hOney mustard?” NO I WOULD NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES LIKE HoNEY MUSTARD!”
I do not actually yell at that person because I know it isn’t their fault.
This one I blame on the manager for not ordering enough hot mustard sauce. Now, I can probably hear the manager saying, “But we don’t sell that much hot mustard sauce…” WELL YOU MIGHT IF YOU GAVE ME HOT MUSTARD WHEN I ORDER HOT MUSTARD - and it is at this point I am looking at McDonald’s like Glenn Frey looks at Don Felder in that documentary- like I could drill a hole right through you with my hate-vision.
As an experiment, I kept up with my last six trips to McDonalds. Six times I ordered Chicken McNuggets with hot mustard sauce. I got hot mustard sauce exactly once. 1/6th of the time they got it right.
Let me be clear, very little of this is the fault of the hard working employees of McDonald’s. Largely comprised of people doing a very hard job at not nearly enough pay. Most of this is minor mistakes that just compound into a comedy of errors. Bless their hearts, I love fast food workers, they truly are under-appreciated and under paid.
So, I have a solution. Maybe the McDonald’s corporate office could send out a memo. I call it the “Hot Mustard Memo”. Very creative, I know. I have prepared a fake sample for you, feel free to use this if you like.
Dear McDonald’s Workers:
Hey y’all this is Big Mackie Deez Corporate hollerin’ at you! How y’all doin! Anyway, about our Hot Mustard sauce, could y’all please like double check and make sure you put the right one in the bag? I know the honey and hot both say mustard on the pack, I get it, we probably should have put a bit more effort into that but here we are.
Anyhoo, to our super awesome and vastly underpaid managers, could y’all please make sure and order enough hot mustard sauce to keep on hand so we can sell lots and lots of delicious Chicken McNuggets? Thank you Valued Team Members (TM) and everybody gets a $10 an hour raise because you deserve it. Keep on dippin!
P.S.: It’s 2021 fix that ice cream machine already.
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