There's something to be said for the frivolous, the ridiculous, the plain unnecessary. A slapstick pie in the face, while absurd and useless, is often funny if timed properly and, while many may question the humor, most will not recoil in abject horror that a pie or two is being wasted while people go hungry.
I can also appreciate that at buffet restaurants around the world, on a daily basis, tons of food is left on plates and subsequently discarded while the occasional patron will lament, "what a waste!"
I am also one who will often buy DVDs that you'll find shrink-wrapped a year later on my shelf. I will take semi-annual treks to Las Vegas where the useless has become commonplace. I will waste time with the best of them. Waste is not an unknown or unwelcome concept to me on many levels. Why then am I left awestruck in amazement at the recent practices of a fast food establishment?
No more than two days after getting an email from a friend about his recent trip to Taco Bell that netted him about a dozen packets of hot sauce for his three Tacos, I made an infrequent trip to the Bell and placed a dinner order consisting of a 7-layer Burrito, a Meximelt, and a Double Decker Taco. What resulted can be seen in a quick summary of the numbers:
3 items purchased (all of which could have sauce used on them)
23 packages of "Border Sauce" dispensed (12 Hot, 11 Mild)
I'll admit I did indulge in one packet of sauce for the Taco, but, beyond that, the rest of the "Border Sauce" remained. The practice does beg some intriguing questions including:
1) Is a single package supposed to represent a "recommended" serving for a single item? (If so, there's some real arithmetic upgrading that needs to be done by PepsiCo for their employees.)
2) If this is not a serving, why not change the package to accommodate what the suggested serving should be?
3) While they often ask if you'd like hot or mild sauce, why don't they ever ask how much if the threshold can be between 1 and at least 23?
The conspicuous number of packets also allowed me to realize that Taco Bell now incorporates witticisms onto the packets like:
"Bike tires scare me."
"I'm in good hands now."
"So many tacos so little time"
"Pick me. Pick me."
"You had me at Taco"
"Live life... Take two."
While that last example had me starting to understand the culture of waste that has not only permeated Taco Bell, but almost every other food establishment, there was a final packet that really summed up the event: "Live life one sauce packet at a time."
Now while I doubt the Taco Bell parent corporation of PepsiCo has taken to hiring existentialist philosophers for Border Sauce packet blurbs, this last jolt of wisdom did leave me with an optimistic tinge and perhaps the one redeeming quality for this condiment onslaught. I figure that my life is now good as long as I have sauce packets left to enjoy. Considering I may frequent Taco Bell twice a year and this trip I only used one out of 23, I figure I've got a guaranteed 12 years of life without fear of accidental death. If I ever am planning on doing something risky, I can just head back to the Bell and reacquire a bounty of new packets to carry me through the remainder of a long life sponsored by the Pepsi Corporation and a subsidiary that once wanted me to take my own life by forcing a precocious chihuahua on my psyche.
While I honestly hate the indifference and complacency that led to an employee dumping such a condiment cluster bomb into the trillionth plastic bag that will be hitting a landfill somewhere near you, I've gotta love the fact that, for one brief shining moment, I believed fast food guaranteed my future.
