The Best Potatoes We Could Dig Up

Bizarre Unearthings from Fast Food Culture

So one day you're at a fast food restaurant doing your best to get your food down and get the hell out of there, and you look around the place, seeing who the other customers are, taking in the atmosphere. And then you start reading the signs on the walls, the movie promotional materials, the price specials, the paper mobiles hanging from the ceiling. Kind of like reading the cereal box in the morning. You don't expect anything of substance, just the usual babble.

And then you read one of the most absurd things you've ever read in your life.

Your eyes have been opened. Soon, you're seeing the fast food experience in a whole new light. Every new restaurant brings a whole host of new printed absurdities. You start seeking them out. You make pilgrimages across town just to see a particular sign. You actually request and read the nutritional brochures and customer response forms.

You find you've been eating way too much fast food.

At least that has been close to my experience. Actually, I don't remember any one particular epiphanic moment or sign. It was more like after three or four real weird ones over the course of a few months I scratched my head and wondered aloud "What is this connection between fast food and utter nonsense? What do these CEOs and copy writers think they're telling us? What does it all mean?" My housemate (and Prep X editor) Skip had a similar experience and we started bouncing ideas and new discoveries back and forth. What follows are the results of months of grueling research in the field and some specimens of our more bizarre discoveries.

Burger King serves up mostly what you would expect as far as printed material. They're big, they're corporate, and their basic look hasn't changed in over a decade. They always have a movie promotion running, so the service counter is perpetually trimmed out with streamers and mobiles and cutouts of cartoon characters and whatever movie merchandise they're pushing. Crass and cute, but not particularly interesting. The Kid's Club newsletters are pretty vapid­it seems they're banking on children identifying with the most two-dimensional and fetish-driven characters they could devise. Again, it's about what you would expect, and not particularly interesting.

What I don't expect is the sign in the window: "Now hiring smiling faces." Okay, it's a happy thought, and a bit playful. You smile, we'll hire you. Of course it's not meant to be taken literally. But I can't get away from the image of the store manager breaking it to the smiling quadriplegic that they just can't take him on. Just what would a smiling face DO at Burger King? On its own, that is.

Certainly not take your order. The sign must not have been up yet the day they hired the automaton that welcomed me to Burger King, took my order, and took my money. Or maybe they do hire smiling faces; the faces just can't keep smiling after working there too long. Or else the sign is simply a lie. After all, "Sometimes you just gotta break the rules" (Burger King slogan from a couple years ago).

The other Burger King discovery was peering up at us from under our food. The paper tray liners have a list of definitions on them, formatted as mock dictionary entries, which tout repeatedly: 1) that Burger King burgers are flame broiled, not fried like McD's or Wendy's; 2) that Burger King's Whopper® beat the Big Mac® and Wendy's Single® in a national taste test; 3) that the Whopper® has a different variety of available toppings than the Big Mac® (but noticeably they don't apply this critique to the Single, which is in most respects identical to the Whopper in meat weight and toppings). The ad claims are about what you would expect, but the pitch is bizarre. The "definitions" are redundant and authoritative, progressing comprehensively from a to z, from "all·beef pat·ty"­"1: four ounces of real beef 2: the soul of the WHOPPER® sandwich (See also: flame-broil, quarter-pound)" to "ze·ro"­"1: [sic; there's no number 2] number of fried WHOPPER® sandwiches in existence" The message is that from a to z, this is the definitive truth. Burger King's way is THE way to make a hamburger, so forget the other guys.

But in borrowing the authoritative guise of the dictionary definition format, Burger King is also asking you to forget whatever you (may) already know about dictionaries and the English language. The "phonetic" spellings are almost all totally incorrect by any set of standards. "juxtapose" is rendered with a schwa and an accent on the first syllable­a phonetic impossibility. The same thing happens with "onion" and "hunger". Apparently little things like that don't matter in the King's English. In the phonetic rendering of "your way" they put the accent on "way," as opposed to "your" which seems to be the more appropriate emphasis as well as how the slogan is pronounced in actual Burger King ads. What's at issue is whose way the burger is prepared, right? What do you gain by emphasizing "way," anyway?

Burger King's definitions tell you some things about their product, but they also tell you things which are downright meaningless. Witness the definition for "geometric": "1: relating to the basic shapes and principles of geometry, as in: the circular patty in a WHOPPER® sandwich is (geometrically) perfect; the square shaped WENDY'S SINGLE® is (geometrically) inappropriate" Yeah, when you cut hamburger out of the cow it's always round and flat. Circles are better than squares? Apparently so, a priori: "illogical"­"adj. 1: devoid of logic or sense, as in: it is (illogical) to make a square hamburger (See also: geometric, round)"

But then after all these are just paper tray liners. Who really cares how phonetics work? You haven't worried about that since junior high school. Everyone knows this is just a joke, that these are mock definitions and not real ones. Sometimes you just gotta break the rules, and the King is just playing a little fast and loose with the English language. No harm done. They're just doing things their way, like they say you can do things your way. It all makes sense.

Except like I said at first, their way is THE way. Dictionaries are just rule-books, and they wrote the dictionary on hamburgers. They have a national taste test to back them up­cold hard facts. Bow to the King's authority. Your way, of course, but your way is our way. (But then if the definitions are all just a joke, then I guess a fried hamburger could be MY way after all...)

Taco Bell tends to have large splashy window signs advertising their cheap prices; these are fairly straightforward. Most of their food related stuff is pretty straightforward, like the mobiles proclaiming their new "Border Lights" series of lowfat menu items. "All the taste / 1/2 the fat." Other than being rather a vague claim (ordering a light fast food taco is certainly just as much a sign of good taste as ordering the non-diet variety; however, the new products certainly don't have the same flavor as their fattier cousins, which weren't all that high-fat to begin with), it doesn't reveal any particularly warped origins.

Taco Bell promotional deals can be interesting. Like the "Do something alternative" campaign a while back. They were selling a compilation cassette that had all these minor league "alternative" bands on it. The poster was filled with all sorts of little "believe in something" statements, like they wanted you to think you were really accomplishing something by buying it, or that the proceeds were going to some worthy cause (Warner or Sony is more like it). Yeah, I'll do something alternative: I'll go eat at Burrito Bunker instead (and you can buy Zen Frisbee CDs there if you really like buying your music from taco stands). No, something alternative, you know, like wearing a t-shirt with a band logo on it, and growing your hair out, and buying this cassette for $8 or $10 or so which is on a major label and being sold by a national fast food chain owned by a giant soft drink corporation. Something alternative, you know­everyone's doing it.

Lately I like the Congo: The Movie promotional paper drink cups. If you only see one side of the cup, you can't even tell it's a movie slogan. Taco Bell: "Where you are the endangered species."

Taco Bell billing itself as "the border" is somewhat curious. A border isn't really a place; it's a line, a division between two places. Taco Bell is like this extra-dimensional space that hangs between the "normal" anglo-American suburban reality of burgers, fries and fast food counters and the foreign, exotic world of tortillas, beans, and funny sounding words. Taco Bell combines elements of both these worlds, and yet belongs fully to neither. The ads always have people making "a run for the border." But the line is never crossed. I think this is deliberate. They serve Mexican-ish food; not real authentic but it helps sales to reinforce a southwestern mystique. "Over there," across the border, is something valuable we don't have "over here." But Taco Bell doesn't really want to be associated with Mexico; there are too many American prejudices against the unwashed poor. Don't cross that line, it's dirty and dangerous over there. Don't drink the water at Taco Bell. They use dog food in their tacos­or dog meat! No, Taco Bell certainly doesn't want those associations. And most mass consumers don't seem to mind being mass consumers. They don't want to cross lines. They'd rather wait in them. Crossing a line leads to encounters with the foreign, the unfamiliar; when you wait in a line you get only the familiar, comforting tastes of a food product that remains consistent from visit to visit and store to store, all over this nation. Running for the border, but not necessarily past it, is a great marketing strategy because it appeals to timid and bold alike, the people afraid to cross the line and the people hankering to cross the line. It's a neutral space which the consumer can turn into anything he or she desires.

So are these lowfat "Border Lights" the beacon lights at the border? Are they lights shining for us, enticing us to throw off our American ways for the exotic lure of the other side? Or are the lights beckoning us the other way, out of the poverty and oppression of Central American despotism, over the border to the haven of the land of opportunity and benevolent corporate oligarchy?

Or are the Border Lights shining simply to help the border patrol pick us off when we dare to come close to the line? The Border: "Where you are the endangered species." It seems to me the new line of tacos is just a way to trick customers into paying 15 cents more for a chicken soft taco by renaming it. Border crossing, prepare to stop, pay toll.

The weirdest element of Taco Bell culture has to be the workplace environment. In my neighborhood TB lounge I noticed a metal plaque hanging on the wall by the cashiers' station which read in total: "An operating environment which consistently meets or exceeds company performance standards. It requires a total customer satisfaction cultural mind set exhibited by each of our employees toward the consumer." It had the store number and Taco Bell logo at the bottom, and at the top it had a big "A" surrounded by some small words I couldn't make out. I couldn't tell if this was an award given for meeting these expectations or a mission statement outlining the Taco Bell ideal. But whether it's a grade A or a priority A, it still makes my head reel trying to comprehend WHAT they could mean by a "total customer satisfaction cultural mind set." It would be very easy to say instead, "The top priority for all employees should be total customer satisfaction." But that's not what it says. Whoever makes these decisions in the Pepsi-Cola corporate family thought that they couldn't count on their employees to provide good service without some kind of guiding monolithic ideology in place. And how does one go about instilling or installing a cultural mind set anyway? Other than simply brainwashing your employees by repeating incessantly that customer satisfaction is goal one. I know Taco Bell can't spend that much time on training. It seems like a cultural mind set, if such a thing exists, would have more to do with the fact that Americans bathe everyday, pay athletes multi-million dollar salaries, and are willing to wait in drive-through lines to be fed. That's cultural.

So where do they find these customer service ideologues? A counter display sign reads: "When you're IN IT to WIN IT you belong on The Team at Taco Bell. Taco Bell is the perfect place for fun, friendly, high-energy TEAM PLAYERS who work just as hard as they play. Ready to be a starter on a winning team?" The sign then instructs the applicant to fill out a "mini-application"a 3"x5" sheet from a tear-off pad which reads: "YES! I WANT TO BE IN IT TO WIN IT. Please contact me about current crew openings at Taco Bell®." with labeled areas for applicant to fill out name, address, phone, hours available, and a check box stating "I am 16 years old or older." Of course, we all know what "it" is that you're in to win. It's funny that there's nothing about cultural mind sets here. But I guess if you are a TEAM PLAYER that means you don't have a strong sense of your own identity and would be highly susceptible to indoctrination with a cultural mind set of subservience and efficiency.

The really frightening help wanted sign is in the window. The sign depicts what appears to be a flagpole with some guy wearing a t-shirt and shorts nose-diving from the top. There's a wiggly cable attached to his ankle connecting him to the top of the pole. The entire image is in a mock-woodcut style. The text reads "Want better control of your destiny? Build a career with us!" This isn't a bungie-jumping scene. The guy is wearing no helmet or safety gear which would conjure up any images of sports or fun. He's in a very perilous situation. The poster clearly is appealing to people who identify with the victim, who feel that their lives have taken a downward turn, who have no control over their destinies, that they are at the mercy of gravity and other impersonal external forces. What really confuses me though is that cable. Is this a safety line, the last connection our hapless youth has with the height he's fallen from? Will it catch his fall? Is the message that your outlook is bleak but there's still some hope? A Taco Bell career will put you back on top. Or is it even darker? That line is real thin and wiggly, not something to trust. It looks like it's going to yank his leg out at the socket once he reaches the end of it. Is this line the fetter around his ankle, the chain that binds him to the post, the flagpole, the phallic symbol of patriarchal authority? So Taco Bell will help you get away from the Man, huh? In fact, you need Taco Bell to get your freedom back, to fight the System for you. Now that's doing something alternative.

And why is it woodcut? Is this to complete the bleak picture through stark graphic contrasts, hearkening back to a barbaric medieval past before Gutenberg, when people's destinies were controlled by ancient customs (cultural mind sets) and cruel tyrants (chains, posts, and inquisitions)? A Taco Bell career will pay your bills PLUS bring you into the 20th century world of desktop publishing, offset printing and Pantone color-typing. Or is the woodcut style intended to appeal to our young out-of-work freedom fighter, the guy who is into that DIY ethic, who might even have done a woodcut himself in his spare time when he wasn't watching MTV. It's the Man that's into all that hi-tech, flashy four-color printing process­Taco Bell knows where it's at, and they have the image to prove it.

I realize that I've probably thought too hard about all of this. But what impresses me is that I can think so hard about it, that it's so pliable. As with the Border and the Border Lights, a neutral image has been constructed out of completely unnecessary elements, a wiggly line and a printing style. The sympathetic viewer fills in the blanks to make it mean whatever it needs to mean.

Or maybe the poster depicts what a career at Taco Bell actually feels like. After all, there's no caption to tell you how to interpret this thing. You are in control of your destiny; you took the leap to commit to this job. The plummeting sensation you feel is a thrilling dive of release as you are freed of your worldly cares and absorbed into the corporate whole, your sense of identity replaced by the team player's cultural mind set. The cable represents your new-found sense of attachment to a new authority figure, a new flagpole that flies a TB banner. Maybe you'll snap your leg off, or maybe you'll hit bottom, but that doesn't matter as long as it's for the greater good of total customer satisfaction; your personal cares are over now, and the corporation will take care of things. You feel good because you no longer matter. Oblivion beckons.

A Taco Bell career. Where you are the endangered species.

An Orwellian warning to the dining proles at BoJangle's...

McDonald's wrote the book on mass media brainwashing, and usually they pay a lot for good marketing and public relations. Which means they get quality copywriters, people who actually read what they write and don't let absurdities slip through. Plus, the chain is big enough that they don't need to promote themselves through novel ad campaigns. All they have to do is remain visible and appeal to the young kid market. All of which means that you really have to dig to find the weird stuff in a McDonald's, because the surface is generally very uniform, sanitized and thoroughly "normal."

That's why it's so refreshing to have such a blatant example of corporate double-speak for their current slogan. "What you want is what you get at McDonald's today." They're not saying "tell us what you want and we'll do it for you at McDonald's," at least not exactly. This is no "Have it your way" message, although it's cleverly disguised to seem that way. No, McDonald's is telling us, its consumer base, what we want to consume. Here's what you get at McDonald's, and it's what you want. Your desires already conform to what we provide. So what are you waiting for? The slippery syntax allays any fleeting doubts about our loss of freedom as we're lured in to "choose" from a multiple-choice menu.

In 10th grade I would go to McDonald's fairly regularly with friends and we would request the chicken nugget dipping sauces when we'd order french fries. For a while they would give them to us, but suddenly they clamped down. It was no longer an option. These sauces only come with Chicken McNuggets®, so take your free ketchup and be happy. I would have been willing to pay an extra 5 cents for a packet of honey mustard sauce if they had asked for it, but there was no key on the register to ring it up. I was out of luck.

McDonald's customer service questionnaire forms are classic examples of this mentality. It is a complaint form, but in the form of a multiple choice fill-in-the-bubble Scantron sheet. There are no blanks for actual customer comments. The only problems you could possibly have with a McDonald's dining experience are the ones on the form. Some examples:

Note that under #5 there is no bubble for "Coffee was too hot." (This should never be a problem at a McDonald's again.) How about "Pie filling scalded my tongue." Notice that it reads "Fries not salted right." There's no way to tell them that their right way of salting the fries is something you don't like. Under #7 there's no way of indicating they messed up your dessert order. Or that your happy meal didn't have a toy in it. Or that the structural integrity of your packaging items was compromised, that when the employee put the lid on your drink cup, she squashed the rim so it didn't seal, and when you turned the corner in your car it leaked all over your other food. You can tell them the food did not look good, but not that the sandwich was thrown together so hastily and asymmetrically that it was impossible to eat without gushing condiments all over your hands and making a mess. I could go on, but you get the picture.

But just to prove that McDonald's is attentive to your individual needs, filling out one these forms bags you a coupon for a free sandwich or entree on your next return visit. Try it out!

Hardee's, many years ago, had a very short-lived ad campaign which claimed, "at Hardee's, we know you can always go someplace else."

I took that message to heart, and I haven't been to a Hardee's since.

Arby's holds a special place in my heart because as an eating experience it is always bizarre. The only one anywhere close to my house is the ancient Arby's on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh with the 20-foot tall lighted cowboy hat sign out front. The sign proclaims, "Arby's roast beef sandwich is delicious." There are always a few letters burned out and sometimes they almost spell interesting things. At one point the sign's existence was threatened by the City of Raleigh's myopic sign ordinance, but fortunately it's out of danger now. Between the employees and the customers, that store always provides tests of my patience and communication skills, as well as a really frightening glimpse into contemporary Americana. Something akin to a late-night Waffle House stop, but with an extra edginess because you expect the unexpected late at night; Arby's is weird any time of day. I can't eat at Arby's very often, because I can only take so much of their food, and because the experience is usually simply too intense to go back very soon.

Arby's was probably one of the earliest fast food chains to print something that really pushed some buttons for me. A few years ago they had an ad campaign with the slogan: "Arby's is different. Different is good." It was as if the Arby's upper management didn't trust the mass consumer base to understand anything beyond faceless homogeneity. They had to remind us that difference wasn't necessarily all bad. But it is somewhat bad!­because on the blurb on their paper tray liners the first words were "But not too different." After all, you wouldn't want anybody to think you were weird or nothing.

Lately they've been running a "Go West" campaign, with the stinger line, "It's better out here." All their paper cups, fry containers, tray liners etc. have dusty monochrome photos of big sky country and western images like deserted canyon highways, cowboys, a wrought iron ranch gate with the Arby's logo on it. The tables all have these folded stand-up cards on them in the same vein, with some text in them which is also found on the paper tray liners. In full:

"Welcome to Arby's.

Even though we serve up our Famous Roast Beef Sandwich as quick as the ring of a dinner bell, there's a long story behind it. Three hours, to be exact. Just like the cooks of the West, Arby's knows that slow roasting is the only way to bring out beef's full robust flavor.

So everyday, here in the restaurant, we fire up our roasting ovens and start the three hour process of roasting our beef. One bite into any of Arby's Roast Beef Sandwiches will tell you why slow roasting beats fast cooking anytime.

While our beef is roasting those three flavorful hours, our cooks are hard at work making sure everything at Arby's is fresh and wholesome. We hope you have time in your busy schedule to sit a spell and thoroughly enjoy every bite.

The cowboy hat is Arby's sign that our restaurant and food stand for the same values as the new West: Hearty. Substantial. Authentic. Honest. Wholesome.

It really is better out here."

This concept of "the West" or "the new West" strikes me as being very similar to Taco Bell and "the Border." The restaurant becomes this magical transitional place connecting the "normal" world with some idealized "western" place. I wonder if they run this ad campaign in the western states. I kind of doubt it would have the same impact.

I have a lot of problems with the values that the "new West" supposedly stands for. These are certainly positive values, and exactly what you would expect from say, the good guy homesteaders from some 50's western movie, or from the Rifleman, or that sort of thing. John Wayne. Only those are all figures I associate with the old West, or at least with an American myth about our early western expansion. The new West as I see it is the West of sprawling suburban California, underground nuclear testing and massive Air Force bases, huge corporate-controlled ranches and oil fields (owned by such presidential families as the Johnsons and the Bushes), flaky crystal-gazing new age types trying to "get close to nature," gorgeous national parks and preserves being decimated from erosion due to mountain bikers going off road, same parks being sold to timber and mining companies, displaced American Indian Nations living in poverty forced to hock cheap souvenirs for a living, a secret Third World nation of migrant worker camps within the borders of the United States. Its values: do what you can to make a buck, and don't worry about the other guy. Kind of like the values of the new Eastern United States.

Or maybe they're just saying that since they now call Arby's "the West," Arby's is the "new West," so the statement is completely circular. Arby's stands for the same values that Arby's stands for.

Another problem I have with associating Arby's with "the West" is that roast beef isn't a very typically western thing in my experience. I lived in west Texas for 11 years as a kid and I saw plenty of western culture, but never did I hear any out-west cowboy types (and there are plenty out there) bragging about good old Texas roast beef. Sure, beef is western, but beef ribs and steaks and briskets and big slabs of meat cooked over open flames­that's what I think of as western. Thin-sliced roast beef on a sandwich is good, but it's about as western as a New York deli. "Just like the cooks of the West, Arby's knows that slow roasting is the only way to bring out beef's full robust flavor. / So, . . . we fire up our roasting ovens and start the three hour process of roasting our beef" (see above). Wait a second­those cooks of the west took roasting ovens with them in their chuck wagons? The cowboys would sit around the campfire singing songs, drinking coffee and firing up their roasting ovens? I don't think so. Unless they're talking about the cooks of the West, you know like NATO, Western Civilization, Plato and Aristotle, our European heritage. It was only after I was struck with this absurdity that I realized that the familiar Arby's logo I had seen since I was a kid was actually a cowboy hat. I had never noticed that before. I never had any reason to associate Arby's with cowboys or the west. Arby's has barbeque sauce, but it's unlike anything I've ever eaten anywhere. Horsey sauce? Well, cowboys ride horseys, but I rather think they would prefer mustard on their corned beef.

It doesn't help Arby's Go West campaign that so many of their other printed packaging items are utterly absurd. Didn't anybody read these things before they went to press? They all strive to present this real confident assertion of quality and integrity, but it comes off as real desperate or even apologetic.

On a paper cup: "Thanks for riding West to quench your thirst." We know you can always go someplace else.

On a paper carry-out bag: "Roast Beef slow-roasted for three hours is our way of saying 'Thanks for stopping in.'" Then why do I have to pay for it if you appreciate my company so much? If you're so confident about the quality of your product, why don't you tell us that slow-cooked roast beef is the reason you know we'll keep coming back? It sounds like they're thankful for any customers they can get.

And my favorite, on the cardboard fry container: "Inside are the best potatoes we could dig up." Sorry we couldn't do any better. We're trying awfully hard.

David Jordan

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