mcdonald's

Just recently I discovered water. Just kidding, it was ice. But stop me if you've heard this one, I just won't hear it since this is a blog post.

I've been dialing back on ordering takeout via Uber, not for health reasons, I wish I had the willpower. The reason sounds dumber than that: the food kept getting worse.

Not worse like "eh, it was fine" but more like, I ordered lamb burgers from a place I liked and they sent me something I wouldn't feed a stray (don’t feed shit to strays, they got that covered). That place was just the last one in a long lineage of businesses that sent delectable foodstuffs the first few orders, then totally Geronimo’ed on quality.

Almost every business I ordered from first send good food, then bungee jumped without a rope. Sometimes they did it with a parachute, so the next few orders would be okay again, but then they’d do the, “it’s a bird… it’s a plane… it’s Clark Kent just swallowed kryptonite and jumped off the Daily Bugle” and if you’re that type of nerd, it’s an intentional mixup, unlike these places.

It’s gotten to the point I unconsciously avoid Uber because I just don’t want to go through the ordeal, regardless of deals, and since I need to eat, I’ve strategized like a Beyblade off the stadium, which is to say, not at all, just improvised the simplest thing. For instance, I found that lamb burger place by scouting out my area on foot, ate there, liked it, then started ordering off Uber, until they sent the charred lamb. This was the first time it happened with this place, but the pattern is now automatic, so I just went, “here we go again”. It’s bad enough to be locked at home assailed by screens without having to think about my aunt who died from meat-borne flesh eating bacteria, only to be relieved that no bacteria would survive this grill.

Tired of this rollercoaster of emotions that ordering takeout has become, the other day I was hungry, didn’t want anything I had at home, and didn’t want to go out. So I grudgingly open Uber, and go, “shit place, shit place, vape store, shit place with another name” until suddenly, I see the most unlikely place to which I’d ever waged I’d had this reaction, “you know what? this I know,” and believe it or not, well, you already read the title, but just in case, because I know, it’s weird, it was McD.

And the thing is I didn’t reason about it, it was an automatic response just as automatic as I avoid Uber to avoid the pattern. My brain reprogrammed Uber from a food slot machine, to feeling like Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. So my commander instantly knew McDonald’s was so industrialized that it would get roughly the same thing this time as it got five years ago. It’s sloppy stuff, but it’s slop you know. I chose to avoid the uncertainty, the gamble, and instead ordered something I actively avoid, due to something that has become a unconscious reaction, a smell, if you will.

I know the other places are overall considered better than McDonald’s, they’re more expensive too, and judging them due to what may just be a one off mess up doesn’t seem logical, but tell you let me not by logic humans always work, our brains find a way, and they’re more powerful than us, so they find a way in spite of us, mine would rather eat less or worse than playing the lottery with food.

Through all this, I now go out to eat more, and I learned through actual experience, not just from a content creator online, that when I eat simpler I usually feel better, so now I have an easier grocery list which in turn makes shopping more pleasant, I eat healthier, and make my own food at home.

So I guess all’s well that ends well, I’ve tried for years to have a proper diet, and what finally pushed me was that the service I relied on kept triggering a pattern that controlled my actions unconsciously until I started looking for a way out automatically, and since on the brain takes shortcuts, that way out was cheaper, easier to maintain, and simpler to live with.