How Hard Is It To Count?

Being the bitter cynic that I am, it's relatively simple to find things that piss me off. I might even be tempted to write a rant if something pissed me off enough. Hell, I could probably fill a blog with all these embittered rants. There would be so many subjects to whine and bitch about that if I ever became an utter slacker and failed to update that said blog on a frequent basis, well, the topics inspiring said cantankerousness would just stack up.

They might accumulate to such an extent that they could become too numerous to count. Actually, that is a lie, nothing is too numerous to count. It's just it might be too arduous, difficult and time-consuming to count. (And, as a quasi-accountant, I can tell you that counting sucks hairy donkey balls). But counting itself is an easy task. Any dimwit can count. Hell, it’s like the second thing they teach you at school. Right after they make sure you don’t piss yourself, they get your uneducated (and hopefully dry) ass down to the counting. They even start that before the damn alphabet. So, in principle, we can all agree that it is simple to count.

Then, will someone please explain to me why McDonald’s has stopped counting the number of burgers they’ve sold??

Let me explain with some information stolen from the internet:

In 1994, McDonald’s “made a conscious decision to stop counting,” according to spokesperson Walt Riker.

Putting a running tally of hamburger sales on its storefront advertising was a publicity device that dated to the beginning of McDonald’s as we know it. The fast-food company started in 1948 as a California chain. Ray Kroc, the guy who sold the McDonald brothers their milkshake mixers, convinced them to franchise to him.

Kroc, who eventually bought out the brothers and became a corporate kingpin, opened his first McDonald’s franchise in 1955 in Des Plaines, Illinois. The restaurant featured a road sign that proudly announced, “1 Million Served” (1 million hamburgers, that is).

As McDonald’s multiplied and sales skyrocketed, restaurant signs were regularly updated. By 1958, it was 100 million. By 1961, 500 million.

The 1 billion mark, reached in 1963, was a big deal, noted in neon signs in front of every McDonald’s restaurant. The supposed 1 billionth burger was served by Kroc himself on national TV.

For much of the ’60s, the signs just said, “Billions Served,” then went specific again when the 5 billion mark was hit in 1969. It was 10 billion in 1972, 25 billion in 1978, 50 billion in 1984. In the late 1980s, McDonald’s was regularly selling 5 billion hamburgers a year; to avoid frequent updates, the signs were frozen in 1986 to read, “More Than 60 Billion Served.”

Riker said these numbers were projections based on how much beef was shipped to each restaurant. It was counted by hamburger patty—so the Big Mac, which contains two patties, indeed counted as two. (It hit the market in 1968.)

Today, the signs are all frozen in a generic, “Billions and Billions Served” or “More Than 99 Billion Served.” Riker said McDonald’s hasn’t counted since 1994 (at least not for public information) and never will again.

Why not? Riker would only say that the company wanted to “focus on other things.”

I know it has been many moons since they stopped showing their tally, but it has repeatedly bothered me that they did. As an incredibly dorky child, I actually took some pathetic pleasure when I witnessed an increase in burger sales. Especially when you’re talking about billions. Back before Microsoft, a billion used to be a pretty impressive number (and this was back in the Cold War days before they were selling McDonald’s burgers behind the foreign Curtains and sh-t.)

But they stopped counting. That stopped letting their public know how many cows (if that is cow meat) are being digested. They just quit. “To focus on other things.”

That’s like starting a blog and then not updating it for months – allowing people to still come back and check – only to find the same old crappy half-assed attempt at humor. That’s just being a complete and utter dick.

And just what other “things” are they focusing on? Are they wondering how frequently they should bring back the McRib? (By the way, just leave the damn thing on the menu. Let’s start really threading the herd. If you like the pseudo-pork, you know the risks.) Are they finding new ways to screw you with the Monopoly game? What are they doing with this extra time and energy?

I have been to McDonalds recently and I have to tell you. Stopping the counting process has not freed up any brain power. I couldn’t spot a single worker that could handle a Sudoko puzzle in there. So, making them count might actually spark some brain activity. And it’s not like they would be counting fries. It’s only the burgers.

More importantly, they got to be nearing the trillion mark soon. Lets hear the word “trillion” used for something besides our nation’s debt. Let that number symbol some other aspect of our gluttony.

wojr  ¶ 4:05 PM