Revenge of the Sandwich Artist

Last night I had to stay downtown for supper and I was really hungry so I decided to eat at a fast food place. For some reason, Burger King has had some significant problems with their trademarking, so here in Australia it is known as Hungry Jacks. The meal offerings are the same as in North America, the logo is the same, but the title is different. As in other big cities in the world, the service sector is dominated by recent arrivals to the country. Service personnel generally have a rather tenuous grasp on English, so that compounded with my funny accent results in pretty bad service. At Subway, the staff seem to be entirely Chinese while the Hungry Jacks seem to have mostly Persians, I don’t know why. At Subway, when the sandwich artist offers you salad, she is referring to lettuce. It took me a while to learn that I was the problem in the curious incident of the green pepper: I was trying to explain that I wanted green pepper on my sandwich and got a blank stare. Using my pantomiming skills I was able to simulate the planting, growth and harvest of the green pepper, including a particularly clever visual representation of photosynthesis, and I got my green pepper. I later looked at the menu documentation stuck to the wall and learned that they are called capsicums here, and not green pepper. I looked the rube then. Anyway, back to Hungry Jacks, I wanted a Whopper meal. The till person repeated, “a double Whopper meal?” I said, “no, I want just a single Whopper meal”. This quickly became a continuous loop with no feedback, only a time constraint. Eventually she ordered my hamburger; I was sure we had it right, but when I got it, sure enough it was a double Whopper. It may offend the beef farming contingent, but that was too much meat. I didn’t want to get back into a discussion over the distinction between double and single, so I ate quietly, silently considering the latest scandal in the Indian Cricket Premiership.