11.20.07
Coffee vs. tea
My breakfast coffee on Sunday tasted like what McDonald’s calls “milk tea”–strongly brewed black tea with milk and sugar. (A friend of mine who lived in Hong Kong calls this “pantyhose tea” because many people use a sexy pantyhose sock to hold the tea leaves when steeping.) My guess is that an employee either accidentally used the tea pot for coffee or mistook the last of a pot of tea for coffee and poured it into the into the coffee pot to free up a pot for the next batch.
I brought my coffee up to the counter and told them the problem. One woman smelled my cup and said, “No, this is definitely coffee.” For the next five minutes I told them that I wasn’t claiming it was tea, but rather had somehow acquired the flavor of tea mixed with coffee. They countered by constantly repeating that it was definitely coffee and definitely not tea. Finally a manager came over and just poured me a new cup from a pot that I had already confirmed to be 100% coffee. These kinds of stubborn arguments with customers are common at Chinese restaurants, where servers often seem more concerned with winning a pointless argument than making sure the customer is happy. McDonald’s is usually pretty good about training its employees to avoid these arguments, but this one had the entire line of cashiers against me. (In case you’re wondering, no, there is absolutely no chance that I was wrong. I drink several cups of McD’s coffee almost every day, and I know what it should taste like. I also tasted all three pots–one with pure coffee, one with pure tea, and one with the mystery mix that had elements of both.)
SHTig’s Guess: A McDonald’s employee used a sexy panythouse sock to prepare uncleronald’s coffee.
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