The Art Of Ordering A McDonald's 2 Cheeseburger Extra Value Meal With No Cheese
At some undefined point in our fast food history, there was a brief flash and the 2 Hamburger Extra Value Menu slipped into extinction. One theory is that it is McDonald's attempt to involuntarily up-sell us to cheese. The casual observer might conclude that the customer must certainly be able to order a 2 Cheeseburger Extra Value Meal minus the cheese, even if said customer has to pay for the cheese. It is not that easy. "At McDonald's, if there's no button for it on the register it doesn't exist," says "Bagumpity," a Consumerist Forums reader. Not content with letting McDonald's play God with his 2 Hamburger Extra Value Meal, Bagumpity discusses the strange world of confusion and twisted logic he is forced to enter each time he tries to order a 2 Cheeseburger Extra Value Meal with no cheese. His letter, inside...
Why won't McDonald's sell the 2-hamburger extra value meal (henceforth called the 2HEVM) anymore? Yeah, I know why- they'd have to charge less than a 2-cheeseburger extra value meal (2CEVM). Paying extra for cheese I don't want ticks me off, but the worse thing is that half the time I can't even get a 2HEVM!
Have you ever tried to order a 2HEVM? It confuses the heck out of the register drones. There's no button for it, and as you know: At McDonald's, if there's no button for it on the register it doesn't exist. Some restaurants have it as a "hidden menu" item, so I always ask for it first. The answer is usually "no" (or the clerk doesn't know, which amounts to the same thing). So I have to ask if they will substitute hamburgers for cheeseburgers. Sometimes I'll get lucky, and they'll do that. More likely, though, they'll tell me they don't do sandwich substitutions. Actually, the usual response is "there's no button for that."
As a last resort, sometimes I have to ask for "Two Cheeseburgers, No Cheese." Don't ever do this. As many McDonald's order takers have tried to explain to me "cheese burgers without cheese are just hamburgers." In other words, they are a non-item. A thing that cannot exist. Anathema. They tell me this so patiently, as if I'm on the verge of a mental break down or might burst into tears when confronted with this apparent contradiction.
I've tried getting clever, but it doesn't help. Asking for the cheese "on the side" (even with the utterly believable explanation that I "don't like my cheese to be melted") is useless since there is no button for "cheese on the side" on the register. Asking for a Kosher cheeseburger will only be met with a blank stare or a puzzled/confused glance at the register just to be sure that "there's no button for that."
If I'm lucky, I'll be able to cajole them into ordering the 2CEVM and pressing the "grill:no-cheese" button. They'll be nervous about it though. Afterward, they'll stare at the register as if they expect it to blow up or start waving robotic arms around and shouting "DOES... NOT...COMPUTE...."
This will kick off a bizarre chain of events. The guy nuking burgers and condimentizing buns in the back will see a grill order for cheeseburgers, hold the cheese. Fellow employees will be asked for advice. Manuals and build-a-burger charts will be consulted. Finally, two decisions must be made: Will there be cheese? And what color paper will be used to wrap the tasty little paradoxes?
You just never know. It's sort of like Christmas that way. Usually, I just get a couple of cheeseburgers wrapped in orange paper. Bizarrely enough, I've even received a couple of cheeseburgers wrapped in white paper. Either way, I consider this a necessary step, the follow-up to which is to change lines and tell the next clerk "I ordered hamburgers but got cheeseburgers." They happily exchange the sandwiches. Exchanges are something they know how to do. I think there's even a button for it. Everyone's happy, and I go on my way cheeseless and a better man for it.
On other luckier occasions, I actually get a couple of hamburgers. Cause for rejoicing, indeed! Sometimes they'll be wrapped in orange paper, sometimes in white. I don't really care, except it's a pain to have to check every fricking time.
The one thing I try to look out for is when they wrap my hamburgers in orange paper, and then the kid serving the drive-thru window will snatch them up and send them out the window. I don't want some poor schmuck to get drive-thru rage from a case of missing cheese.
All this to get the extra 10cts for always up-selling to the cheese level probably costs them a good $1 per order in salaries (since the whole damn restaurant has to get involved) not to mention the cost of the discarded food.
Seriously, what's so hard about adding another fricking button to the register?
We salute you and your quest, Bagumpity. We should not be forced to endure McDonald's lactose-laden wrath any longer. You are a modern day Bobby Dupea from the film "5 Easy Pieces." The next time a McDonald's employee says, "You want me to hold the cheese?" You say, "I want you to hold it between your knees."
Two Cheeseburgers, No Cheese [Consumerist Forums]
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Comments:
That is one of the best Nicholson scenes ever.
Maybe you need to go to a different McDonald's. Or maybe you just need to tell them to turn around and tell the guy working the grill to not put cheese on it. Maybe this is the biggest fucking boo-hoo-who-the-hell-cares story I've ever seen on Consumerist?
Besides, this is nothing. I tried to get that new chicken sandwich on the day they were giving them away for free two weeks ago and they gave me a Filet O Fish.
A FILET O FISH! SOME OF US HAVE REAL PROBLEMS, MISTER.
My Mcdonalds does it just fine.... but then again its Canadian.
It reminds me when I ordered a cheeseburger "plain" (to me meaning no condiments). I got a cheese sandwich ... no meat!
@Derp: Dollar menus are different depending on the location; plus, the combo would almost certainly be cheaper than ordering each item a la carte.
What is the cost difference between ordering the 2 Cheeseburger extra value meal (since it sounds like you almost always pay for the cheese even if you don't get it) vs. ordering the hamburgers, fries and drink separate?
LOL...it's like Neil Stephenson come true!
@Derp: That would be around 4 bucks, which I'm pretty sure is more expensive than what he is trying to order.
My wife has the same problem. At nearly every restaurant we visit she'll clearly order a hamburger, at which point everyone stares at her blankly and asks what kind of cheese she wants on that. NONE! It's called a hamburger for a reason.
Half the time she'll still get cheese on it and have to send it back which is annoying as hell as I have the dubious choice of eating in front of her, or waiting and eating with her but being stuck with cold food. It's a never-ending battle.
Cue everyone calling my wife, myself, and the writer a cry-baby in 3..2..1...
I'm a proud member of the he-man-cheese-haters club and I'm convinced the people that work at McDonald's (at least those that I've been to)are trained to believe that when someone says, "NO cheese, I'm allergic to it and it will kill me" they are really saying, "I love cheese, give me extra"...but that's just me.
this was hysterical, thanks Bagumpity!
Heaven forbid someone should have to take the cheese off themselves.
Funnily enough, my occasional habit of ordering a cheeseburger or two without meat seems to cause no confusion whatsoever.
There's a reason the 2CEVM exists and the 2HEVM doesn't, and it has nothing to do with the 10 cent price difference or the ingredient cost of the cheese slices. Cheeseburgers are more popular than hamburgers, so the staff are trained to make them quickly (and ahead of time). Hamburgers, on the other hand, would end up sitting around if made ahead of time, so McDonald's discourages the sale of hamburgers by eliminating the 2HEVM. Of course, if the hamburgers were to become more popular, McDonald's could change their policy, but I doubt it would happen.
I havent seen the 2 hamburger OR cheeseburger value meal at McDonalds for years!
This is a bit of a whiny article, but I still can't believe that McDonalds, the company that got its start making HAMBURGERS, doesn't even have a button for them anymore. That's almost like Chili's not having chili on the menu, yet still having loads of chili memorabilia on the walls.
A regional fast food chain I prefer to eat at, Runza, fortunately does not have this logic problem. I order their cheeseburger meal without cheese and there's no confusion or real questions that follow.
Occasionally I will get the facetious individual who will ask "So you just want a hamburger with fries and a drink, right?" but that's rare.
Their fries are also 50x better than McDonalds.
Oh, and yeah, I like the cheeseburgers better, though.
Try ordering it in spanish. Then they would understand you.
@backbroken: Are you an idiot? Have you ever tried to remove metled cheese from a pourous surface (such as a burger and bun)? It's harder than removing it from a toaster, and if you DO have an allergy, missing some of the cheese could cause issues.
yeah, because it's so easy to scrape it off once it's melted onto the burger paty. That's like saying "if you don't like the kind of dressing on your salad, just scrape it off."
As a person allergic to things (not cheese thank god!) it is highly frustrating when you cannot get employees to register the fact that what they are trying to feed you will cause an allergic reaction!
@PinkNightmare:
So good to know there are more of us out there. I always get incredulous looks when I say I hate cheese. Like I killed their dog or something.
Not allergic, just don't like it. Is that really so strange?
Sad thing is I do remember when the double hamburger meal was still on the menu, it was a #10 if memory serves me...but then again it's been 8 years sense I've eaten @ a mcd's....the though of that crap makes me sick.
Manuals and build-a-burger charts will be consulted.
Aren't these the guys working with the Illuminati and Trilateral Commission to take over the world?
The funniest thing I ever saw was someone ordering a whopper with no meat in the car in front of me at a Burger King.
It was like a real life Monty Python skit.
i just tell them I"m allergic to whatever it is I don't want in my food. Then the kid will freak out and call the manager and they generally make the effort to fix it in fear of getting sued.
I assumed that the reason he didn't want cheese is because he was trying to be Kosher. He mentions Kosher in his post and if he was ordering hamburgers for that reason, then scraping the cheese off would not suffice.
I submitted a story to Consumerist about CitiMortgage repeatedly sending to me the private mortgage information about another one of their customers. Because our names were similar, they were sending me their mortgage information. The refused to correct the mistake. They didn't just NOT correct the mistake; they told me that this wasn't their responsibility, and that I had to fax all of my information to their investigations department. I had to do it, because their offices had no out-going phones (and I'm a magical stone!).
I bring this up, because Consumerist refused to run the story. Now, we are getting stories about a guy who can't get is discounted hamburger meal.
WTF?
this is strange. I've never had that problem at McD's. I regularly get a double hamburger, which they always ring up as double cheeseburger with no cheese. I don't typically get the HEVM, but I bet it'd be the same.
I love my morning Sausage-egg-cheese bagels from McDonalds.... that bad thing is they stopped offering it on their menu about 2 years ago - now they just have steak-egg-cheese or bacon-egg-cheese.
My local McDonalds all still know how to ring up a sausage-egg-cheese bagel - but the problem happens when I'm at a non-regular McDonalds - I've gotten upcharged for a more expensive steak-egg-cheese begal substitute steak/sausage - And the most unique one was when I was charged for a begal - charged for a sausage - and charged for an egg - and charged for cheese - like they were building it from scratch, and ended up being something like a $8 item!
Wait, you mean I'm not the only person on the planet who orders stuff without cheese? Holy cow!
Actually, I used to be allergic to cheese (and most other dairy products), but through numerous shots as a kid am no longer allergic, but I just can't stand cheese. I guess it's a texture thing.
Anywho, it's extremely frustrating to go to just about ANY fast food joint and try to order their signature items without cheese. Probably the worst for me is Sonic. Why, oh why, is it so freakin' hard to order an extra long cony with NO CHEESE. When I was in college I went to Sonic after getting off work and literally returned my cony 4 times before they got it right. On the last attempt I had to specify exactly what to put on the bun: chili, mustard, wiener...that's it! I was just waiting for the smart ass to ask "you still want the bun"?
@bohemian: Hmmm hopefully they figured out that it's called a Veggie Whopper and it's been around for at least 15 years.
Runza's fries are 50x better than anyone else. Pretty much everything on the Runza menu is fantastic.
I often get the $1.29 jr. swiss mushroom burger at Runza. It's quite a bit bigger than McDonald's double cheeseburger and the quality is much better.
@Vejadu: Much agreed, but I think Runza is a midwest phenomenon, so most these folks aren't going to know who you're talking about. :)
Uh,,,WHY would you eat at this dump? This company need's to be shut down now! It's "food" is crap, and it really gives a bad smell to the industry. Serious, I almost puke every time I am near one of these garbage heaps.
A vending machine has more class.
at my mcdonalds a sweet tea hold the sugar is cheaper than an unsweet tea. crazy huh.
In the Burger King hold-the-pickle-hold-the-lettuce days one of my friends once ordered "a Whopper with everything, hold the meat" and you would have thought he was robbing the place. The cashier had to call the supervisor, who had to call the manager from his back-room office. It took good 10 minutes to get the order processed.
I've had this problem for years because I'm lactose intolerant. Ordering a double cheeseburger without cheese confuses the heck out of the mindless rule followers that work there. Some McDonalds have a button for a double hamburger, but most do not, so I'll end up with a receipt for a double cheeseburger with no cheese, but I'll still get a double cheeseburger in the bag.
@Leah: Ditto the double hamburger. I also used to regularly order an Egg McMuffin with no egg. That's fun to watch, but I just wanted canadian bacon and cheese, their sandwich-eggs are abysmal in texture.
@fostina1: Probably cause the sweet tea is that Nestea fountain crap while the regular Ice Tea is brewed in one of those big powerbrewers. (Least thats the way it was in the big restaurants I worked in years back)
I like cheese just fine. I just can't stand that "processed American slices" crap that gets passed off as cheese at McDonalds.
OMG!!! Someone else that has problems with the masters of burgers!!! Never ever order a chicken sandwich with just pickles and ketchup. It is impossible to make! I know, I ordered one for my daughter three years ago and asked for a refund after they got it wrong SIX TIMES IN A ROW! And this is after I wrote the order out on paper and gave it to the general manager.
I will never blame the OP for anything on this site but stay the hell away from that place!
Ha ha haha! Remember those hot side stays hot and cool side stays cool burgers that McDonald's put out about 20 years ago? I was forever trying to get them to put the cheese on the hot side...y'know so it would melt.
I solved the problem by just not eating there anymore.
Don
I have had this problem so many times it stopped being funny, then became funny again. I've found the following to work best:
1) "Do you still have a 2 Cheeseburger meal?" (answer is usually Yes)
2) "Can I get that with hamburgers INSTEAD of cheeseburgers?"
----pause-----
3) "I'm lactose intolerant - I can't have dairy."
[this is not STRICTLY true, but partially true]
This usually gets them on the ball, though I too have received everything from regular hamburgers to hamburgers wrapped in orange wrappers. From their point of view, a customer vomiting everywhere from eating a piece of unrequested cheese is enough of a concern to get me my hamburgers.
I have had similar problems with ordering breakfast sandwiches at Dunkin Donuts. On numerous occassions I have tried to order a ham and cheese breakfast sandwich without the egg(I don't eat eggs)....with problems. One time the clerk behind the counter said thant since it didn't have have egg it became a ham sandwich and tried to charge me a buck or so more. I ended up ordering the sandwich with egg and taking it off and leaving it on the counter.
Good to know I'm not the only one who deals with this. Not that I'm against the cheese on a cheeseburger, just the stuff McD's tries to pass off as cheese. I'd put it in the wax family.
Why not just order 2 hamburgers and fry and drink, are those not all items on the dollar menu?