Burgers For Less (ED! #04)

Wow, has it really been a week since I last wrote this? Amazing how time flies.. It's clearly a memory thing. I've been at the beef again, you see.

Actually it was last Thursday, an event I would ordinarily have forgotten, but I know this to be so because I took my own advice as featured in last week's Ed and started carrying around a notebook with me. And I made notes of the event, so interesting it was.

It's kind of like the famous Monopoly Community Chest card Bank Makes Error In Your Favour.

In this case, Burger shop makes error in your favour. Or to be precise, two errors.

Picture the scene: A man walks into a burger shop, asks for a BigBurger meal. There is method to his beef-induced madness, for the BigBurger is on special this week, a saving of about 65p.

However, the burger emporium has a problem - it cannot vend the requisite soft drink with the BigBurger meal as "the machine is bust".

Hence, customer is offered non-soft drink of his choice from the menu, and in this instance he selects a milkshake.

Another saving! Everyone knows that milkshakes are more expensive because they're not almost 99.99% water. This therefore costs extra.

Having secured two savings in one purchase, the customer is happy, but he is in for a surprise when he actually comes to eat his BigBurger, because he's actually been given a BigBigBurger by mistake.

Considering that the regular BigBurger is on special but its larger brother is not, this constitutes a very large saving - almost £1.30, before you even think about the difference between a soft drink and a hard drink. (i.e. a milkshake)

Ben Elton was absolutely right when he said that you need an industrial vacuum pump to actually get burger milkshakes (not literally) up the straw..

Still, last Thursday I was most definitely in the money, having paid about £3.15 for something worth at least 50% more.

And I was so excited that I wrote it down.. Is that sad? No, what's sad is that I feel the need to tell you all about this!

I really must stop eating burgers quite so much, though. Even if there is no risk of catching Mad MooCow Disease, it can't be good for you.

Luckily my local burger emporium is actually helping me to stay away - because every time I go in they're playing Olivia Newton John songs. They obviously only have one tape.

It's funny though, I never really even considered touching burgers while I was a kid.. it all changed one Christmas.

One lunchtime, after a particularly heavy session of playing Santa to lots of small children (Did I ever mention I'd done that?) I took the easy way out and tentatively bought my first cheeseburger as lunch.

Well, I had just turned 16, so I felt duty bound to start not eating properly.

And it was all downhill from there. I suppose in a few years time I'll be sampling these "kebabs" that everyone goes on about.. I wonder what animal that meat IS?