There was a time in my life before I found myself fully entrenched in the middle of the organizational quagmire that is the federal bureaucracy. During that time, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, one of the many jobs I had was flipping burgers at the local McDonald’s. There’s a better than average chance I worked there with some of the people reading this post. Since I spent the better part of four years doing every job in the place from fry cook to cashier, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I can speak from experience, if not with authority on the issue.

If I remember my cheesy video training correctly, it’s considered bad form for a “guest” to wait in line for 35 minutes to place his order and get his food handed across the counter. Sure, if a couple of buses show up, it’s no unheard of, but for your standard lunchtime rush, it’s pretty much frowned upon. Especially when there are only seven people in the line in front of you. This isn’t rocket science after all. We’re putting pre-pattied portions of cooked meat on buns and deep frying potatoes until the buzzer rings for us to take them out and add salt. I’m pretty sure if I took of my tie and dug up my old apron, I could still show you how everything is done.

I’m sure there were extenuating circumstances. There almost always are. Even so, there’s never a really good reason for a burger joint to take more than half an hour to produce a regular menu item… especially when my only option for getting out of line at the point is elbowing my way through to the end or climbing over or under the stanchions. That’s just bad business and the only reason I’ll need to take my business next door whenever I feel the need for a greaseball cheeseburger.