Cola, Diet, RB, or other.
When we were kids, my sister and I carefully pushed those little plastic buttons every time we scored a meal at McDonald’s. We pushed Cola if we had cola, RB if we had root beer, and Other if we were sucking back some McDonald’s orange drink, which was our usual.
Honestly, we thought there was a big Garbage Survey at the end of the day and every customer had to punch their button to send in feedback. We figured some poor McDonald’s employee stuck his arm shoulder-deep in that bag of lettuce scraps drenched in Big Mac sauce, assorted ice-cream cone bottoms, and greasy French Fry containers to pull out all the cup lids. Then we imagined he arranged them in tipsy, drippy piles and counted up how many of each sold that day, quickly tabulating the results on a clipboard and calling them into head office so they knew how many batches to make for tomorrow.
Kids, huh?
Anyway, these days every time I enjoy a fine dine at a fast food joint, I still make sure I take lots of napkins, swivel in my chair, and press those little buttons on the drink cup lid.
There’s just something about the way they give, the way they turn white, and the way they’re permanently transformed for all eternity that just makes me itch for it.
It’s just compulsive. It’s just instinct.
It’s just
AWESOME!
36 Comments
February 4, 2009 at 12:41 am
Excellent entry, so true. I was already loving McDonald’s Orange Drink (which was also a mainstay of mine), but I just had to stop reading when I saw “lettuce scraps drenched in Big Mac Sauce.” That…Is one of the greatest combination of flavors ever created.
February 4, 2009 at 1:00 am
The simple things in life are sometimes the most fun.
February 4, 2009 at 1:35 am
You only pushed the correct one? I always pushed all of them in. No matter how you do it, it is truly awesome.
February 4, 2009 at 1:38 am
pushing them all in is a necessity.
What are those for, anyways?
February 4, 2009 at 5:29 am
You have root beer at Maccas in the US?! What the…?! Root beer (aka sarsaparilla in Australia) is incredibly foul.
But it IS awesome to push in all the little buttons on the drink lid <3
February 4, 2009 at 8:08 am
@ali
coke, diet coke, and root beer all look the same color (black!) when you get them in your cup. so the buttons are for the STAFF to push to tell the customers which is which… right? but that doesn’t explain other.
February 4, 2009 at 8:56 am
Yes! Nothing better than popping those little suckers.
February 4, 2009 at 10:09 am
Better than bubble wrap!
February 4, 2009 at 10:53 am
ahh I pushed them all in and not on my own drink lol, so much fun. Little things amuse me hehe
February 4, 2009 at 11:16 am
The staff usually only pushes them in if you’ve ordered more than one drink that looks the same but is different. If you order 3 diet cokes, and you get three brown beverages then you can safely assume they’re all diet coke, even though the buttons are pushed.
February 4, 2009 at 11:31 am
When I was a kid, we only went to McD’s on rare occasions, since our little town didn’t have one, and my parents were really frugal (five kids on a teacher’s salary will do that to ya.) The rule was, if you were 12 or over, you could get a Big Mac. Otherwise, a cheeseburger will do you just fine. Somehow my little brother managed to get Fillet ‘o Fish all the time, but since the rest of us thought it was disgusting, we didn’t really care too much.
Anyway, I digress from the topic at hand: the buttons on the drink cups. I am a little embarrassed to admit that my family never figured those out. We would just taste the drink and then argue over what it was. This often resulted in a fair amount of your Root Beer being repeatedly sampled by the Coke orderers who suddenly wished they had asked for RB. Getting Sprite was a smart move if you didn’t want to pick up random sibling cooties.
February 4, 2009 at 12:17 pm
There is no way I could only push JUST one. Those little buttons are sitting there just asking to be pushed in.
I think the obsession with lids buttons would fall into a similar category as the bubble wrap folks. And I sure do love my bubble wrap!
February 4, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I like the restaurants that have one for Dr. Pepper. They recognize that the Dr. deserves its own button, and the true awesomeness that is Dr. Pepper.
But as it stands, I do push all the buttons because its awesome.
February 4, 2009 at 2:04 pm
But Dan, shouldn’t they then make a button for Diet Dr. Pepper? It tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper, you know.
A lot of people think Dr. Pepper is flavored with prune juice, but this is totally false.
I remember my first trip to the south, and I had Mr. Pibb – a competing soda to Dr. Pepper. I thought it was very funny that Mr. Pibb was trying to compete with the good doctor, despite the fact that he never got a medical degree. A similar southern soda war is the Mountain Dew vs. Mellow Yellow battle.
What was this awesome entry about again?
February 4, 2009 at 2:52 pm
just a note to freddo & dan, there is no period after the Dr in Dr Pepper. don’t know why or why that little factoid has always stuck in my head.
February 4, 2009 at 3:31 pm
I used to work at Coca-Cola. If anyone put root beer or cream soda syrup on the wrong line, you can never get the taste out of it.
Sprite, Ginger Ale, etc. will all taste like Root Beer. You need a damn Exorcist to fix dat.
February 4, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Are the dots to be pushed to indicate what drink in in the cup? If so, I have never seen it done.
February 4, 2009 at 11:00 pm
never never never did I ever ,even to this day, notice those buttons on the tops of lids….. thank you for adding a new dimension to My OCD
February 4, 2009 at 11:29 pm
I work at McDonald’s, and the “Other” is generally used to show iced tea at our store. It is slightly lighter that coke, diet coke, and root beer, but when we are in a hurry we sometimes make mistakes, so the punched lids help speed things up.
I must say, even when making drinks that are obvious(orange drink, sprite, fruitopia) I tend to push in the “Other” button. I know its unnecessary, but it’s so much fun! I’ve worked there for 3 years and I still get a kick out of it.
February 5, 2009 at 8:19 pm
I’ve just completed a project including soft drink cup lids, strangely enough. I have about 10 – and I’m going to press them all when it’s marked. ;D
February 7, 2009 at 1:51 am
Haha yess, I suggested this :)
Most infinitely AWESOME thing ever.
February 7, 2009 at 3:46 am
Ha. Yep, this has been a quiet little pleasure of mine too for years. Well pointed out.
February 9, 2009 at 5:50 am
Hahahaha has there ever been a company who actually pushes these things in consistently to signify your flavor of beverage?
I think its a little bit like bubble wrap, sure you can use it for its intended purpose…but just playing around with it is oh so much fun!
http://andthisismyamerica.com/2009/02/09/we-want-in-and-this-is-my-america-crew-set-to-break-paltry-72-hr-television-watching-bid-and-take-the-guinness-book-of-world-records-crown/
February 18, 2009 at 6:58 pm
You sir, have just summed up every trip to a fast food restaurant i have ever made.
February 24, 2009 at 12:39 am
Yeah Mike….I agree with the bubble wrap!!! My OCD totally kicks in when I see a sheet. Good time, man:)
March 27, 2009 at 1:49 pm
I do this, too! What is so satisfying about pushing in those little bumpy dots? ^_^
April 26, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I STILL push all of the buttons down. I always liked the fact that the McDonald’s lids have cool shaped buttons.
April 27, 2009 at 7:10 am
Before I do anything else, I push down the little buttons on my drink. Only a couple of times in my life I have forgotten to, started eating, and gasped in shock! I must push down the buttons! Then I do, and all is well.
June 29, 2009 at 1:00 am
Most times, I push them all in.
On some rare occasion, though, I decided to only do one. I was horrified to realize I did the wrong one. So I took the lid off and popped it back up.
Basically, the little buttons are awesome. :D
July 27, 2009 at 4:19 pm
it was my favourite thing about mcdonald’s when i was a kid. i would take a handful of the lids and pop the buttons and then put them back.
September 4, 2009 at 12:14 pm
When I was a kid, my mom never really let me drink pop whenever we went somewhere that had cups like that so I would always press the Coke tab, thinking if I did that it would magically turn into Coke.
Thankfully, I am now allowed to get pop so I just push them all in!
November 3, 2009 at 2:49 am
My siblings and I always used to think that it was the buttons that magically designated what drink you had. If you pushed Cola, it was cola, if you pushed RB, it magically became root beer…. Strange, but just one of the awesome things from childhood!
November 13, 2009 at 10:20 pm
I do this. I also tear the straw wrapper from the middle and take the top off so the bottom is ready to shoot off into the garbage can when I blow in it.
I just found this site and adore it!
November 21, 2009 at 9:04 pm
I THOUGHT IT WAS A GARBAGE SURVEY TOO!
hahahahaha I thought I was alone. X]
And yes, this is indeed awesome.
November 22, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I used to do this all the time when I was little. I thought there was some kind of technology that went in the lid, and something would happen when you push one. I pushed all of them, every time. But I never knew what they were for until a few years ago.
December 2, 2009 at 12:27 am
I looooove them :) Except I always push in ALL the buttons, no matter what I’m drinking!