Burger King Owes Me $2133.90

Here's one thing that I've noticed about fast food. Actually, this is one thing that I've noticed about every food establishment I've eaten at, from McDonalds to Les Halles, but--as the title clearly states--I most commonly see it in fast food establishments. This may be because I continue to be an unambitious economic under-performer who has spent more of his independent years subsisting on various dollar menus then he has asking the sommelier to give the '83 Lafite time to breathe, but at this point I'm into full fledged digression, so let's leave that topic for another day.

Back on point, one thing that I've found interesting is that menu prices change as economic factors do; a Big Mac doesn't cost now what it did, say 10 years ago. Or 5. One thing that HAS remained surprisingly consistent, however, is the price of tomatoes. Regardless of what, say, a Whopper has cost me over the past decade, Burger King has, in the same time span, always charged .30 for extra tomatoes. It's like how stuff on TV keeps getting sold at $19.99, no matter what happens with inflation; Whoppers go up, Whoppers come down, tomatoes hang tight at .30.

So here's where my (pun alert!) beef comes in: Suppose you go to Burger King right now and order a Whopper. Prices vary depending on where you live, but at the place down the road from me, you can have one for $3.49. Now suppose you really like tomatoes and want a couple extra on that bad boy. You can, as they say, "have it your way" for an extra .30. Awesome.

Now suppose you're like me, and you think tomatoes are nastier than a Dustin Diamond sex video. Suppose on the list of "things you'd like to eat", tomatoes come in somewhere between "Akebono's thong" and "your own tongue". So you ask for a Whopper with NO tomatoes. How much does your $3.49 Whopper cost THEN?

$3.49. You see where I'm going with this.

Places charge extra for certain things because of the associated cost with getting MORE of that thing. Tomatoes are historically expensive fruit (vegetables?) to procure, so charging extra for an extra helping is only fair. I don't begrudge them that. But I, who have never in my life partaken in a Burger King tomato, have saved the company literally thousands of dollars in associated cost by not having them on my sandwiches. If you charge extra to HAVE extra, shouldn't it stand to reason that you would get charged LESS for HAVING less? This happens to us everywhere we look: my own pizza joint has the usual "specialty" pizzas; supreme, taco, meat, etc. And if you order one with extra of something, there's an additional charge. Order one without something, and the price doesn't move. This, I don't mind saying, is part of the reason why I'm fairly convinced that I'm the only non-bastard on the face of the planet. I understand this slight!

So I've taken the liberty of making a few calculations, based on the (approximate) number of times I ordered Whoppers from Burger King before I stopped frequenting that establishment and extrapolated out the price of all those tomato portions I didn't eat. It comes to roughly $2133.90 and Burger King, I'm asking for a refund.

I realize that I'm the only one tilting at this particular windmill. But think of this: if I WASN'T the only one, this issue would suddenly cease to be so Quixotic. If we ALL complained about being charged for things we didn't buy, they'd stop doing it. So, in effect, I'm only tilting at a windmill because you aren't. I know, right? I just blew your mind all over your face.