Chris I bet you get lots of weird looks when you order a "plain" cheeseburger. My friend does this also but says plain last an example yea illl have a double whooper with cheese :waits a few secs: ..plain the looks he gets is damn hilarious.
You have to spell it out, it is a good idea to ask them to repeat it back. Your plain and there plain are two different things I have found. If your order doesn't match the little images on the register you are going to have trouble. If you are real carful you can cut your bad order rate at 25% down to twentyfive percent.
"Como?"
You are assuming here that these people can actually READ and UNDERSTAND .
Having worked in fast food, both as a kitchen person and as a manager, I can not tell you how many times I have made a special order, correctly, and had the person bagging the order put the wrong sandwich in the bag! Then when the customer complaines, it is always blamed on the kitchen!
Getting competent people to work in a low paying, mind numbing job is almost impossible. If you do actually run across such a person, either they don't stay long, or end up fired for some assinine reason, like compently doing their job.
I wish that I was the person doing the hiring, but I was the one training the new employees, it was a real challenge when either they couldn't speak english or couldn't read, or both.
One piece of advice, never go to the drive thru.........they fuck you in the drive thru, because they can. Most people won't take the time to get out of their cars and come in to complain.
A friend of mine is allergic to onions, I know how you feel. This guy can detect onions in a meal from a mile away, I dunno how he does it. But I guess if it's a survival skill you learn it.
I looked for your email without any luck so I'm using your comments 
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My pet peeve is this:
me: 'I'd like a cheesburger, no mayo, large fries, and a large drink please.'
idiot: 'Our burgers don't have mayo'
me: 'Very good then...I don't want mayo'
idiot: 'out burgers don't have mayo...'
I can't keep track of who's damn burgers come stock with mayo and whos comes with mustard...and I don't care to. I only want a burger with no damn mayo-- all it would take is is a simple 'yes sir' (the sir bit may be asking too much, but we can dream, can't we)
I had a friend back in college that would order 'water, no onions' in the drive thru just to screw with them for this very reason. It took us a loooooong time to get through the drive thru when he was ordering.
"Plain plus ketchup! Damnit!"
That's why fast food places annoy me.
I went thru a local Irish restuarants drive-thru and got a bag of cheeseburgers. Ten miles down the road where we were going to eat them I found out there wasn't any meat on them.
My sister OWNS the resturant and still has trouble getting the food the way she wants. I was eating with her once and she told the waiter what she wanted and specified "NO onions" (she not allergic -- she just won't eat onions). Meal arrives with onions -- she sents it back. Meal comes back and still has onions -- sends it back again; evidently the cook thinks she doesn't really mean it -- even though she hired him and signs his check and was quite clear about what she wanted.
I also used to work in fast food. Started out in the kitchen at McDonald's, then worked front counter, then drive-thru. My personal opinion is that yes, the pimply teen-agers running the shop are inexperienced, rude, and slow. However, the system by which the orders are completed, and the number of people working on each order, is too complex for anything but the simplest of orders. Even then they get it wrong occasionally.
Dude: I want a cheesburger
Idiot: Canada?
Now what we have here is either a miscommunication or the largest upsell in fast food history.
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Can't tell you how many times I've given them my order followed with the words "For here", only to be immediately asked: "Will that be for here or to go?"
It scares me to death these people are in the gene pool!
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