I was cleaning out my files recently (new year, new start kind of thing) and stumbled upon the following piece I wrote for a post-graduate journalism class I took in New Haven, Connecticut. It still made me laugh all of these years later, so I thought I’d share it. Besides, McDonald’s hasn’t stopped counting. Bon appetit!
Did you ever wonder what the McDonald’s golden arches slogan, “Over Eighty Billion Served,” actually refers to? Okay, well, I did. Last week. For the first time.
There was nothing unusual about my day. Same road, same car, same destination. But this time I drove by the golden arches and wondered … but, eighty billion what? The more I thought about it, the more curious I became. So I decided to go right to the source—McDonald’s employees and customers—to find out what it meant.
I soon realized I was facing a McMystery of enormous scope, one that baffled veteran managers, customers, and staff at corporate headquarters alike.After scores of interviews with employees and customers I discovered:
1. I am the only person who has ever asked, “But, eighty billion what?”
2. People do not willingly talk to strangers asking questions.
3. Despite some fairly good guesses and lots of laughing, no one really knows what the slogan means.
I began my investigation at a drive-thru in New Haven. I ordered the usual: chicken sandwich with cheese, no lettuce, and a Diet Coke. Then I asked the server who took my order, “But eighty billion what?”
He said it represented the number of customers served.
“Are you sure? I heard rumors that it might be hamburgers. Or all of the food you serve on buns.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “A lot of people think it’s hamburgers, but it’s really the total number of customers.”
His initial look of surprise had disappeared, and had been replaced with one of cautious cheeriness.
“Is that an international or a national total?” I asked.
“International,” he replied confidently.
Indeed, “customers” was the number one response of those willing to give one. When I posed the question to a group of employees at a Danbury restaurant, I was greeted with wide eyed stares, uneasy smiles and shrugs all around.
“Can you maybe ask your manager?” I said to the woman who initially fielded my, “But eighty billion what?” question.
She seemed frozen to her position behind the counter, apparently unsure if her nervous laugh and casual shrug would be enough to make me go away.
Maybe I should’ve ordered something.
“Okay,” she said, shrugging again and disappearing behind the french fry grill.
I asked the other women behind the counter what they thought. I had to repeat my question twice.
“I always thought it was customers,” a brave woman finally answered. The others around her mumbled something that sounded like, Yeah, yeah. Customers. Thought it was customers. Yeah.
The customer next to me, a James Woods look-alike, said, “I have no comment.” Seriously.
By this time the manager had arrived—a lanky, ten year McDonald’s veteran in his mid-thirties, sporting spotty patches of razor stubble. He rested his elbows on the counter in a casual, yet somehow authoritative posture, and leaned forward.
“The eighty billion represents the number of customers served,” he said, adding that the number is definitely international.
More mumbling and head nodding from the employees standing around him.
But five minutes away at another McDonald’s, I got a completely different reaction and set of answers.
This time I ordered medium fries and a large Diet Coke. I asked the woman behind the counter, “But eighty billion what?”
She paused for a second, smiled, then laughed and finally said, “It’s just burgers. But let me check.”
She turned to another woman, her head barely visible behind the gray metal stand where the burgers and sandwiches sat under heat lights, for her opinion.
