rantings on the state of restaurants
driving home from work last night, i stopped at a taco bell because it was open at 12:15 am. i ordered a chicken burrito and a seven-layer burrito. the drive-thru speaker lady says, "what kind of chicken burrito do you want?" with an air of annoyance.
"i'm sorry?" i respond confusedly.
"chicken supreme or grilled stuffed chicken. which one do you want?" she says with an attitude building up.
"supreme, i guess," i answer and then she tells me the total before i can say that i also wanted a soda.
all of my life i have ordered chicken burritos from taco bell and in twenty-seven years no-one has ever asked me what kind. what happened to the plain chicken burrito? did they take it off the menu? are my only choices the supreme or the grilled stuffed? and if so, shouldn't one of those be called just a chicken burrito? can you really label a product as the 'supreme' version if there isn't a base one to which it can be compared? shouldn't they just call the chicken burrito supreme a chicken burrito now?
and personally i blame 7/11 and starbuck's. 7/11 introduced the big gulp and that was the start of everything getting bigger and bigger to outrageous proportions. and starbuck's began the short, tall and grande method of naming product sizes. now, companies have not only focused on making everything bigger or more special than the original, but they have even deleted the originals.
at taco bell, i couldn't order a regular chicken burrito. at sonic the have three sizes of fries: regular, large and sonic size. shouldn't they be called small, medium and large like they once were?
fast food chains and gas staions are even selling 32, 44 and 64oz sodas. who needs that much of any liquid other than water?
"i'm sorry?" i respond confusedly.
"chicken supreme or grilled stuffed chicken. which one do you want?" she says with an attitude building up.
"supreme, i guess," i answer and then she tells me the total before i can say that i also wanted a soda.
all of my life i have ordered chicken burritos from taco bell and in twenty-seven years no-one has ever asked me what kind. what happened to the plain chicken burrito? did they take it off the menu? are my only choices the supreme or the grilled stuffed? and if so, shouldn't one of those be called just a chicken burrito? can you really label a product as the 'supreme' version if there isn't a base one to which it can be compared? shouldn't they just call the chicken burrito supreme a chicken burrito now?
and personally i blame 7/11 and starbuck's. 7/11 introduced the big gulp and that was the start of everything getting bigger and bigger to outrageous proportions. and starbuck's began the short, tall and grande method of naming product sizes. now, companies have not only focused on making everything bigger or more special than the original, but they have even deleted the originals.
at taco bell, i couldn't order a regular chicken burrito. at sonic the have three sizes of fries: regular, large and sonic size. shouldn't they be called small, medium and large like they once were?
fast food chains and gas staions are even selling 32, 44 and 64oz sodas. who needs that much of any liquid other than water?
posted by scøüpe at 11:54 AM
9 Comments:
yes, yes, you're referring to the theory of markedness. in order for something to be linguisticall 'marked', there must exist an 'unmarked' norm as the basis for comparison.
for the chicken burrito to be 'supreme', there must be the normal not-supreme. like the kid in the incredibles wisely tells us, 'if everyone's special then no one is'.
of course, the categorization of something as marked or unmarked may change in different contexts, such as sweet and unsweet tea. the norm depends on whether you're up North (or in Louisiana strangely enough) or down South. the marked one is the one you have to specially request.
either way, the dialectic always exists.
and if you really wanna know, i can explain the changing (un)markedness of street language and Spanglish in Nuyorican poetry!!!
[yes, i'm aware of how obnoxious this comment is. but i've been studying this stuff all day, and (self-inflicted) misery loves company!]
wha...? who?... oh, i forgot how to speak this language on Dec. 17, 2005. when i graduated and left my graduate school days (daze) behind me.
I'm there with you, guys. And to your comment, eJnan, I would add that the term "marked" is doubled, in that the consumer is also "marked," or is, in a way, a "mark," in the age-old carnie sense. Vendors employ marketing personnel that have trained to research the effectiveness (and thus, the psychological basis) for consumer reaction to verbiage.
Scøupe is right - the Western world demands bigger, better, faster, more, and our linguistic differentiation between "small" and "tall" or "regular" is the same kind of variation between buying jeans at the GAP and buying (the exact same jeans) at Old Navy. In this case, it's even the same company! But the $45 price tag and GAP logo seem more legitimate somehow, more worthwhile. Psychologically, we, for lack of better terminology, respect the GAP jeans more, because we've paid more for them.
Or else it's 1:15am and I'm really working to sound mildly intelligent right now. whee!
What am I saying, really?
I'll have a double tall non-fat sugar-free caramel latte extra-hot, please.
My way, the fancy way. The best and only way.
It is ALL marketing strategy. (This from my disillusioned self due to short stint in the advertising world.) I like it not.
I hate Starbucks as well for introducing unneccesary words for small, medium, and large. Now I have to learn fucking Italian to order a cup of coffee.
and it's even worse that every place mixes up the names for different sizes. at starbucks, a tall is a small, at jittery joe's regular is small, etc. in general, to get a regular, medium size coffee, i have to ask for large or grande. but at some places, these don't even exist. at others, these words will actually get me something big, bigger than i wanted. bah.
i generally just point these days. i would just say 8 oz, 12 oz or 16 oz (or 20 for the starbucks venti), but then i'd be foolishly expecting the cashier to know their ounce-age. if they don't understand the words "extra hot", i somehow think this would be too difficult for them, too.
at sonic, there's the "Sonic Sized" side items, & "Rte. 44" sized drinks.
at jersey mike's, there were "regular" or "giant" sized subs.
it's a gimmick. it's just to differentiate you from everyone else. it's also helpful when it makes things sound big.
i disagree w/ scoupe on one point: i think mcdonald's was the 1st to phase out the small sizes.
oh, & darren said a wordy-dird on scoupe's widely read blog! i'm tellin'!
is it really widely-read now?
woo-hoo!! i have achieved my goal in life. now i can die happy.
(well, not quite yet; i'd like to take a shower first. it'd be kind of embarassing to be found dead and dirty.)
be sure to go to the bathroom first too. all your muscles relax when you die, you know.
from "fruitcakes" ~ jimmy buffett, one of my favorite jb tunes:
"Take for example when you go to the movies these days, you know.
They try to sell you this jumbo drink, 8 extra ounces of watered
down cherry coke for an extra 25 cents. I don’t want it.
I don’t want that much organziation in my life.
I don’t want other people thinking for me.
I want my junior mints. where did the junior mints go in the
movies.
I don’t want a 12 lb. nestle’s crunch for 25 dollars.
I want junior mints"
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