When I was younger, my father would periodically take us to a fast-food restaurant. Which one wasn't important, since they sort of all operated on the same principle (place order, get food, move on). The one we used to go to involved arches and clowns, if that helps.
We lived in a pretty small town, so stopping at this restaurant typically meant we had traveled to a bigger city, were on our way to somewhere else and were just looking to check-mark the "food" box. But Dad tended to want to expedite what was already a fairly abbreviated process even more. Without bothering to look at the menu or polling the vested parties in this family feast, he'd step to the counter and order "four Cokes, four hamburgers and four fries."
And just like that, we were served. Whether that was actually what we wanted was immaterial. This was a hamburger place, so we got hamburgers. You had to have something to drink and they had Coke, so we got Cokes. And we got fries because, well, you always get fries.
Most of the time I was just fine with this because, honestly, I didn't have the most sophisticated of palettes. And the idea of getting a real-life, honest-to-goodness hamburger not served by someone in a stained white t-shirt and smoking a stogie was a pretty exotic thing. Hey, it was the '60's. It didn't take nearly as much to be exotic back then.
But one time, when the person behind the counter asked, "Is that everything?" after Dad did his speed-ordering thing, I woke from my usual daydreaming long enough to say, "I don't want any pickles on mine."
Imagine, if you will, the wheels of a giant machine grinding to a sudden halt. The entire staff, including the cooks in the back, suddenly stopped what they were doing and began to stare at me. I'm sure, somewhere in a tall office building in San Diego, sirens and lights started going off. These weren't exactly "have it your way" days.
My dad looked at me like I'd just expressed an interest in shaving my head and wandering down to the airport to play the tambourine, which would have been fairly precocious from a 7-year-old. And then he solved what was quickly becoming a national fast-food industry emergency.
"Well," he said, "you can just pick them off."
I tell you that story as a prelude to offering this suggestion: It's possible, just possible, we may have too many choices.
All right, all right, I know. We live in a democracy, where the idea of being able to choose is pretty much sacred. But that really applies more to Senate races than the canned green bean aisle at the grocery store, where, apparently someone thinks we really need about 300 flavors, sizes, cuts and varieties of salt content.
It is worth noting that if you decide you don't like your green bean choice, it doesn't take six years to take it back. But I digress.
Now I like a well-stocked shelf or a well-fleshed-out glowing neon drive-through menu as much as the next person (provided the next person has about two days to contemplate his slushy choices). But you've got to wonder, at some point are Habanero Ranch Gluten-Free Cranberry Vanilla Pumpkin Spice Scones really filling a customer need or just hoop-jumping foolishness?
You see, nothing good ever comes of giving a person raised to keep things moving along fairly briskly too many "stop-and-think" choices. Because if you do, chances are you're going to discover just how many things come with a chipotle option. Or bacon flavoring. Neither of which you'd really think would work for Pop Tarts, but which strangely enough ... don't.
The current desire to shove one more flavor/size/variety under the offering blanket means I now get to spend a larger portion of my time staring at food aisles, menus or freezer cases like I'm trying to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics with the decoder ring from a box of cereal. Of which there are about 725 on Aisle Six. Next to the chipotle-bacon-flavored Pop Tarts.
I'm not going to take it anymore. From now on, I'm demanding simplicity. No more confusing quantity for quality and pretending "variety" is the same thing as innovation and artistry.
From now on, I want my hamburger, Coke and fries!
Except, can you make that a diet drink? And no onions -- hard on the stomach, you know. And, well, the doctor is going to want me to go with the grilled chicken. And those fries ... peanut oil, right?
GARY SMITH IS A RECOVERING JOURNALIST LIVING IN ROGERS.
Commentary on 12/04/2014