Mickey D and the case of the wasteful, coolish coffee

I like McDonald's coffee. People look at me funny when I say that because

1. Nobody questions Tim Horton's (AKA Dunkin' Donuts North) claim to the throne of best everyman's coffee, and
2. I'm a bit of a coffee snob, grinding my own beans at home and all that.

But, coffeewise, McDonald's does it right. Most of the time. I have a frustration with them, though. I use a travel mug. It holds 16 ounces. McDonald's medium coffee is 16 ounces. Take a moment to draw your own conclusions about what's supposed to happen when you order a medium coffee and hand the clerk (customer service associate?) your clean, empty travel mug. I ask you to think about this is because someone at McDonald's already has, and they've made a decision about what's supposed to happen next. And it's nothing like you'd expect.

The clerk obligingly takes the mug and puts it down on the counter next to the coffee machines. Then they ignore it and select a medium-sized paper cup from the dispenser, which they fill with 16 ounces of coffee. Having been adequately measured, the coffee is poured from the paper cup into the travel mug. Paper cup goes in garbage. Travel mug is handed back with a smile (that's free).

This is how it goes when I'm not there. Actually, it's the same when I'm there except that I ask, prod, cajole and almost beg them to just pour the damned coffee straight into my cup. No go. Against company policy. I've heard reasons from the need to measure the coffee (reasonable, but not insurmountable) to the need to avoid accidentally contaminating the carafe by touching it to the mug (retarded). The reasons change but the answer stays the same: no pour coffee into mug.

Here's what I don't like about this, in case you don't think exactly like I do (shame!) in order of descending obviousness:

1. Cup waste
2. Colder coffee: double the pouring means double the cooling, both from the air and from cool cups. I like my coffee hot hot hot! Can you feel it?
3. Soap, water and time waste: Now I've got to clean my damned mug in addition to a cup hitting the garbage. (we can call this 'synergistic waste' if we want to put it in corporatese)
4. Employee safety: pouring hot coffee from one cup into another over and over again is a recipe for worker's comp.
5. More expensive everything: That cup you just threw in the garbage is now gone forever. McDonald's paid for it, so the price of a hamburger just went up. A tree went into making it so the price of wood just went up. A truck brought it to the restaurant so the price of diesel just went up. Electricity, water, storage.... everything is affected when something goes into the garbage. Admittedly these are tiny, marginal, minuscule increases but when the sign reads 'billions and billions served' those individual decisions and actions add up to have real consequences.
6. McDonald's offers free coffee refills anyway, so that extra ounce or two, if it even gets poured, is already in the budget, Ronald!

This morning I found out that McDonald's Canada doesn't offer web-based customer service, or even provide an email address. Maybe they're afraid of e-coli. Where to easily and conveniently register my list of coffee beefs? There was a local phone number but... ewww... subscribe to the McDonaldized horror of voicemail customer service hell? I'd much rather just type, blast, and wait for the platitudes to arrive (or not) than explain to someone in real time why this pisses me off. After all, it's Letterman, not Phonephella. And it's much easier to point to what was said and promised before when it's all there in black and white. But when trying to change the world you take what you can, so I called. I got a real person, who took notes on my complaints slash suggestions in the absence of someone who could tell me that they would change corporate Canada for me today, tomorrow at the latest. Apparently the store manager, the manager's supervisor and the supervisor's supervisor are getting copies of the ticket. Someone's supposed to call me back. I'm optimistic about the outcome, but not necessarily the pace.

We McWait.