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I want my 62 cents back.

Fast Food is America's greatest export, but the source of it's strength, its secret power is and will always be the Dollar Menu. How can they afford to make a double cheeseburger for a buck? How many corners did they have to cut to make this a reality? What animal is this? These questions are the digestif that makes the food taste so much better than it actually is. The real value of the Dollar Menu is not just the ease on your wallet, but the subtle mind games.
McDonald's has flirted with deals for specific days, like 29 cent cheeseburgers on every other third Wednesday, and every chain has some kind of cross promotional special with throw-back prices, like a barrel of fries and a hepatitis shot for two bits, but the lasting staple of fast food is that you can get food for a buck. Period. However, this temple to consumerism is being spun from the straight-forward "Dollar Menu" to the duplicitous "Value Menu." In linguistic shuffle lies the death of truly great fast food, and if it picks up steam you'll soon find yourself hacking through prices as high as....$1.49. Dear sweet God, not me.
Take Jack in the Box for example, the most recent convert to the "Value Menu." The chicken sandwich and the genius of the two tacos for a dollar are still there, and both are in fact 99 cents. However, I've found my eyes straying to the "Big Cheeseburger." It's exactly what it promises-ketchup, mayo, cheese, and tons of meat-but the freakin thing is $1.29. It's so frustrating to buy two and then find myself paying, not $2.14, like I should, but $2.78. Plus I have the sickening feeling that it's actually meat, and where's the fun in that? I want the mystery, the concern, and the unease of eating wholesale ground beef.

And I want my 62 cents back.

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