McDonald's Rant 1 - Ketchup Packets

I'm feeling rather antsy these days because of my wife's pregnancy. So I'm going to start a couple of posts on rants regarding McDonald's over the next couple of days.

Using just 1 minute searching on Google, I was able to find that I can buy a case of a 1000 ketchup packets for US $32.79. That's less than HK $0.30 per packet. Consider that a fast food chain as large as McDonald's would certainly buy in bulk and that price would surely be lower.

Then why is it that by default, you never get more than 1 pack of ketchup if your order contains fries here in Hong Kong? You always have to pop the question: 

"May I have some more packs of ketchup please?"

By "some more", you would expect at least 2 or 3. Definitely not 1. Then why is it that the server keeps only giving you 1 more? It's just a waste of time and effort because then I would have to ask them for more again and they have to get me more again.

What's worse is sometimes they respond to your question with another question:

"How many do you need?"

That's the most stupid thing. Firstly, it's rude. Secondly, with the effort they made by asking the question and then waiting for my response, they could have filled my entire tray with ketchup packs. For this very reason, I never answer this question. I just repeat my request for "some more" packs of ketchup.

This whole thing just makes the restaurant look cheap. While McDonald's is certainly no 5-star restaurant, you would think they can afford to generously give away ketchup packets.

Maybe the next time I get asked how many packets of ketchup I need, I should say something like this:

"I'm not sure. I usually use about a pea-size amount per piece of fry. I think that will burn through about 1 packet of ketchup for every 10 fries. How many fries do you reckon there are on this tray?"