Can I Get Fries Without That?

This afternoon at lunch I felt like getting some french fries. I know, I shouldn't be getting fries at lunch--I bring a perfectly good lunch to work every day--but I wanted to, so there you go. I pulled into Wendy's, but when the drive-through line was around the restaurant, I decided to go in. I could've got the smallest size of fries, what Wendy's labels Medium, but I decided to go one size up, Biggie. I didn't want anything else, just fries, which I planned to eat in my car as I drove away. I asked for Biggie fries, and the cashier told me it would cost about 50 cents more than it should've. She'd charged me for Great Biggie, which was simply too much. I corrected her that I'd actually asked for Biggie fries, but she told me that she couldn't sell them to me. Biggie fries, she explained, could only be served when you order a full meal and then Biggie-size it. It didn't matter that the board behind her listed Biggie fries as available for $1.29, there was no key on the cash register for that order, and no one had ever successfully ordered it as long as she'd worked there. I thought that was ridiculous. Why have it priced on the menu if it wasn't even possible to order it?

The cashier was accommodating, though. She did agree to let me have Biggie fries, but she'd only charge me for Medium, because there was a key on the cash register for that. The bill was $1.08. I gave her a five, but since she was running low on change, she asked me if I had 8 cents so she could just give me my change in bills. I didn't have 8 cents, but I did have 28, so I gave her that. She gave me $3.20 back in change. I didn't get a chance to say anything before she closed the cash drawer, but that's a dollar less than she owed me. When I pointed it out, she didn't know how to reopen the register without entering a new order. She asked someone else who was filling an order, but that person didn't know how to do it, either. (Maybe, like buying Biggie fries, it couldn't be done, either.) So she took the order of the guy who was behind me, and reopened the till. But then she wasn't sure how much she should give me back. Maybe she only owed me some more coins. No, I explained again that I'd received only $3.20 when I should actually have gotten $4.20. We went back and forth for about another minute, and she finally gave me my dollar, but I think it was mostly out of faith rather than certainty that she owed it to me. I sure hope her registered balanced at the end of the day.