How's come

Is it just me and my tastes that are so far out of line with the great unwashed or do companies go out of their way just to piss me off?

The above thought occurred to me on the homeward leg of my journey to take my daughter back to her mother. For those of you who are uninformed my daughter lives with her mother in upstate NY so that visitations mean we have to meet at a halfway point on both ends of the visit. This means a spot about 15-20 miles south of the Pa/NY border which means about a 5-6 hour drive roundtrip. My daughter’s spring visit was over today which is why I was driving and I had my father in the navigator’s seat providing company for the drive. Since my stroke last year my family doesn’t like me driving long distances without a passenger. They mean well but it can be a pain in the ass at times. Anywhoo, back to the subject. On the return trip my father was feeling a bit puckish so we pulled off the Turnpike and into an Arby’s at the exit. Besides the roast beef there are two things that take me to Arby’s, jamocha shakes and their potato cakes. Well at least they left the shakes alone. Now the potato cakes were great, basically an extra thick hash brown with a crunchy outside and soft inside. Main drawback to them is that they usually had to cook them fresh; unlike fries they didn’t seem to handle the heat lamps well. This meant you had to wait for them but it was worth it, nice change from the standard fry. I got an inkling of trouble when I ordered the potato cake and the girl at the counter calls out for a side of bites. Bites??? WTF is this bites shit. I look up at the board and see the familiar triangle shape under the name potato bites so I think, OK, maybe they just changed the name. Then she goes over to the fry station and opens a warmer drawer and starts taking out these smaller triangles. Ut-oh, this can’t be good. Looks like they made them smaller but never saw them in a warmer before. I worked for a year or so in an Arby’s many moons ago so I know a bit of the routine, warmers drawers weren’t part of it. So I get my order and reach in to grab the potato and take a bite. Another WTF moment. These ain’t potato cakes, smaller or otherwise. I look and the damned things are orange in the middle. Obviously it’s supposed to be cheesy but it don’t taste like cheese. There is also some other kind of flavors in there but whatever they are they ain’t meshing well. Damn things are disgusting as far as I am concerned. I wonder what happened to my potato cakes. After I finish the sandwich my father is cleaning up the mess and finds a container of ranch dipping sauce in the bag. Ain’t gonna help them IMHO. They suck plain and simple. So on the rest of the ride I start wondering how comes things I like always seem to either vanish or become “new and improved” which usually means that they now suck also.

The first Chunky soup that hit the market in our area was a chicken noodle soup. It had a good flavor, those soft, slurpy noodles, kind of like the ones in Campbell’s regular chicken noodle but wider and mushrooms. That one has disappeared in favor of a home-style chicken noodle which has no mushrooms, a lighter broth, bigger hunks of carrots and such and the noodles are the type you buy in bags at the store, hard, and boil up like pasta. I abhor those things. As this has taken the place of the old soup it seems my tastes are out of touch with the masses.

Another item was the potato salad one of the grocery chains around here used to carry in their deli dept. It had a touch of celery seed in it which gave it an interesting taste. For years I went and got it when having a picnic style dinner or sometimes for lunch. Then one day I went in and ordered it and the woman behind the counter tells me they have a new home-style (why does everyone think home-style makes things better) potato salad and wouldn’t I like to try that. No, I say, I want what I ordered. She was persistent trying to peddle the new stuff and I was just as adamant telling her no. I finally got what I wanted but within 6 months my favorite was gone, replaced by the new stuff. Another item I enjoy down the drain. Chunky peanut butter fell prey to the conjecture that if something is good, more of something is better. If chunky was good, extra or super chunky had to be better. Ever wonder if anyone ever realized that adding that extra also made the peanut butter extra dry. First time I tried it I wondered if I could ever get it down my throat. Finally switched to creamy until I found a honey roast chunky I liked, without the extra or super. These are only a few things I can put down. If I really wanted to I’m sure I could run on and bore you for hours and pages here but I think one gets my idea. Is it just my tastes that are out of whack and people prefer these things or is it just that most people don’t care or bother and take what comes along?

Not a great rant I’ll give ya but thanks for the listen.