Burger King Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Burger King. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Oh my God, I sent a picture of my boobs to Jim," I moaned as a fresh wave of nausea rolled through me. "You also threw up in the emergency room parking lot, called Drew and told him you were the Donkey Punch Dick Queen and filled out a Last Will and Testament on a Burger King napkin and then asked the drive-thru worker to notarize it.
Tara Sivec (Seduction and Snacks (Chocolate Lovers, #1))
Right,' Thomas said. 'Where are we headed?' 'To where they treat me like royalty,' I said. 'We're going to Burger King?' I rubbed the heel of my hand against my forehead and spelled fratricide in a subvocal mutter, but I had to spell out temporary insanity and justifiable homicide, too, before I calmed down enough to speak politely. 'Just take a left and drive. Please.' 'Well,' Thomas said, grinning, 'since you said 'please' - Thomas Raith & Harry Dresden, Small Favor, Jim Butcher
Jim Butcher (Small Favor (The Dresden Files, #10))
I was going to say he's aimless," the witch replied. "I know he's a bit old to be old to living at home with his mom, but he's had a difficult time holding a job. He's worked at Wendy's, Taco Bell, and Burger King, but it all ends the same way- he challenges his manager to combat, takes over the restaurant, and enslaves his coworkers. Then it's back to video games." - Morgan le Fay
Michael Buckley (Magic and Other Misdemeanors (The Sisters Grimm, #5))
Dan was suspicious. "How did he find out where we were staying?" Amy frowned. "I think that's the message inside the message. He wants us to know that he has a long reach–that's he's rich and powerful." "Like we'll see his giant mansion and assume he works at Burger King," scoffed Dan.
Gordon Korman (The Medusa Plot (39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers, #1))
How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. advertises trucks by invoking “The Dodge Rebellion”? How is one to be bona fide iconoclast when Burger King sells onion rings with “Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules”? How can an Image-Fiction writer hope to make people more critical of televisual culture by parodying television as a self-serving commercial enterprise when Pepsi and Subaru and FedEx parodies of self-serving commercials are already doing big business? It’s almost a history lesson: I’m starting to see just why turn-of-the-century Americans’ biggest fear was of anarchist and anarchy. For if anarchy actually wins, if rulelessness become the rule, then protest and change become not just impossible but incoherent. It’d be like casting a ballot for Stalin: you are voting for an end to all voting.
David Foster Wallace (A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments)
I couldn't see where the collection of Burger King figurines fit in, but I supposed there was no reason why psychopaths shouldn't have unrelated hobbies.
Jon Ronson (The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry)
The Burger King robbery was committed by a couple of black kids, so that fact justifies pulling over EVERY black guy?
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal In Black (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #4))
I don't wanna be def. Death. Dead. This Burger Twin nappykin just got served as my will, BEOTCH! The fries here suck, by the way. If I die, don't feed my son your shitty fries. Don't give my son to the creepy child molester king you put in your commercials either. What the fuck is wrong with that guy? He's got a normal body and a plastic face that is always smiley. It's not right, man. It's just not right. My ears feel funny.
Tara Sivec (Seduction and Snacks (Chocolate Lovers, #1))
Life is not always like Burger King. You cannot always have it your way.
-Me
I like to look nice when I go to see His Majesty, the Burger King.
Maureen Johnson (Truly, Devious (Truly Devious, #1))
I stood in a Burger King and studied, with absorption, the photographs of the manager and his executive crew (reflecting on the curious fact that people who go into hamburger management always look as if their mother slept with Goofy),
Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail)
I can't see any point to hanging around a Burger King all day, no matter how much money you make. .... I'll tell you why. Your life would depend on the random desires of people who wanted a hamburger. So you can just forget about Burger King.
Charles Willeford (Miami Blues (Hoke Moseley #1))
I'll be Burger King and you be McDonald's. I'll have it my way and you'll be lovin' it!
Vi Keeland (Made for You (Cole, #2))
I’ll be Burger King and you be McDonalds. I’ll have it my way and you’ll be lovin’ it,’ and you’d probably still score.
L.H. Cosway (Six of Hearts (Hearts, #1))
Life isn't burger king. You can't always have it your way.
Sukhraj S. Dhillon
Just thought you might like to know that there’s a little kid playing Freddy Fuckaround at the Mile 81 rest area. You know, where the Burger King used to be?
Stephen King (Mile 81)
We'd never talked about it, but I figured you knew the rules. If a cop stopped, you didn't run, you didn't talk back, you didn't ever, ever get angry. White people could do that—hell, they could shoot up a church and then ask for Burger King—but not us. We got killed at traffic stops for speeding, for having broken taillights, for knowing our rights.
Una LaMarche (You in Five Acts)
Because I’m no good with directions, but I’m really good with landmarks, so if you tell me to go north on Main, I’m fucked, but if you say, “Turn at that Burger King that burned down last year,” I totally know what to do, so we should build a GPS system that does that.
Jenny Lawson (Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir)
I smile as I leave them, wondering what building my dad would try to save with his writing.Probably a baseball stadium. Or a Burger King.
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
There are now more self-storage facilities in the United States than McDonald’s, Burger Kings, Starbucks, and Walmarts—combined.
Michael Easter (Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough)
Once she'd loved my filet mignon, my carnivore inklings, but now she was a vegan princess, living off of beans. She'd given up the cheese and bacon, sworn off Burger King, and when I wouldn't do the same she gave me back my ring. I stood there by the romaine lettuce, feeling my heart pine. Wishing that this meatless beauty still would be all mine. She turned around to go to checkout, fifteen items or less. And I knew this was the last go-round, so this is what I said. ... "Don't you ever give me no rotten tomato, 'cause all I ever wanted was your sweet potato.
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
He was a boy breaking out and into himself at once. That's what I wanted—not merely the body, desirable as it was, but its will to grow into the very world that rejects its hunger. Then I wanted more, the scent, the atmosphere of him, the taste of French fries and peanut butter under the salve of his tongue, the salt around his neck from two hour drives to nowhere and a Burger King at the edge of the county, a day of tense talk with his old man, the rust from the electric razor he shared with that old man, how I would always find it on the sink in its sad plastic case, the tobacco, weed and cocaine smoke on his fingers mixed with motor oil, all of it accumulating into the afterscent of wood smoke caught and soaked in his hair, as if when he came to me, his mouth wet and wanting, he came from a place on fire, a place he could never return to.
Ocean Vuong (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous)
She snorts. "Yeah, I'll tape my boobs down and wear my Burger King Crown. That'll fool'em. They see five-foot-seven-inch-tall, hippy eleven-year-olds all the time." She sneers at me. "You on the other hand..." "Did you just call me short?" "And, apparently, boobless." "Sawyer doesn't think so.
Lisa McMann (Gasp (Visions, #3))
I could not take one more minute of trying to convince the people of Los Angeles that a workers’ revolution and a complete overhaul of society was a tiny bit more exciting than getting a bit role in a Burger King commercial
Susie Bright (Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir)
I snagged a golden paper crown from one of the bags, and idly joined it into a circle and put it on my head. Susan blinked at me and let out a brief laugh. 'I am' I intoned with an imperious narrowing of my eyes, 'the burger king.
Jim Butcher (Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, #2))
The usefulness of the market, its effectiveness as a tool, cuts both ways. The real power of the American consumer has not yet been unleashed. The heads of Burger King, KFC, and McDonald’s should feel daunted; they’re outnumbered. There are three of them and almost three hundred million of you.
Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal)
Maybe I should call my mother and tell her that her decision to send me to an all-girls Catholic school had cured my curiosity with boys. I was no longer interested in giving blow jobs to college guys who worked at Burger King. Now I only wanted to spread my legs for men twice my age who bit and spanked and wore clerical collars.
Pam Godwin (Lessons in Sin)
Us southern boys can pretty much make a grill out of anything,” Preppy said, plating the last burger. “I’m like a redneck MacGyver.
T.M. Frazier (Preppy: The Life & Death of Samuel Clearwater, Part Three (King, #7))
You know how Burger King often employs mentally handicapped people to wipe down tables at their restaurants? What those people are to Burger King, paralegals are to lawyers. It's the lowest job you can possibly get and still technically be considered in the legal profession
Michael Ian Black (You're Not Doing It Right: Tales of Marriage, Sex, Death, and Other Humiliations)
Hipster (n.): Yes, you ride a fixed-gear bike and drink single-origin chai from a local specially abled artist’s hand-thrown ceramic mug. Your bi-friend only listens to cassettes, and you just love vintage flats, and your rescue dog is named Cobain. Please just wear your hat and glasses and turned-up pants and defy categorizing. Remember: you will one day be driving a Volvo with toys thrown willy-nilly and Burger King wrappers on the floor, listening to Sade and digging it unironically. Even the freshest kale can go brown and wilt. Cave futurum.
Greg Proops (The Smartest Book in the World: A Lexicon of Literacy, A Rancorous Reportage, A Concise Curriculum of Cool)
I was looking at Latin America and who was the richest guy in Venezuela? A brewer (the Mendoza family that owns Polar). The richest guy in Colombia? A brewer (the Santo Domingo group, the owner of Bavaria). The richest in Argentina? A brewer (the Bembergs, owners of Quilmes). These guys can’t all be geniuses...It’s the business that must be good.
Cristiane Correa (DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz)
In the words of Mr Thierry Coup of Warner Bros: 'We are taking the most iconic and powerful moments of the stories and putting them in an immersive environment. It is taking the theme park experience to a new level.' And of course I wish Thierry and his colleagues every possible luck, and I am sure it will be wonderful. But I cannot conceal my feelings; and the more I think of those millions of beaming kids waving their wands and scampering the Styrofoam turrets of Hogwartse_STmk, and the more I think of those millions of poor put-upon parents who must now pay to fly to Orlando and pay to buy wizard hats and wizard cloaks and wizard burgers washed down with wizard meade_STmk, the more I grind my teeth in jealous irritation. Because the fact is that Harry Potter is not American. He is British. Where is Diagon Alley, where they buy wands and stuff? It is in London, and if you want to get into the Ministry of Magic you disappear down a London telephone box. The train for Hogwarts goes from King's Cross, not Grand Central Station, and what is Harry Potter all about? It is about the ritual and intrigue and dorm-feast excitement of a British boarding school of a kind that you just don't find in America. Hogwarts is a place where children occasionally get cross with each other—not 'mad'—and where the situation is usually saved by a good old British sense of HUMOUR. WITH A U. RIGHT? NOT HUMOR. GOTTIT?
Boris Johnson
And one particular characteristic that Doerr liked: “They were nerdy white males, dropouts with no social life.”6 Again, Larry and Sergey went off to Burger King to celebrate.
Janet Lowe (Google Speaks: Secrets of the World's Greatest Billionaire Entrepreneurs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page)
To this day, I can’t look at a Burger King cheeseburger wrapper without feeling my clit twitch.
Chelsea G. Summers (A Certain Hunger)
Now, I’m not trying to give every slacker a free pass to cut class and head straight to Burger King, but I do think we should acknowledge that school isn’t for everyone.
Sophia Amoruso (#GIRLBOSS)
we’d done our errands, not to mention an awful lot of cocaine in the parking lot of Burger King,
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
. . . We'd done our errands, not to mention an awful lot of cocaine in the parking lot of Burger King . . .
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
Other days, I just pick up some Burger King—I know where my loyalties lie—and play games I have to pirate because I can no longer use credit cards.
Edward Snowden (Permanent Record)
Then I’d have had to take my liberal arts degree and gotten a job at McDonald’s or Burger King like all the rest of the history majors.
Patricia Briggs (Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson, #2))
In psychology experiments, women strongly prefer ugly men wearing Rolexes to handsome men wearing Burger King uniforms.
Terry Burnham (Mean Genes: From Sex To Money To Food: Taming Our Primal Instincts)
Yo mama is so old… she knew Burger King while he was still a prince.
Johnny B. Laughing (Yo Mama Jokes Bible: 350+ Funny & Hilarious Yo Mama Jokes)
Food was becoming more abstract, more aestheticized and compartmentalized-- and indeed, after kaiseki, who can ever go back to Burger King, or even a well-made gourmet sandwich? Instead of food, I longed for other things to swell my body and buoy its lines--- lists of ancient queens, the grave and stately names for the forgotten regions of the sea, the imagined words for desire in hermetic languages; food, on the other hand, was leaving me increasingly unmoved.... I grew thinner and thinner, streamlined, my blood nourished by ever-slighter molecules, some kind of pale elongated light running the length of my body, nightmares detouring it in the most starved, and so-lightly blue-black-bruised, corners of my flesh. In this state of non-health, every step became a performance, each stride an act of contrition, a question and an answer.... On the once-dry, now-flowering branches of my skeletal limbs, the words sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch were being invisibly but indelibly written. I was a festival of new senses.
Cynthia Gralla
Georges was telling me that he saw nothing wrong with my having asked to stop at a Burger King for a snack in lieu of luncheon—that, in his opinion, the giant burger, properly prepared from top sirloin substitute
Robert A. Heinlein (Friday (CAEZIK Notables))
Fast Food Rule. Wanna know what the summer's blockbuster is going to be? See who McDonald's does the marketing tie-in with. Wanna know what blockbuster will do disappointing business? See who Burger King ties in with.
Roger Ebert (Ebert's Bigger Little Movie Glossary: A Greatly Expanded and Much Improved Compendium of Movie Clichés, Stereotypes, Obligatory Scenes, Hackneyed Formulas, ... Conventions, and Outdated Archetypes)
There may be something genuinely evil in the idea of an N.F.L. Maybe the Miami Dolphins is an evil concept, the Houston Astros, Burger King, the American League. Franchises like some screwy version of Manifest Destiny.
Stanley Elkin (The Franchiser)
He is the polar opposite of President Obama. Where Obama’s rhetoric soars, Trump’s rhetoric slithers. While Obama eats arugula, Trump scarfs Burger King. Where Obama is controlled and calculating, Trump is petulant and loud.
Katy Tur (Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History)
So when the big companies come in they buy the name of the company, they pay the funeral directors to stay on, they create the appearance of diversity. But that is merely the tip of the gravestone. In reality, they are as local as Burger King.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
So when the big companies come in they buy the name of the company, they pay for the funeral directors to stay on, they create the appearance of diversity. But that is merely the tip of the gravestone. In reality, they are as local as Burger King.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
A typical artificial strawberry flavor, like the kind found in a Burger King strawberry milk shake, contains the following ingredients: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amylketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglyci-date, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphrenyl-2-butanone (10 percent solution in alcohol), α-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, γ undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.
Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal)
How are you going to try to say that this is a beautiful moment between us when I’m eating a Whopper?” Sam laughed. “I think I just love you that much,” he said. “That even standing next to you as you cram Burger King into your mouth is special to me.
Taylor Jenkins Reid (One True Loves)
Seeing the psychologist Steven Pinker making pronouncements about things intellectual has a similar effect to encountering a drive-in Burger King while hiking in the middle of a national park. It is under such an oversensitive bull***t detector that I have been writing this book.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (Incerto, #5))
I am never bothered by normal people; it is the bull***tter in the "intellectual" profession who bothers me. Seeing the psychologist Steven Pinker making pronouncements about things intellectual has a similar effect to encountering a drive-in Burger King while hiking in the middle of a national park.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life)
Oh, right. I doubt this place has any delicious, fattening fast-food places, and maybe the Imperium doesn’t either. Yup, no McDonald’s, no Burger King, no Gino’s Pizza… Dear God, have I made a mistake coming here? I may be of small stature, but make no mistake: I am a glutton. On the other hand – possible franchise opportunity.
Giselle Simlett (Girl of Myth and Legend (The Chosen Saga #1))
having a big dream brings as much work as having a small dream’...
Cristiane Correa (DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz)
We usually had four big targets a year: market share, expenses, EBITDA and cash.
Cristiane Correa (DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz)
Religion, with its metaphysical error of absolute guilt, dominated the broadest, the cosmic realm. From there, it infiltrated the subordinate realms of biological, social and moral existence with its errors of the absolute and inherited guilt. Humanity, split up into millions of factions, groups, nations and states, lacerated itself with mutual accusations. "The Greeks are to blame," the Romans said, and "The Romans are to blame," the Greeks said. So they warred against one another. "The ancient Jewish priests are to blame," the early Christians shouted. "The Christians have preached the wrong Messiah," the Jews shouted and crucified the harmless Jesus. "The Muslims and Turks and Huns are guilty," the crusaders screamed. "The witches and heretics are to blame," the later Christians howled for centuries, murdering, hanging, torturing and burning heretics. It remains to investigate the sources from which the Jesus legend derives its grandeur, emotional power and perseverance. Let us continue to stay outside this St. Vitus dance. The longer we look around, the crazier it seems. Hundreds of minor patriarchs, self-proclaimed kings and princes, accused one another of this or that sin and made war, scorched the land, brought famine and epidemics to the populations. Later, this became known as "history." And the historians did not doubt the rationality of this history. Gradually the common people appeared on the scene. "The Queen is to blame," the people's representatives shouted, and beheaded the Queen. Howling, the populace danced around the guillotine. From the ranks of the people arose Napoleon. "The Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians are to blame," it was now said. "Napoleon is to blame," came the reply. "The machines are to blame!" the weavers screamed, and "The lumpenproletariat is to blame," sounded back. "The Monarchy is to blame, long live the Constitution!" the burgers shouted. "The middle classes and the Constitution are to blame; wipe them out; long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," the proletarian dictators shout, and "The Russians are to blame," is hurled back. "Germany is to blame," the Japanese and the Italians shouted in 1915. "England is to blame," the fathers of the proletarians shouted in 1939. And "Germany is to blame," the self-same fathers shouted in 1942. "Italy, Germany and Japan are to blame," it was said in 1940. It is only by keeping strictly outside this inferno that one can be amazed that the human animal continues to shriek "Guilty!" without doubting its own sanity, without even once asking about the origin of this guilt. Such mass psychoses have an origin and a function. Only human beings who are forced to hide something catastrophic are capable of erring so consistently and punishing so relentlessly any attempt at clarifying such errors.
Wilhelm Reich (Ether, God and Devil: Cosmic Superimposition)
Hoy en Estados Unidos se están produciendo y masacrando al año por este sistema de producción desalmada 50 millones de vacas, terneros y cerdos, 200 millones de pavos y 6.000 millones de pollos para que los dueños de los Burger King, los McDonald’s y los Wendy’s inflen sus bolsas y los comedores de carne, negros y blancos, cristianos y musulmanes, tengan carburante para sus almas inmortales.
Fernando Vallejo
The advisors, on the other hand, were like older brothers and sisters. My favorite was Bill Symes, who'd been a founding member of Fellowship in 1967. He was in his early twenties now and studying religion at Webster University. He had shoulders like a two-oxen yoke, a ponytail as thick as a pony's tail, and feet requiring the largest size of Earth Shoes. He was a good musician, a passionate attacker of steel acoustical guitar strings. He liked to walk into Burger King and loudly order two Whoppers with no meat. If he was losing a Spades game, he would take a card out of his hand, tell the other players, "Play this suit!" and then lick the card and stick it to his forehead facing out. In discussions, he liked to lean into other people's space and bark at them. He said, "You better deal with that!" He said, "Sounds to me like you've got a problem that you're not talking about!" He said, "You know what? I don't think you believe one word of what you just said to me!" He said, "Any resistance will be met with an aggressive response!" If you hesitated when he moved to hug you, he backed away and spread his arms wide and goggled at you with raised eyebrows, as if to say, "Hello? Are you going to hug me, or what?" If he wasn't playing guitar he was reading Jung, and if he wasn't reading Jung he was birdwatching, and if he wasn't birdwatching he was practicing tai chi, and if you came up to him during his practice and asked him how he would defend himself if you tried to mug him with a gun, he would demonstrate, in dreamy Eastern motion, how to remove a wallet from a back pocket and hand it over. Listening to the radio in his VW Bug, he might suddenly cry out, "I want to hear... 'La Grange' by ZZ Top!" and slap the dashboard. The radio would then play "La Grange.
Jonathan Franzen (The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History)
I may have bought the business from him, but when we worked together, he still gave the orders. Part of it was habit, I suppose, but a larger part of it was that, though I am a good mechanic, Zee is magic. Literally and figuratively. If it weren’t for his tendency to get bored with easy stuff, he’d never have hired me. Then I’d have had to take my liberal arts degree and gotten a job at McDonald’s or Burger King like all the rest of the history majors.
Patricia Briggs (Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson, #2))
For a zoned-out, stupefied populace, “democracy” will be nothing more than the right to shop, or to choose between Wendy’s and Burger King, or to stare at CNN and think that this managed infotainment is actually the news. Corporate hegemony, the triumph of global democracy/consumerism based on an American model, is the collapse of American civilization. So a large-scale transformation is indeed going on, but it is one that makes triumph indistinguishable from disintegration.
Morris Berman (The Twilight of American Culture)
Every night, millions of Americans spend their free hours watching television rather than engaging in any form of social interaction. What are they watching? In recent years we have seen reality television become the most popular form of television programming. To discover the nature of our current “reality,” we might consider examples such as Survivor, the series that helped spawn the reality TV revolution. Every week tens of millions of viewers watched as a group of ordinary people stranded in some isolated place struggled to meet various challenges and endure harsh conditions. Ah, one might think, here we will see people working cooperatively, like our ancient ancestors, working cooperatively in order to “win”! But the “reality” was very different. The conditions of the game were arranged so that, yes, they had to work cooperatively, but the alliances by nature were only temporary and conditional, as the contestants plotted and schemed against one another to win the game and walk off with the Grand Prize: a million dollars! The objective was to banish contestants one by one from the deserted island through a group vote, eliminating every other contestant until only a lone individual remained—the “sole survivor.” The end game was the ultimate American fantasy in our Age of Individualism: to be left completely alone, sitting on a mountain of cash!   While Survivor was an overt example of our individualistic orientation, it certainly was not unique in its glorification of rugged individualists on American television. Even commercial breaks provide equally compelling examples, with advertisers such as Burger King, proclaiming, HAVE IT YOUR WAY! The message? America, the land where not only every man and every woman is an individual but also where every hamburger is an individual!   Human beings do not live in a vacuum; we live in a society. Thus it is important to look at the values promoted and celebrated in a given society and measure what effect this conditioning has on our sense of independence or of interdependence
Dalai Lama XIV (The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World)
Doing things the right way, giving guys accolades for that. It’s important. In Burger King we used to call it taking a walk. Taking a walk means you get out of your office and walk around the restaurant. You walk outside and look for trash. Is the dining room clean? Are your employees dressed properly? Are they smiling? Are the lights on? We all need to take a walk more often. Just look around and say, ‘Is everything right? Is everything the way it should be? Are we giving ourselves the best chance to have success?’ And if we are, then what’s wrong with going up to that person that has that area cleaned up, and is focused, with a smile on their face, and saying, ‘Hey, I want you to know I appreciate it.’ If there’s one thing I learned as an owner, it’s that the players, people that work for you, they’re the ones that are going to make you successful.” Plank bought
Rich Cohen (Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football)
Era un chico abriéndose al exterior y a sí mismo a un tiempo. Eso es lo que yo quería, no el mero cuerpo, por deseable que fuera, sino su voluntad de acceder al mundo mismo que rechazaba su anhelo. Y aún quería más: su aroma, su atmósfera, el sabor a patatas fritas y a mantequilla de cacahuete de debajo del bálsamo de su lengua, la sal de su cuello –de sus trayectos de dos horas a ninguna parte– y el Burger King de la linde del condado, un día de charla tensa con su viejo, el metal oxidado de la maquinilla de afeitar eléctrica que compartía con su viejo, que yo siempre encontraba en el lavabo dentro de su triste funda de plástico, el tabaco, la hierba, la cocaína en sus dedos, todo ello mezclado con aceite de motor, todo ello sumado al olor residual a humo de madera adherido y embebido en su pelo, como si, al venir a mí, su boca mojada y famélica viniera de un lugar en llamas, un lugar al que jamás podría regresar.
Ocean Vuong (En la Tierra somos fugazmente grandiosos)
... People like to know what they are getting ahead of time. Thus, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, F.W. Woolworth: store-brands maintained and visible across the entire country. Wherever you go, you will get something that is, with small regional variations, the same. 'In the field of funeral homes, however, things are, perforce, different. You need to feel that you are getting small-town personal service from someone who has a calling to the profession. You want personal attention to you and your loved one in a time of great loss. You wish to know that your grief is happening on a local level, not a national one. But in all branches of industry - and death is an industry, my young friend, make no mistake about that - one makes one's money from operating in bulk, from buying in quantity, from centralising one's operations. It's not pretty, but it's true. Trouble is, no one wants to know that their loved ones are travelling in a cooler van to some big old converted warehouse where they may have twenty, fifty, or a hundred cadavers to go... 'So when big companies come in they buy the name of the company, they pay the funeral directors to stay on, they create the apparency of diversity. But that is merely the tip of the gravestone. In reality, they are as local as Burger King.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
The menu Kroc used to take McDonald’s national was similarly minimalist, with exactly three food items—Pure Beef Hamburger, fifteen cents; Tempting Cheeseburger, nineteen cents; Golden French Fries, ten cents. He aimed to make his burger construction line as standardized and closely measured as the Crystal Palace, decreeing, among other things, that McDonald’s burger patties must weigh 1.6 ounces and measure 3.875 inches in diameter. Don’t like a quarter ounce of onions on your burger? Too bad, just scrape ’em off—custom orders slow things down, and speed was the whole point. That’s why they call it fast food. Then Burger King countered with “Have it your way” in the ’80s, and to compete, McDonald’s started broadening its menu and allowing for special orders. Today, the average McDonald’s menu has more than a hundred items, and special orders are commonplace. But customers never changed their expectations of miraculously instantaneous service to match the vastly more complicated menu crew members are working with. So a lot of people who’ve experienced the magic of getting a Big Mac seconds after ordering it seem to believe there’s some Star Trek machine in the back that zaps food into existence from nothing. At least, that’s the only reason I can think of that customers like this lady get so mad when their special orders take an extra minute or two.
Emily Guendelsberger (On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane)
He learned that we should keep our eyes on the goal and not on the ground. He learned so much about the Burger King’s operations that later when he was running the Investment Bank and was looking for high-profile American billionaires to sit on his Board of Directors, he met Joe Antonius, Chairman of the 32-billion-dollar conglomerate. The first thing they had in common was that Antonius ran that corporation where Mir once cleaned bathrooms. He went up to him, introduced himself, “Hi Joe! I am Mir Mohammad Ali Khan, founder and Chairman of KMS Investment Bank and my first job in America was washing bathrooms at one of your restaurants.” Joe burst out laughing and all top notch people – Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Peter Lynch – could not believe what the young man was saying. Joe took him aside and said, “Tell me honestly what did you like about cleaning bathrooms.” “Ammonia,” replied Mir. “Why?” Mir said, “I hated my job and it hurt my ego. I hated it so much that I cried throughout the first week and every time somebody saw me crying, I would tell them that it was because of ammonia. Ammonia helped me shelter my ego.” Later Antonius joined the Board of Mir’s bank for NO COMPENSATION and also brought 6 top people from Forbes, Yoblon, Mario, Andretti, and others. In the first meeting of the Board Antonius said, “I joined this board because if this immigrant kid can come from a family background that he has, compromise with his ego, wash bathrooms and smile and tell us in a corporate meeting of leaders that he is proud of it, then it means that he will go far in life. At 29 he owns a bank, imagine what he will do at 49.
N.K. Sondhi (Know Your Worth : Stop Thinking, Start Doing)
Did you eat?” he asked as he backed out of the parking lot. “No.” “Do you want to stop somewhere?” “Like Burger King?” “I was thinking something a little nicer.” “I’m wearing sweaty clothes and sneakers.” Briefly taking his eyes off the road, he glanced at her. “I think you look nice.” “Says the man in a dress shirt and tie.” “Trust me, you could wear a sack and I’d still be the inappropriate factor in the equation. Let’s stop and have dinner. We’ll go someplace small and quiet.” She sighed. “Fine. But you have to take off your tie and un-tuck your shirt.” “What?” “Either that or I’m not going. I look like a slob.” His fingers noticeably tightened on the wheel. “Fine.” When they arrived at the restaurant, a little corner place with outdoor seating and Italian cuisine, Elliot stood at the car door and loosened his tie. After unclasping the top button of his shirt, he frowned at his hips. “My shirttails will be wrinkled. Can’t this be enough?” She laughed at how uncomfortable the idea of wrinkles made him. “Fine.” Untwisting the clip in her hair, she flipped her head over and shook out her waves, hoping to hide the fact that she was in an old tank top with a bleach stain on the side. Flipping back, she paused as she caught him staring. “What?” His eyes were wide behind his glasses. “Nothing.” He shook his head and looked away. He took her hand and escorted her into the restaurant. The smell of delicious pasta cranked up her hunger. The hostess greeted them, and before Nadia could manage a word, Elliot asked for a private table in the back. They were escorted to the rear of the restaurant, far away from all other patrons. “Do they know you here?” He seemed to have some pull. “No, but if you make a direct request people don’t often tell you no.” She raised a brow. “I’ll have to remember that trick.” For as gentle as he was, he had a knack for being equally commanding. His clout was subtle but undeniable. She wondered if he even realized the influence he held over others. He wore authority very well.
Lydia Michaels (Untied (Mastermind, #2))
was enough to understand what Marcel wanted... On a normal day he would sit at the table,
Cristiane Correa (DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz)
of the 2000s – mainly to preserve future relations among their heirs. Establishing the rules that will guide future generations of partners has been a concern for
Cristiane Correa (DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz)
don’t forget, George Lucas was the man who made me into a little doll! And it barely even hurt. A little doll that one of my exes could stick pins into whenever he was annoyed with me. (I found it in the drawer.) He also made me into a shampoo bottle where people could twist off my head and pour liquid out of my neck. Paging Dr. Freud! And then there was a soap that read, “Lather up with Leia and you’ll feel like a Princess yourself.” (Boys!) Oh! And the nice people at Burger King made me into a watch. And you know Mr. Potato Head? Well, they
Carrie Fisher (Wishful Drinking)
Any you’d recommend? I wouldn’t mind a lobster roll.” “I’m vegan.” This word had become ubiquitous and absurdly trendy. She supposed there were a few young women with anorexia who kept to this diet, but otherwise it had to be lip service. “I have a theory, Clarke. Want to hear it? There are no male vegans. There are men who say they are to appear more sensitive to their girlfriends or anyone else they’re hoping to lure into bed with them. Once they’re on their own, they’re in a drive-through line at Burger King.” “McDonald’s,” he said.
Stephen McCauley (My Ex-Life)
I’m a zealot wearing a broccoli suicide vest to a Burger King.
Penn Jillette (Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales)
Now, if you have a very good [brand] recognition and revenues that do not match the size of this recognition, that means that you have a great opportunity...
Cristiane Correa (DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz)
If someone fixing a broken water pipe says, “Hand me the wrench,” his co-worker will not, generally speaking, say, “And what do I get for it?”—even if they are working for Exxon-Mobil, Burger King, or Goldman Sachs. The reason is simple efficiency (ironically enough, considering the conventional wisdom that “communism just doesn’t work”): if you really care about getting something done, the most efficient way to go about it is obviously to allocate tasks by ability and give people whatever they need to do them.11 One might even say that it’s one of the scandals of capitalism that most capitalist firms, internally, operate communistically. True, they don’t tend to operate very democratically. Most often they are organized around military-style top-down chains of command. But there is often an interesting tension here, because top-down chains of command are not particularly efficient: they tend to promote stupidity among those on top and resentful foot-dragging among those on the bottom. The greater the need to improvise, the more
David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years)
Then came Dani’s turn to read a question. “‘Who’s in charge in the bedroom?’” Much to the group’s amusement, none of them got a match, and Sean didn’t think they would either as he held up his notepad. “‘I am, since I carry the big stick.’” Emma read hers with a remarkably straight face. “‘Sean, because he has a magic penis.’” “Wow. Um…so Sean and Emma have a point,” Dani said as the men nearly pissed themselves laughing. No way in hell was he leaving that unpunished, and he winked at Emma when Kevin read the next question. “‘Where’s the kinkiest place you’ve had sex?’” The fact that Joe and Keri had done the dirty deed on the back of his ATV led to a few questions about the logistics of that, but then it was Emma’s turn. “‘In bed, because Sean has no imagination.’” Roger threw an embarrassed wince his way, but his cousins weren’t shy about laughing their asses off. Sean just shrugged and held up his notepad. “In the car in the mall parking lot. Emma’s lying because she doesn’t want anybody to know being watched turns her on.” Her jaw dropped, but she recovered quickly and gave him a sweet smile that didn’t jibe with the “you are so going to get it” look in her eyes. Beth asked the next question. “‘Women, where does your man secretly dream of having sex?’” Keri knew Joe wanted to have sex in the reportedly very haunted Stanley Hotel, from King’s The Shining. Dani claimed Roger wanted to do the deed on a Caribbean beach, but he said that was her fantasy and that his was to have sex in an igloo. No amount of heckling would get him to say why. And when it came to Kevin, even Sean knew he dreamed of getting laid on the pitcher’s mound at Fenway Park. Then, God help him, it was Emma’s turn to show her answer. “‘In a Burger King bathroom.’” The room felt silent until Dani said, “Ew. Really?” “No, not really,” Sean growled. “Really,” Emma said over him. “He knows that’s the only way he can slip me a whopper.” As the room erupted in laughter, Sean knew humor was the only way they’d get through the evening with their secret intact, but he didn’t find that one very funny, himself. It was the final answer that really did him in, though. The question: “If your sex had a motto, what would it be?” Joe and Keri’s was, not surprisingly, Don’t wake the baby Kevin and Beth wrote, Better than chocolate cake, whatever that was supposed to mean. Dani wrote, Gets better with time, like fine wine, and Roger wrote, Like cheese, the older you get, the better it is, which led to a powwow about whether or not to give them a point. They probably would have gotten it if they weren’t tied with Keri and Joe, who took competitive to a cutthroat level. When they all looked at Sean, he groaned and turned his paper around. They’d lost any chance of winning way back, but he was already dreading what the smart-ass he wasn’t really engaged to had written down. “‘She’s the boss.’” The look Emma gave him as she slowly turned the notepad around gave him advance warning she was about to lay down the royal flush in this little game they’d been playing. “Size really doesn’t matter,” she said in what sounded to him like a really loud voice. Before he could say anything—and he had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth, but he had to say something--Cat appeared at the top of the stairs. “I hate to break up the party,” she said, “but it’s getting late, so we’re calling it a night.” Maybe Cat was, but Sean was just getting started.
Shannon Stacey (Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3))
McDonald's does not talk to Burger King.
Student
Mister Borderline, you gotta crew the Happy Meal, Burger King.
Petra Hermans (Voor een betere wereld)
Finally, I offer to go pick up some Burger King for all of us because I’m desperate for a distraction. And food is the perfect distraction. None of the boys want anything. They ‘can’t eat’ right now, they tell me. I envy them. I envy that their sadness and stress translate to a lack of hunger.
Jennette McCurdy (I'm Glad My Mom Died)
I'm thinking of things I like about living more than I realized; insane things considering how trivial they are. I like Burger King fries. I like watching my dad listening to Hall & Oates. The smell of new tennis balls. I love this old collection of unicorn stickers I have in a cookie tin in my closet. Maybe this is life flashing before your eyes; maybe it's supposed to be mundane.
Jodi Lynn Anderson (Each Night Was Illuminated)
Mental time travel is a powerful tool of the dopamine system. It allows us to experience a possible, though presently unreal, future as if we were there. Mental time travel depends on models because we make predictions regarding situations we haven’t yet experienced. How would my life be different if I bought this new dishwasher? What sorts of problems might an astronaut face if he traveled to Mars? What would happen if I ran that red light? Mental time travel is in constant use because it’s the mechanism for making every conscious choice in life. To the brain, each deliberate choice about the future is a matter for the dopamine system and the models it has created, whether you are deciding what to order at Burger King or the president is deciding whether to start a war. Mental time travel is responsible for every “next step” in our lives.
Daniel Z. Lieberman (The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race)
Maddy showed up around eleven to drop off Scarlet and take me dress shopping. She used her mom skills to get me off the couch. “Hey, pumpkin, I’ll get you a strawberry shake if you get up now,” she whispered, stroking my head. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, baby? A big strawberry shake from Burger King. Does that sound good?” “Can I have whipped cream too?” I asked with my eyes still closed. “Sure, sweetie.” Tempted by a promised reward, I shuffled after her.
Bijou Hunter (Damaged and the Dragon (Damaged, #5))
Americans exhibit a strange and inconsistent attitude toward their dropouts. In theory, this is a nation that was built by the rebels and the nonconformists — more specifically, by the recalcitrant revolutionaries of Valley Forge, the chippy entrepreneurs of the frontier and of Silicon Valley, and by the ambitious Lincolnian auto-didacts who looked at their conditions and sought to improve them on their own terms. In practice, however, America is becoming increasingly rigid and Babbit-like. When a given individual makes it without school, we lavish him with praise and with adulation and we explain his rise with saccharine appeals to the American spirit; when our own children suggest that they might wish to dropout, however, we tut-tut and roll our eyes and make sneering jokes about Burger King.
Charles C.W. Cooke
Another example of motivation in advertising relates to the old saying “Sex sells.” Long an advertising standard, images of buff, scantily clad (and usually female) bodies are used to hawk everything from the latest Victoria’s Secret lingerie to domain names through GoDaddy .com and fast food chains such as Carl’s Jr. and Burger King (figure 4). These and countless other ads use the voyeuristic promise of pleasure to capture attention and motivate action.
Nir Eyal (Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products)
food prices had gone up considerably in a week, almost triple what they had been before Collins took over. Eating at Burger King or McDonald’s was almost as expensive as eating at a four star restaurant. Stopping at night, sometimes they stayed in a motel or camped outdoors. The closer they came to passing the Mississippi, the more camping they had to do, since motels were getting harder and harder to find without wasting all of their gas and money trying to look for one or pay for one.
Cliff Ball (Times of Trouble: Christian End Times Novel (The End Times Saga Book 2))
He explained that fast-food chains including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s have swapped out hydrogenated oils and started using regular vegetable oil instead. “As those oils are heated, you’re creating toxic oxidative breakdown products,” he said. “One of those products is a compound called an aldehyde, which interferes with DNA. Another is formaldehyde, which is extremely toxic.
Nina Teicholz (The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet)
Popeyes Naked Sandwiches: At any Popeyes, you have the option to get your sandwich “naked,” which means no breading on your meat. 196 Long John Silver’s Side of Crumbs: A free box of batter parts that have fallen off the fish or chicken. It’s a great topping for salads. 197 Dunkin’ Donuts Turbo Hot Coffee: A coffee with an extra shot of espresso in it. 198 Burger King’s Frings: Can’t decide between fries and onion rings? Order the Frings and they’ll give you half and half. 199 McDonald’s Monster Mac: A Big Mac made with eight meat patties. 200 Onions and garlic are both foods that accelerate
Keith Bradford (Life Hacks: Any Procedure or Action That Solves a Problem, Simplifies a Task, Reduces Frustration, Etc. in One's Everyday Life (Life Hacks Series))
Frankly, out in America, you get the feeling that America is dying. And along its highways and byways, the country seems less ready to leap into the future than it is already clinging to a sepia-toned past when America stood as the unencumbered Big Boy in a Manichean world of good and evil, capitalists and Commies. Even the neon oasis-pods of the interstate—the perpetual clusters of Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Denny’s, and Burger King—are crowded with people strangely reclaiming bygone days, connecting themselves to some prior eating experience, reveling in the familiar. We gas
Michael Paterniti (Love and Other Ways of Dying: Essays)
Somewhere between Burger King and now, the Syrian’s sleight-of-hand security system worked. Pike wasn’t here. I never doubted, not once, he would find me. My task was to stay alive until it happened or I could escape on my own. The United States Army sent me to something called Ranger School. The Ranger motto was sua sponte. It meant you’re on your own, asshole. Okay.
Robert Crais (Taken (Elvis Cole, #15; Joe Pike, #4))
Joe Pike watched his friend Elvis Cole leave the Burger King parking lot, then entered the longitude and latitude into his GPS. Pike was not using a civilian GPS. He used a military handheld known as a Defense Advanced GPS Receiver, which was also known as a dagger. The DAGR was missile-guidance precise, could not be jammed, and contained the cryptography to use the Army and Air Force GPS satellite system. The DAGR was illegal for civilians to own, but Pike had used it in remote locations throughout Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Central and South America. These were military contract jobs for multinational corporations, mostly, but also the United States government. The government gave the DAGR to him even though it was a crime for him to own it. Governments do that. Thirty-two
Robert Crais (Taken (Elvis Cole, #15; Joe Pike, #4))
Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop. Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25 However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.
Charles Duhigg (The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business)
I’ll be Burger King and you be McDonald’s. I’ll have it my way and you’ll be lovin’ it
Vi Keeland (Made for You (Cole, #2))
For two months, between the crash of Lehman and the end of negotiations, we were really anxious,” recalled Brito. “Things were out of our hands and nobody knew where the world was going... We announced the transaction in one world and signed the contract to buy it in another... Some of the banks in our consortium almost disappeared... It was as though we had entered a tunnel and, somehow or other, had to get to the other end – only by the other end, it had suddenly started to rain. What could you do? Begin to think of a plan B, a plan C, on other ways of financing...
Cristiane Correa (DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz)
In the United States, most boards are benign, and the power resides primarily with the chief executive; boards tend to only become significant when it comes time to replace a failing CEO. The AB Inbev board, however, is the primary power center in the company. It exemplifies that boards can play a central role in setting BHAGs, developing strategy, sustaining culture, seizing opportunities and leading through tumultuous times. Without such a strong and unified board, AB Inbev would not have come through the 2008-09 challenges as strong as it did (and perhaps even not at all). The AB Inbev board pays constant attention to its own culture, disciplines and vibrancy, with as much fanatic attention as building and preserving the management culture of the company. Most important, it makes decisions and allocates capital for long-term shareholder value, measured in multiple decades, not in terms of quarterly moments. If more boards behaved this way, we would have better performing enterprises and lasting companies.
Cristiane Correa (DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz)
CSPI encouraged fast-food companies such as Burger King and McDonald’s to abandon beef tallow for partially hydrogenated soybean oil in their french-fry operations.
Nina Teicholz (The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet)
It’s so old, I think when it opened, Burger King was still a prince.
James Patterson (I Funny: A Middle School Story FREE PREVIEW)
Q: How did Burger King get Dairy Queen pregnant? A: He forgot to wrap his Whopper.
Scott McNeely (Ultimate Book of Jokes: The Essential Collection of More Than 1,500 Jokes)
Stella’s had the best burgers in Omaha, after all.
Rachel Higginson (The Reluctant King (Star-Crossed #5))
You can’t compete with your own partner. You can’t get upset about who gets credit for a deal. The idea that one has to win doesn’t work in any
Cristiane Correa (DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz)
So this is a party in No Hope?” Brent asked, plopping down on the scratchy plaid couch in the corner. “Don’t act like Tyrone is better,” Jason said, turning defensive. “At least we have a Burger King and a Sheetz,” Chris offered. “Sheetz is a mark of civilization,” Webb agreed. “It’s a convenience store,” Jason deflected, but they all knew Webb was right.
Leslie J. Welch (The Goodbyes)
In one set of experiments, for example, researchers affiliated with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism trained mice to press levers in response to certain cues until the behavior became a habit. The mice were always rewarded with food. Then, the scientists poisoned the food so that it made the animals violently ill, or electrified the floor, so that when the mice walked toward their reward they received a shock. The mice knew the food and cage were dangerous—when they were offered the poisoned pellets in a bowl or saw the electrified floor panels, they stayed away. When they saw their old cues, however, they unthinkingly pressed the lever and ate the food, or they walked across the floor, even as they vomited or jumped from the electricity. The habit was so ingrained the mice couldn’t stop themselves.1.23 It’s not hard to find an analog in the human world. Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop. Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25 However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.
Charles Duhigg (The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business)