Welcome to WAL-MART

I again had Dunkin Donuts issues this morning. After waiting in line at the Carousel Center in Syracuse, NY I ordered "A seasame bagel with ham, egg, and cheese." Now, the cashier had to re-enter this information because, the "ham, egg, and cheese" option must be selected BEFORE the "seasame" option. She asked if I wanted anything else and I responded "Medium French Vanilla regul... (ahemm) cream and sugar" (grumble). And guess what. We get to start from scratch because the "Value Combo #4," which I now had qualified for, has to be ordered first.

So the correct syntax is not the natural, "I would like a seasame bagel with ham, egg, and cheese and a french vanilla coffee with cream and sugar." Nope, it's "Value Combo #4, medium, ham, egg, and cheese, on a bagel, seasame. French vanilla coffee with cream and sugar." Okay, not the end of the world. But for all the flack we give minimum wage employees for being incompetent, we've also set them up to fail. It should be spectacularly easy to write a software program that allows options to be selected in any order, and then parses them when the "total" button is pressed. They're screwed from the get go much like the irritating "Welcome to Walmart" people who are required to welcome you even if there is a huge line forming at the only open cash register. Seems the middle-management operations-types making 10x what their underlings do aren't any smarter.