The drink does not "come with" the value meal.

This is a pet peeve of mine. I'm not really mad at the customers. It's not their fault. They have somehow been led to believe that the drink "comes with" the value meal, and that they are actually getting a "bargain."

In a value meal, the sandwich and fries are together as a unit. You are charged one price for the sandwich and fries together. The price is different depending on whether you get the fries medium, or large. (No, you cannot get small fries as part of a value meal.) This price is slightly lower than the price you would pay to buy a sandwich and fries without getting a value meal. I can't remember how much lower. I would have to go look. It might vary from store to store, too. That is the only thing that is a "bargain" or "value" or whatever you want to call it.

The drink is charged separately from the sandwich-fries price. You are REQUIRED to buy the drink. You do not get any kind of deal, or bargain, or "value," on the drink. The drink is the regular price. It does not "come with" the value meal.

You can get any type of drink. Don't worry about whether you are "substituting" some other drink instead of the drink that "comes with" the meal. There is no specific drink that comes with any meal. For instance, you could get an iced coffee with a Happy Meal if you felt like it, instead of a kids' drink like apple juice. You are expected to "substitute" something, and in fact, we're HOPING that you do. Don't apologize for substituting the "wrong" drink instead of the one you are "supposed" to get. We're glad. It makes us richer.

The only thing you can't do is you can't buy the "value" drinks, the $1.00 drinks, like the small soda, with certain meals. You can with some meals, but not all of them. At my store, if you buy a large sweet tea with a value meal, the sweet tea is a different price than the usual $1.00 price that you get if you buy the sweet tea alone.

Why can't you get the cheap "value" drinks? Because the drink is where the profit comes from in the value meal. We make lots and lots of profit on the drink, and that profit makes up for the small amount that we lose when we give you a lower price for the sandwich and fries. So we want to charge the full price for drinks. The value meal encourages people (or, actually, requires them) to buy a drink, even if they don't really want the drink, and they think they're getting a deal, so they buy a drink they don't really want. Without value meals, we would probably sell a lot fewer drinks, and the drinks are very profitable.

You cannot get a value meal and then say "I don't want the drink." If you do that, the order taker will roll their eyes, delete the value meal that they just entered in the computer, and charge you for a sandwich and a fry separately at their regular price, and they won't be bothered trying to explain this to you. Also, you can't cheat and get a free cup of tap water with a value meal. That will also get an eye roll and a deletion and re-entry on the computer. The computer won't let us do those things. We don't have a choice about it.

When you get the reduced-price sandwich and fries, plus the drink, the total price is higher than, for instance, getting only a sandwich and fries. You are spending more money total. Many, many people have been fooled by this sales tactic, at many different places, not just at McDonald's, but at grocery stores and any other place that says "Buy 10 for $10!" Do you really need 10 gizmos? You are spending more money total than you would have spent if you only got one or two at the regular price. Sometimes, you really don't need 10 gizmos taking up space in your house even though they were a bargain.

There is only one sense in which a particular drink "comes with" a value meal. When you read the prices listed on the sign, and you ask, "How can I get that price?" there is only one particular drink that will give you the price it says on the sign. That's usually what people mean when they ask for the drink that "comes with" the meal. With the dinner value meals, this means a medium soda or a large soda. With the breakfast value meals, it's a small coffee. If you get anything else except a small coffee, you won't get the total price listed on the sign, you'll pay more, because all the other drinks are more expensive than a small coffee.

I have had arguments with customers, I have had customers get totally confused, as they try to tell me that they are being cheated because the total price of their value meal is higher than they think it ought to be, because they ordered some other drink instead of, for instance, the small coffee with their breakfast. I can show them the receipt, I can explain how our prices work, and they will still sit there and argue with me and get confused and annoyed. They have this idea in their head that we are supposed to be doing them a favor by giving them "value," instead of doing what we are really doing, which is, finding a way to make more profits for McDonald's, by requiring people to buy a drink that they might not want.

The Happy Meal is the one that causes the most trouble. I have had people insist that they don't want a drink with their Happy Meal. You don't have a choice about it. There is no way to type it into the computer and take off the drink and reduce the price. If you get a Happy Meal, that is going to have the price of a drink added to it somewhere, and the only thing you have a choice about is getting the cheapest possible drink. I've had to tell customers "We will charge you for a drink, but if you want, we just won't give it to you." They don't want to be handed a drink that will get thrown in the garbage. Again, there is no way that we can get rid of the drink to reduce the price of a meal.

If you don't want a drink with your Happy Meal, and if it's a matter of principle, and you don't want to be charged for an imaginary drink that you will either not receive, or will throw away, then you could order all of the items separately, the sandwich, the fries, and the toy (and you will be charged for the toy), and you could ask us to please put them into a Happy Meal box or bag for you.

By the way, children probably don't love Happy Meal toys as much as you think they do. I remember being a child, and I felt sorry for all the junky toys that I never played with, the toys that got buried in the bottom of the toybox and left there for years and years. Happy Meal toys are exactly that kind of toy. I couldn't bear the thought of throwing a toy in the garbage. (Ever seen Toy Story? I felt that way about my toys. Every toy was alive. It was wasteful to bring home a "live" toy and then bury it in the bottom of the toybox and then feel sorry for it. And I already felt that way when I was a kid.)

So... that was a huge rant. I was going to try to make a long story short, but instead I made a short story long.