hamstercult--is burger king an ice queen?

"Stupid people should have to wear signs that just say, 'I'm Stupid.' That way you wouldn't rely on them, would you? You wouldn't ask them anything. It would be like, "Excuse me...oops...never mind, didn't see your sign.'" -Bill Engvall

I thought I saw something the other day that would qualify for "Here's Your Sign" status. But, low and behold, it has actually started making sense to me.

I had to go to The Orion to finish writing my column for the week, and decided to just grab lunch at Burger King on the way. Later on, when eating my food, I noticed something on the drink cup that came with my value meal.

Take a look at this:

Look at those two circle-like ovals I made. (I used Paint, cut me some slack) The bottom one is a mark showing how high the BK employee should fill the cup with ice. The top circle is mark showing the level that soda should be at.

My first impression when I saw this is that it showed a new low in human intelligence, that somewhere along the line Burger King hired somebody dumb enough to forget putting ice in a cup, or soda first then ice or something really abnormally dumb like that.

But people around me had alternative suggestions.

"It's probably to make it more uniform," another Orion editor suggested. "They know exactly how much ice and soda to use to maximize profit."

For my roommate, who has battled with teeth sensitivity problems his whole life, it brought up childhood memories.

"My parents would also fight with fast-food people not to put ice in my drink because it hurt my teeth," he said.

So, maybe this ice mark thing isn't all that dumb. In fact, here's a couple of suggestion of other ice marks that should be considered.

First, there's Dentyne Ice:

And Vanilla Ice:

Have any other "ice level" suggestions? Fire off an email and let me know! Put "IceSuggestions" (no space) in the subject line.