Life is a game

One of the consequences of teaching a class that is part economics and part game theory is that you tend to start viewing all aspects of life as a game. Sometimes this can be good of course, and I have an example for you. Perhaps this can improve your life by some microscopic amount.

Our family pretty regularly orders from the drive through at McDonald's, and we get the same thing each time. Ellie wants the kid's meal for a girl with a coke, Linda likes a #2 with a coke, and I usually get a grilled classic sandwich without mayo and a coke. (Part of living the "Supersize me" life when Linda was in the hospital means I now tend to go for the low-fat offering and I don't order fries.)

My order is pretty regularly completed incorrectly. The most common mistakes are that they give me the meal instead of the sandwich (so I get and get charged for fries) or they forget my drink. I suppose it has to do with the "without mayo" part which distracts them--they have to hit extra keys for that. I realized that I could probably optimize the probability of my purchase being done right simply by changing the sequence in which I ask for items.

Historically, I have ordered my items last, after Ellie's and Linda's, for no particular reason. I realized that asking for a "grilled classing sandwich without mayo and a medium coke" at the end of my order was doing me in. It has pretty much the same rhythm as ordering the meal with a coke. All they have to do is plonk their finger down on the wrong button (which they probably press a dozen times every day) and my order is wrong. Or they get caught up using the override button to remove the mayo and then leave off my drink.

Solution: order the drink first and the sandwich second. It breaks the pattern. Since the drink is first, they don't forget it, and since the typical pattern is broken the temptation to hit the "meal" key is reduced. My order comes through more reliably.

The best part of my solution is that it seems to work.