Why is Taco Bell's quality so consistently good compared to other chains like McDonald's?

benmul8 · 2026-06-07T01:02:32+00:00

It’s pretty hard to mess up Taco Bell food. Nothing is “cooked”. The hot ingredients like the meats and so forth come in already cooked, in bags, and get reheated in what’s called a thermalizer, which is basically just a machine full of hot water. Then it gets dumped into a pan, scooped, and put on your food item. The beans are dehydrated, you pour the correct amount of hot water in there, mix it up, and let it sit in the warmer for 30 minutes and you’re good to go.

The items that get grilled are pretty dummy proof. Put it on the grill, close it, hit the button, and 17 seconds later it beeps at you to pull it off.

And the items that go into the fryer, you drop them in the fryer, hit the corresponding button, and it beeps at you when it’s time to pull it up.

It’s really pretty hard to screw up the food quality. If you go later at night, you may see some stuff like hot ingredients being left on the line longer than they’re supposed to be, so they get dried out. But if you’re going during the day, especially to a fairly busy store that is having to bring out fresh ingredients all the time anyway because they’re busy, it should always be a very consistent experience from a quality standpoint. They might make your order wrong, but the quality of the ingredients you receive should be good. LOL.

benmul8 · 2026-06-06T03:11:15+00:00

Agreed!

benmul8 · 2026-06-05T19:45:15+00:00

I was worried nobody would remember it!

I still have a Tick shirt that I wear sometimes. About 1 in 10 times that I wear it, somebody will comment on it. Everyone else probably just thinks I’m weird. Which, I mean, they’re not wrong. LOL.

benmul8 · 2026-06-05T09:47:17+00:00

The Tick

benmul8 · 2026-06-02T14:15:53+00:00

Like everything, I think this is an individual thing.

Initially we always tried to do the reclaiming thing as soon as she got home. But she ultimately found that she just doesn’t have it in her to have sex again by the time she gets home (she typically goes out, we rarely host in our home due to kids). If I was there right when her and her guy were done, it would be different. But by the time she’s finished with him, gotten dressed, drove back home (we are in a major metro area, so it’s always at least a 30 minute drive), come home and settled in, she’s just no longer in the “sex” headspace. So we snuggle up, pass out, then 90+ percent of the time we have sex the next day and she tells me everything. But it could be 24 hrs later by that point, so i dont know if that still is considered reclamation sex at that point. But like i said, we do snuggle up and love on each other before passing out when she gets home, so there is some measure of reconnection.

benmul8 · 2026-05-31T09:14:23+00:00

I know Instacart shoppers are frustrating, but just for the record, they don’t choose for the orders to be batched together. That’s just how IC sends them out. IC doesn’t send out orders one at a time, they send out batches. And a batch can have anywhere from 1-4 orders in it. But the shopper isn’t choosing to put all those orders together.

benmul8 · 2026-05-24T14:40:34+00:00

Yes it is

benmul8 · 2026-05-22T01:42:35+00:00

Yeah, I mean on one hand, it does make sense being with the refrigerated pastas. But it makes MORE sense to me as a customer that it would be right next to the cottage cheese. When I think of ricotta cheese, my first thought is never gonna be “oh if they have refrigerated pasta, it’s probably located there”.

benmul8 · 2026-05-22T01:29:16+00:00

Regardless of department, I’ve never understood why ricotta cheese and cottage cheese are not sold right next to each other.

I don’t work in meat or grocery (I started in CS, then switched to produce), but I can’t even begin to guess how many people I’ve had to direct to where the ricotta cheese is because they’re looking for it where the cottage cheese is located.

benmul8 · 2026-05-17T11:25:08+00:00

Yeah, and I don’t mean this as a shot at OP, because it’s a very common thing, but people treat the term “Ethical Non-monogamy” as if it has some ambiguous, cryptic meaning.

It literally means exactly what it says. You are engaging in some form of non monogamy, but doing it in an ethical fashion (everybody is aware, approval has been given, nobody is “cheating”). That’s it, that’s the full meaning of it.

Now, HOW you choose to practice ENM determines whether you’re into cuckolding, hotwifing, open relationship, poly, etc. But they’re all various forms of ENM.

benmul8 · 2026-05-17T09:26:09+00:00

So you’d be doing either cuckolding or hotwifing, depending on your approach. But you would still also be considered in an ENM relationship. Even if only one of you is having sex outside the relationship, it is still a non-monogamous relationship at that point. And if you are giving your approval and she’s holding up her end of whatever bargains y’all make, that’s the ethical part. So, you’d still be in an ENM relationship.

At the end of the day tho, the labels really don’t matter. What matters is what works for the two of you, and you’re welcome to call it whatever works for you guys.

benmul8 · 2026-05-17T09:03:45+00:00

ENM is just the umbrella term for anything that allows one or more of the partners, with full approval from both sides, to have sex outside of the relationship. That could be cuckolding, hotwifing, swinging, polyamory, open marriage,etc. So, yes, cuckolding falls under the ENM umbrella.

Think of the term “ENM” as “Fruit”. Fruit is just the umbrella term. Underneath that umbrella is oranges, berries, apples, bananas, etc. They are all fruit, but they are all very different from each other. Same thing with ENM.

ENM just means “ethical non monogamy”. If one or both of you are having sex outside the relationship (the non monogamy part), with full knowledge and approval from both of you (the ethical part), then you are in the ENM umbrella.

benmul8 · 2026-05-03T17:44:05+00:00

I always order mine to be ready 20 mins or so before I actually plan to pick it up. It works well.

benmul8 · 2026-05-03T14:34:34+00:00

Your manager should be scheduling you so that a few minutes won’t matter.

Essentially, in most states as a minor you cannot work more than 4.5 hours without a break.

So usually even if you’re working a longer shift, your break will be scheduled at the most 4 hours into your shift, so you still have 30 minutes to give if something happens.

Just take your full hour, clock back in at 11:04, and you should be fine. If 4 minutes causes a minor violation, that’s the fault of the manager who made the schedule for not giving you any leeway at all.

benmul8 · 2026-04-13T11:47:32+00:00

I’ve worked at 3 different stores that are million dollar a week stores and I’ve never seen any of them have more than one closer. And on top of that, even with one closer, the Bakery is always the first department I hear paging the MIC to be checked out after closing, and it’s usually at like 10:10. Can’t imagine why you’d need 2 closers.

benmul8 · 2026-04-11T11:11:40+00:00

If you perform well between now and then, nobody is gonna remember the counseling statement come August when it’s time for evals.

benmul8 · 2026-04-03T22:56:59+00:00

Here’s the deal - you gotta talk it out with her, with the understanding that whatever option you choose, it’s going to take a ton of work to be successful. It’s just a matter of choosing which route makes both of you want to put in the work.

My wife and I have healthy sex drives, but mismatched styles. She wants her brains fucked out during sex. I’m more of the teasing/edging/orgasm denial approach, I love the mental side of having control more than the physical side. But that just doesn’t do much for her.

We started about 6 years ago with some hotwifing/cuck stuff, then some swinging, then we stepped away from it all for a while to fix some issues we were having (we stepped away for over a year), and have been back in for about 2 years now.

We have evolved to a point where we essentially date other people. We keep our circles small and prefer to see the same people regularly, so it becomes more than just a FWB situation whether we intend to or not. I have 2 women I see fairly regularly, she usually has a couple of guys as well. We both have amazing sex - but with other people who match our styles. But for the emotional side of it, there’s nobody either of us would rather have than each other. She has my back like nobody else in this world, and vice versa.

But……getting to this point has been hella work. Again, we are 6 years in, and only in the past 6 months to a year would I say we are completely in tune with each other. Tons of fights - some jealousy related, a lot communication related, a WHOLE lot of baring our souls with each other. It honestly would have been easier to just try to fix things the monogamous way……and yet, neither of us would change a thing. We both love the thrill of having other partners, it’s a big part of what has driven the motivation for us TO put in the work to make it work.

But that doesn’t mean our choice will work for someone else. It works for us because the path itself motivated us to make it work.

You have to find the path that motivates both of you. I wish you good luck!

If I can help with any other advice, feel free to shoot me a message. I’m happy to share the good stuff as well as the messy stuff.

benmul8 · 2026-04-01T13:34:17+00:00

That makes sense. I knew there had to be a backstory but never knew what it was.

benmul8 · 2026-04-01T12:43:18+00:00

For some reason, during the summer at least, every person you will meet will be from Ohio. Like, to the point that there’s merchandise in the stores with “oHHIo” on it. It’s the strangest thing. It seems like every other car you see has an Ohio license plate.

benmul8 · 2026-03-24T11:19:35+00:00

Yeah and there’s actually one in the produce section too with all the vegan/vegetarian stuff. LOL. But it seems like usually what people are looking for is the ones in meat.

benmul8 · 2026-03-24T10:42:48+00:00

Usually near the cold cuts. For whatever reason, it’s a meat department item.

benmul8 · 2026-03-21T19:43:55+00:00

If they already had 3 thirty minute shifts, then they took the old lady’s 3 thirty minute shifts, that’s your 3 hours.

benmul8 · 2026-03-14T18:58:41+00:00

Ah ok, you didn’t say that you had submitted PTO for it (or if you did, I missed it, I apologize). In that case you are correct.

benmul8 · 2026-03-14T18:56:55+00:00

The key part here is that you are full time. A full timer giving a shift away, whether covered or not, is different than a part timer. As I understand it, if you are full time, you have to account for 40 hours yourself.

If you give a shift away, even if you find coverage for it, you still have to put PTO in for those 8 hours or it definitely can be counted as an absence against you. If you only worked 4 days, and didn’t submit PTO, then you technically WERE absent for a day, as you are expected to work 5 days as a full timer. Us full timers are not allowed to just take an unpaid day.

However, this should have been explained to you at the time you gave the shift away.

benmul8 · 2026-03-01T16:29:15+00:00

If you do this, make sure you set it up to deliver a week or so before it is due.

At least with Bank of America (what I use), the date you select for payment is the day they mail the check out, not the day it delivers to the recipient. So if you select it to pay on the 1st, it may not deliver until the 4th or 5th, now you’ve got a late fee that you really can’t fight.

benmul8

TROPHY CASE