Sheerly out of necessity, I had to go to a McDonald’s this morning to pick up lunch, so I could eat on the way to work.

Big mistake.

I don’t know if it’s an effect of the pandemic, or simply a sign of America’s cultural and intellectual malaise, but people are doing the strangest and most idiotic things as a result of not knowing how to think properly.

The McDonald’s is one I won’t go back to ever again, at 8210 Brook Rd. in Richmond. After they handed me a bag with my food, they gave me this:

My mouth hung open. “The fountain isn’t working?” I said.

The girl at the window shook her head.

The piece of paper in the photo was actually inside the bag. I thought it was my receipt, but the paper is blank, and one side is gummy, as if it were a sheet of adhesive stickers.

So I have no idea what that was doing in my bag, but I do know I don’t go to restaurants to do it myself. If the fountain wasn’t working, they should have told me. If the fountain wasn’t working, they should have given me a choice of taking a canned drink or none at all.

Instead they told me nothing until I asked about it. What would they have done if they had run out of bags for the fries? Perhaps, given me a handful and said, “Bag them yourself.” If they had run out of buns, would they have handed me a hot burger patty and pointed me across the way to Food Lion to buy bread?

The mismanagement here is obvious. If I didn’t occasionally have to go to fast food restaurants, I wouldn’t. I definitely won’t go back to this one.