Billions and billions served.

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It used to say this on the McDonald's road signs under where it said McDonald's. Nowadays, at where I live, they have done away with that.

In the Sixties that sign would say an actual number ...of folks "served".

And as you would expect the number gradually got bigger bigger over the years as they "served" more people.

"Over 60 million served", "over a hundred million served", "over 200 million served", "a billion served", and so on, as my childhood, and the decade wore on.

Finally they stopped counting and started to phase that out by just saying "billions and billions served" sometime in maybe the Seventies. And that was the unchanging message on their facade for a couple decades. And now apparently they have even taken that sign away, and they dont say anything numerical all anymore.

Today I saw a truck near a McDonald's with an ad for an Egg McMuffin on the side of it. The ad showed a picture of an Egg McMuffin and said that it wouldn't exist without Canadians farmers. I got what they meant, they need the farmers for wheat wheat and eggs and stuff, but the ad kind of implied they're putting Canadian farmers *in* the McMuffins.

And that slogan "billions and billions served" kind of sounds like they're serving burgers made of people instead of burgers *to* people.

As the kids on You Can't Do That On Television would say, "WHO DO YOU THINK IS *IN* THE BURGERS?"

If space aliens landed those signs would confuse them, and lead them to think that McDonald's "serves its fellow man".

I haven't seen them in years.

Is it me, or are new McDonald's eateries looking more and more drab?

I haven't been to a McDonald's in decades. I'm vegetarian and gluten free so they don't serve much that I could eat, but I also just don't think it's good. When I ate meat and wheat I would eat there sometimes if it was convenient, but I never much liked it.

And I'm glad they got rid of the Billions and Billions served!

A friend interpreted it "billions of burgers served", and said "you dont care about the billions theyve served. You care about the one you're eating right now". But I am rather sure it meant "billions of customers served".

Nah, your friend was right, it's the number of burgers that McDonald's has served and not the number of customers they've served.

The proof is that the signs used to say 'sold' and not 'served' and I guess they changed it because saying they've served billions of burgers to people sounds less corporate I guess than 'we've sold billions of burgers'.

Hmmm... I guess you're right that those signs did say "sold".

But then they both diversified their meals beyond just burgers. And they thought it sounded less crass to say...we serve people...rather "sell burgers".