Talking Trash

There are a lot of constants in QSR. The stainless steel counters with registers. The overhead menus. The uncomfortable chairs.

And of course, the bulky rectangular trash cans with the single swinging door that requires a certain finesse to get your cup and wrapper to fall just so. At their worst you could call them residents of the Design Hall of Shame; at their best they are occasionally annoying.

These cans almost always say THANK YOU. But when I was in a Miami Airport Burger King recently this one stuck out. In the least likely of places there was a bit of trashy poetry. A knowing gesture by some insider (Crispin Porter Bogusky perhaps?) to the tiny tray-and-trash struggle many of us have endured to get our wrapper where it belongs.

What other forgotten corners of the retail environment are a little rough around the edges, in need of a bit of humor or at least acknowledgment of the friction they cause? At a minimum this trash talk left me walking out the door with a small but significant smile on my face.