Ordering from a fast food place is like having to choose your best friend. Can’t I just have one of everything? Sometimes this is not feasible, as my doctor tells me, which leaves me in an uncomfortable position: how do you tell a taco it’s not his turn?

One way I’ve found around this problem is to let someone else do the choosing for me. That way I can just shrug my shoulders at the burger and say, “Maybe next time, pal,” and he’ll know I really mean it. But hiring somebody else to pick my fast food meals is probably costly and probably strange enough that only very desperate people would take on the task.

So, instead, I have the chef make my selections for me. Whether that chef is Ronald McDonald, Jack in the Box, or, uh, Señor Taco Bell, they tend to have a solution for people like me. Every place has meal packages, sure, to help you take the responsibility out of ordering for yourself. But these meals tend to be essentially the same thing, every time you go back to the restaurant. You still have to actually choose a meal to something happen, and that’s a stumbling block for me.

But those latter two restaurants, Jack in the Box and Taco Bell, kindly offer a solution to my problem. They offer to sell items in boxes for a set price. And the best part: there’s almost always a new box to try, every time I go! I can just drive through and say, give me whatever’s in that box, sir or madam, and they’re happy to oblige. Whatever four-course special the chef has ready for me (plus soda), I’m glad to accept. I trust their judgment.

I did run into one problem with this method when I tried Jack in the Box a few weeks ago. I went after nine, when a feedbox mystically lowers its price from $8 into $6. I gave my order at the drive through speaker, and sat back with a smile: no more choices need be made today. No more responsibility. And then something happened.

“Which box, sir?”

“Excuse me?”

“Which one? We have three munchie boxes.”

“Oh, well, I think it has jalapenos.”

“Which one? Two of them have jalapenos.”

He called my bluff: I had no idea what I was ordering, and I didn’t want one. I wanted to know as little as possible about what I’d be shoving into my face fifteen minutes later.

“Just give me the most recent one,” I said, “from the commercials.”

“Is that the chicken?”

“Sure, just give me that one.”

“Anything else?”

“No, sorry.” I didn’t know how else to extricate myself from this mess. I wanted the red sauce off of my hands.

I paid and left, with a box. The whole point of having them choose the ingredients of my meal was to avoid making any choices myself. They ruined it by creating multiple boxes.

I haven’t been back to Jack in the Box since. At least Taco Bell usually keeps their boxes to one option. I trust them.

Jack in the Box tacos are incredibly weird and pretty bad, as a side note. I highly recommend them–just get somebody else to order.