Does my Chicken Caesar Salad come with chicken?

If I had a nickel for every time I couldn’t figure out whether there would be chicken on my chicken caesar salad, I would have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot — but it’s funny that it’s happened twice.

Screenshot from a food delivery service. It reads grilled chicken caesar salad. Protein addition (optional) select up to one. Add grilled chicken plus $4.35. Add shrimp plus $4.35. Add cheesesteak plus $4.35. Add chicken cheesesteak plus $4.35
Wait, I thought the grilled chicken caesar salad came with chicken. Why are they offering to add chicken? And what happens if I add shrimp instead? Do I get chicken and shrimp? And who on God’s green earth would put chicken cheesesteak filling on a caesar salad? The Parmesan will get in a fist fight with the Cheeze Wiz you do something like that.
A screenshot from a food delivery service. It reads: chicken caesar salad. last ordered on 7/13/23. fresh chicken and romaine tossed with caesar dressing, pecorino romano, croutons, and fresh pepper. 2 in your cart. Edit button. Chicken addition. Optional, select up to one. Add chicken plus $3.75. Preparation addition. Optional, select up to one. The scrollable area cuts off and the add to order button displaying $16.00 is the last visible thing on the screen.
Once again, it’s a chicken caesar salad. You’re asking me if I want to add chicken to a chicken caesar salad. So is there no chicken now, making it just a caesar salad, but the plan salads weren’t selling well? is this double chicken? if it’s double chicken can you just say that?

I do a lot of food shopping online. It always comes with mixed results because almost all of these systems are asking humans to choose how to list their own products in vast systems that have no idea what products are or why they might have different fields. So I don’t blame the people adding the salad to the menu so much as I do the menu system itself. [1]Don’t get me started on the checkboxes used for “select up to one” scenarios. That’s what radio buttons are for, people!

No, this is more about assumptions. When we’re shopping for salad, we expect that a caesar salad would have no chicken, and a chicken caesar salad would have chicken. We don’t expect either of them to have shrimp, because that would be a shrimp caesar salad.

But what happens when you want a plain caesar salad (no protein addition whatsoever) but the restaurant only lists the grilled chicken salad? There’s no option that says “no chicken”, but the options to “add chicken” seem to imply that there isn’t chicken there to begin with. Then again, it could be adding chicken to the chicken.

Four panels of a woman looking like she's thinking very hard while harder and harder math equations are displayed around her indicating how hard she is thinking

The top example is, in fact, adding chicken to the chicken. The bottom example should be listed as a caesar salad because if you don’t add chicken to your chicken caesar salad you get no chicken.

In both cases, the title “chicken caesar salad” by itself is harmless, as is “add chicken”. It’s in the context where they’re put together but no explanation is given for what you will actually get that matters.

Notes

Notes
↑1 Don’t get me started on the checkboxes used for “select up to one” scenarios. That’s what radio buttons are for, people!

How close are they? So so far away.

An accessibility specialist named Michelle P. posted this on one of the Slack boards I use. She gave me permission to repost it. Person to vendor: How close are you to automating screen reader testing? Me, on the call: There’s no such thing, screen reader testing and automated testing don’t work like that. Person, to … Continue reading “How close are they? So so far away.”

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