As someone who only orders cheese on burgers (although with the buns), it means they only want the sandwich to consist of the meat and cheese (hold all other toppings; so if it would normally come with pickles, hold those).

If I go through a typical drive-thru, I order it like this: "cheeseburger plain, with just the cheese" (varied slightly based on the fastfood chain in question). The first plain part removes all the other toppings (or plausibly all the toppings), the with cheese part confirms that you actually do want a cheeseburger and that you only want the cheese. I've found that specific order instruction to be the closest to universally working across all chains, while generating the fewest errors, after ~25 years of testing combinations.

Exactly.. if you don't say that part, they'll usually remove the cheese too. Similar on experimenting on how to order. "Diet Dr. Pepper" is another hard one, often you will get regular, or diet coke.

The dipping cup ranch, for those curious is because the ranch dressing has a lot of added sugar/carbs and the dipping cups are like 1.5g each. Severely diabetic and nearly 0 carb has been the only effective way to manage it well.

I worked McDonald’s drive thru as a kid and plain cheese burger meant bun cheese and meat. They even had a key for it on the POS, it was completely standardized.

Of course, it’s always possible some new employee would mess it up, or anything on your order actually. With turn over so high, there was no shortage of such errors.

I worked at a couple different McD's in my teens, was an opening manager at one for over a year at 19. Never underestimate nature's ability to build a better idiot.

No ketchup, pickles, onions or mustard.

Or bun

It’s happened. At the McDs I worked at we’d put the rest of the burger on the tray used for hotcakes.

It's just an order for gluten-free/keto burger and salad with no toppings other than cheese. Plus some tenders.

I actually don't think tenders is included in the order... I think they just ordered the ranch dip cups you would get if you ordered nuggets.

correct.. the dip cups are ~1g carbs per cup, the salad dressing packets are around 12g (mostly sugars) iirc.