Deserving a Break — and Getting It Every Day!

Waupun, Wisconsin

Don’t hold the pickles for corrections officer Don Gorske, and don’t skimp on the two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese or onions that McDonald’s piles onto the sesame seed bun that bears the name Big Mac.

The six-foot, 178-pound Gorske, who works at the maximum-security Waupun Correctional Institution, wouldn’t have it any other way. A member of AFSCME Local 18 (Council 24), Gorske took a seat at his local McDonald’s on Nov. 6 and chowed down on his 18,000th Big Mac. Now 47 years old, he’s been eating them daily — as many as nine a day — since 1972.

His gastronomic accomplishment, which propelled Gorske into this year’s Guinness Book of World Records when he hit number 17,500, serves as a lesson for math students at Fond du Lac High School. They’ve calculated that, over the years, Gorske has consumed 800 heads of lettuce, 820 onions, 1,900 whole pickles, 563 pounds of cheese, 100 gallons of special sauce, 14 1/2 cattle and 6.25 million sesame seeds.

"It’s the perfect sandwich," Gorske told The Reporter, a Fond du Lac newspaper. So perfect, in fact, that his daily meals consist only of Big Macs, fries and Coke. To make up for the calories (540 in a single Big Mac), he skips breakfast and dinner. In April, however, he deviated from his menu to eat prime rib for the first time in 17 years. "It was OK," he said, "but give me a Big Mac any day."