The McDonald's Thread: All things McDonald's

[MFS62]

Must be a McDonald's thing. My local one hands out napkins like they're the secret to eternal life. You have to go over to the place where they give out the take-out orders. At least the sugar substitute is in the same place. Their coffee is the best of the national fast food places.

Later

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Had lunch at McDonald's this past weekend. The experience was so bad, I might never go back again. Really. First of all, my favorite McDonald's was totally re-designed. They took out the self-serve unlimited soda refill station, which was my favorite part of the whole deal, and the only reason I even go to this particular McDonald's, which is not the closest one to me. But it has the soda refill station and I like that. To be fair, I knew that was coming. I'd read a few months ago that the self-serve unlimited soda refill stations were being phased out. Still, they're gone. Next -- there are no more cashiers. The only way to place your order is through those automated computerized "kiosk" thingies. That wasn't so hot. You'd figure that an outfit like McDonald's, a multi billion dollar a year company, with all of its decades of experience, and all of the resources available to it, could design a reasonably logical ordering system. But they didn't. The system was flawed, and somewhat illogical. I'm certain that it took me about three times as many clicks to submit my order as it should have. Some items were unreasonably hard to find and the program logic just didn't make any sense to me. Also, how the hell am I supposed to tell the person filling up my soda not to fill it all the way up with ice? A little, little bit of ice is all I want. There was no option for that at the stupid kiosk.

Then the fun really started. I checked my order after I finally got it and saw that my large fries box was half empty. When I finally got somebody's attention to ask them sarcastically --"This is large fries?" the cashier person said "Yes, that's large fries.", with a whole lot of attitude and hostility. I told her that it wasn't large fries, and I'd never, ever seen a picture of large fries advertised where the box was so stuffed that the fries weren't hanging over the top of the box . Like on the stupid ordering kiosk that I just used to place this order, for example.



She finally took my fries box, and very grudgingly, put some more fries in there. But not to the top. The box was now only about 80% full. I let it go. Next I noticed that I didn't get any ketchups. The old soda refill station also had ketchup buckets from where you could pump out as much ketchup as you like. Those were gone with the soda refills. Truth be told, I prefer the ketchup packets. I like that I can make the ketchup come out in a really thin line with the packets, instead of those thicker lines of ketchup that are like ropes that come out of the ketchup pump buckets. Ropes of ketchup that drown my skinny delicate McDonald's french fries. With the ketchup packets, I can maintain the right ratio of fries to ketchup. So I asked for ketchups. Seven ketchups, to be precise. I know how many ketchups I'm gonna need for what I ordered and it was seven. So she gave me four ketchups. Four. Not seven. So then I asked for six more. When I asked for six more, she reminded me that I asked for seven the first time and she'd already given me some. So I asked her why if she knew that I asked for seven ketchups the first time around, why did she give me only four? She was stymied and so grabbed a handful of more ketchups and gave them to me. It was more than the six I asked for the second time around. Now I had about a dozen ketchups. What happened was that she got so annoyed that she just ending up grabbing a handful of ketchups without even counting just to get on with it. You'd think they do an inventory head-count of all of the ketchup packets at the end of the day, matching it all to the surveillance video and then divide the missing ketchups by the number of Big Macs sold to see if anybody gave out more ketchups than they're supposed to give out. Ketchup misers. It took me more than five minutes to get a seat because the place was kind of packed. When I opened my bag to eat my meal, I noticed for the first time that they didn't give me any napkins. Not one. I wasn't going back because who knows how long it'd take me to find a seat again. No way was I gonna try and hold my table by leaving my food on there, unattended. So I ate my meal without any napkins and wiped my hands on the table.

What can you share about the main course? I think the Chicken Big Mac is new there. What about the Big Arch?

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Big Arch isn't out yet. And I didn't get a Chicken Big Mac. Sorry.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Can you share more about the main course?

[SteveCohenStan]

I love those kiosks. I usually just order on the app like a normal person, but in a pinch it works. It's got all the things right there, in a list. I can take my time. I can double check my order myself. I don't have to try to translate through a speaker. They're redoing the one by me. Not that I ever go inside. Gimme those nuggs.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Can you share more about the main course?

Quarter-Pounder with Cheese meal, large (diet coke) and a McDouble, all pictured below. Notice the large fries box filled to the top of the box and overflowing.








My large fries were initially half empty, like in the pic below. What a disgrace. I can't believe the workers are trained to give out half empty large fry boxes. And if this is a thing, I can't believe it's not a big deal on the web.




I've been getting the quarter pounder with cheese pretty much every time I've gone for a few years now. It's now their best sandwich, I think. The quarter-pounder meat was upgraded from frozen to fresh and the improvement in taste was obvious to me immediately, when I first got a new quarter pounder. I have no illusions about what I'm eating. It's still fast food and nowhere near as good as a decent pub or restaurant burger. But I've been eating McDonald's since I was a little kid. It's a guilty pleasure. My doctor would be very disappointed in me if he knew I was eating that even once a year.