You don't go to McDonald's for a fine dining experience that's for sure. Usually, you're needing a quick bite or a snack but that doesn't stop people from being on their absolute worst behavior. These people share the trashiest, most rachet things they've seen go down at the iconic Golden Arches.
That’s Not How You Use A Sink…
“I work at McDonald’s, and I thought I had seen everything. Up until a week and a half ago on Sunday, January 14th.
I was on one of my 10 minute break during an eight hour shift, and as usual for me I went to go use the restroom. I usually take all 10 minutes of my break to do all of my business, figuring that I’m not paid enough to care about customers needing to use the restroom (hey, they can wait their turn like everyone else).
Little did I know, this would come to bite me in the butt.
As I’m sitting there, I hear the door open, and I hear this guy moaning up a storm. He’s saying things like ‘Oh no, oh mama mia, come on…’ Understanding it was an actual emergency, I quickly hurried up and finished up.
As I exited the stall and proceeded toward the sink, I saw what was probably the most disgusting thing I’ve seen not just in a restaurant, but in my entire life.
This guy, who’s still moaning, is sitting on the sink with his pants down. There is poo EVERYWHERE. Diarrhea dookey is all over the sink, in the bowl, on the counter, dripping down onto the floor, smeared on the wall, EVERYWHERE. This guy had a jersey or something on that covered his front, so I at least didn’t see his pecker, but my god, I was absolutely horrified. I had no idea what to do. We make eye contact for about half a second before I rush out of the restroom.
As I am intensely horrified, I bolt straight into the dining room. Still amazed and in shock of what I’d just seen, I blurted out, ‘Hey, some guy just doodied all over the sink!’ There were about ten people in the dining room at tables, waiting in line and waiting for their order, and I hear a cacophony of noise coming from everyone. I’m sure my managers wanted to either murder me or kill themselves with what I had just said, and I’m not really sure which.
At this point, the perpetrator of this horrendous crime has exited the building, never to be seen again. We should have had him arrested for vandalism or something, but he had peaced the heck out.
Anyway, we call up the head manager for our store, who orders the front supervisor to get some money out of the safe and get some bleach from the Walgreens across the street. He does so, and, under the orders of our leading manager, cleans up the bathroom. He has a faux mask made of the white cloths we use to clean, and in his nose are two earplugs used to block the smell permeating from the desecrated men’s bathroom.
This will live on as a legend in our store for years to come. I know that it was the lousiest day on the job for me, and also probably for my manager. Massive props to him for being willing to do it.”
Dumb And Dumberer
“McHell’s employee here. There is no play place at my location, but I’m going to vent about mostly irrelevant things so you all have some insight about working fast food.
Lunch rush, eight hour shift, hung over as heck working the register. People ordering a happy meal. Not specifying which happy meal, just saying the two singular words, ‘happy meal.’ No ‘please’ no nothing. Weird.
Me: ‘Okay. Uh a happy meal, huh? Which happy meal would you like?’
Parent bends down to their child to ask, the child mumbles, hides head in shame. Meanwhile, the line is growing longer and the customers are more disgruntled. A bead of sweat begins to form on my brow as the mother tells her child to tell me which meal. An eternity elapses before the mere infant utters its first, incomprehensible words.
‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that?’ I ask.
Once again, the child whispers something in Gaelic.
‘Uh, I’m sorry I didn’t quite get that,’ I say. Small baby babbles, and the parent will not clarify. Time to guess! The lady then orders a large sweet tea, three mcdoubles, and a large fry. She’s watching her weight so she asks for no salt on the fries. Oh yeah sure, that extra salt will get ya.
Unfortunately we have to make a whole new batch of fries for this no salt request. ‘Will that be all for you?’ I ask. She says yes, but what she meant to say was ‘no’ because she continues to order more food almost as soon as I press the pay now button on the register. The lady orders even more lard.
‘Alright, will that be for here or to go?’ I ask.
This grown woman suddenly blanks for some reason. ‘Uhhhh…..’ she mumbles as she looks off into space and then down to child. ‘Uhhhhh…borger uhhh…’
‘Burger?’ I stammer.
The lady gazes off into space towards the dining room, then down at her shoes. She’s looking for something I think? Anything? A sign maybe? ‘Uhhhhh… we want…for…go. We want for go.’
I blink. My brain has now melted. Blood trickles out of my ear. There is no ‘for go’ button on my register, so I make a guess once again. I know there’s no way I’ve gotten this order correct. I accept defeat.
‘Alright, that’ll be $23.67,’ I say.
The woman’s face drops. The room is absolutely silent except for the racing beat of my heart. ‘I thought sweet teas were a dollar. They used be a dollar all over country.’ Her rage is building as I stutter, ‘They used to be, but now they’re $1.19.’ I inform her.
That extra 19 cents is blood money in this business. Her nostrils flare like a bull as she lets out a long exasperated sigh. She wants me to change the price even though I am clearly a minimum wage employee, not the CEO of McDonalds.
‘You robbing us blind!’ she shrieks. This woman has now mistaken me for a commissioned salesperson instead of a cashier. She now proceeds to go through the price of every item she ordered only to find that yes, indeed, our register is capable of simple addition. She hands me $23 and a bucket of change that somehow only amounts to 65 cents.
‘I’m sorry, I still need two more cents,’ I reply. The lady rolls her eyes, but forks it over. ‘Alright, your order number will be 267!’
The order has taken all but two, maybe three minutes tops, but by now the once orderly line has turned into an impatient lynch mob. They feel hunger, not for McChickens or those precious McNuggets, but for blood. I, on the other hand, thirst for liberation. My lips manage to bend awkwardly into a smile as I say, ‘I can help whoever’s next!’ A large man walks over and O Fortuna begins playing.
‘Are you guys still serving breakfast?’
It is 2 p.m.
‘Oh, alright then. I’ll just have a shamrock shake.’
It is December. I suffered a brain aneurysm that day.”
Never Eat Soft Serve From A McDonalds!
“If nobody has ever told you before, allow me to be the first…NEVER EAT SOFT SERVE ICE CREAM IN A FAST-FOOD RESTAURANT.
Many years ago, I was employed at a Mcdonald’s in the southern U.S. It was my very first job, and I was excited to learn how to do something productive and to earn a few dollars on my own.
The first several weeks for any new employee consisted of learning to clean EVERYTHING. You cleaned the greasy grill. You mopped fry grease. You washed hundreds of trays and utensils. You even steam cleaned the dirty bathrooms after entire baseball teams left the restaurant.
But the absolute most disgusting thing I ever saw was when I was taught how to do the weekly cleaning on the soft-serve ice cream machine.
This was an involved process, so there wasn’t really time to do it every single day. That meant that there were long periods of time each day when there was nobody in the store, and all that delicious sugary goodness was just sitting in this big metal contraption, undisturbed.
My trainer opened the metal door and started pulling hoses and mysterious plastic bits out. It didn’t seem terribly dirty, so I initially wondered what exactly needed to be cleaned. But then, I understood.
As he got to the back of the dispenser, he was calmly explaining the disassembly process, when all of a sudden we both jumped back in a panic.
Out of the ice, cream reservoir crawled half a dozen cockroaches…I seriously almost threw up, just thinking about all the kids I’d seen eating cones served from that very machine.
The worst part? I asked the guy whether we needed to do anything to keep the roaches from returning, and he said, ‘Nah, they get in there all the time.’
Delicious.”
The Craphhouse Phantom Strikes Again
“I was not a customer, I was working at a fast food place as a teen.
There was a person going around the area at the time vandalizing restaurant bathrooms. They called this person the Craphouse Phantom. This person would go into a bathroom and smear and fling excrement everywhere. The mess was unbelievable, even the ceiling was not spared. As a coup de grâce, the toilet would be clogged.
People wondered how so much could come from one person, was it carried in somehow? How did they keep from getting it on them? How did they find the privacy to do that in a public place without getting caught?
Anyhoo, I had lowest seniority there so when the Phantom struck I was tapped for cleanup. I would have given anything to have known their identity so I could visit their home and ask to use the bathroom…it would have been epic.
The other thing that happened at that place was one night we had a customer in the drive through that ordered corn on the cob when we had none ready. The customer was waiting so long that they started complaining. When the corn was ready one of the girls snatched it up to package it…and dropped it on the floor. The greasy, nasty, disgusting floor. So greasy that we basically ‘skated’ rather than lift our feet and risk a fall. The girl looked at that cob in horror, then brushed it off, packaged it, and handed it out the window.
Before you criticize, just know I tried to stop her but she brushed me off. I was afraid to run out to the parking lot to stop him because he was angry already. But ewww. Sorry dude.”
What Happens In The Play Area Stays There
“While I sat drinking coffee with the other moms at McDonald’s, our kids, frolicking around the play place, began a game called, ‘Run from the Teenagers.’ I didn’t think it was unusual because the youngsters were very imaginative, and created games about dragons, superheroes, and other fictional characters.
My son, however, kept asking me if I wanted to see the ‘teenagers.’ Now, those plastic tunnels were hard to maneuver through, especially being pregnant, but my son was persistent and I always liked to engage in their fantasy world.
Up I went, toward the large hexagon-shaped compartment at the top of the play structure, my son leading the way.
When I reached the destination, it all made sense. There were two actual teenagers up there! They were bare from the waist down, tangled up in their jeans, and seemed to be high on something. I was shocked and furious at the same time.
I ordered my son back down, followed right behind him, and went straight to the manager. His solemn facial expression didn’t change as he explained how they had a sign-up that said, ‘Kids 10 and younger welcome to play,’ but teens went in there all the time.
‘But LISTEN!’ I demanded,”First, they are supposed to be in SCHOOL right now. Also, they are partially clothed AND in a place meant for young children! They look high so there might be something up there!’
He, with no sense of urgency, told his assistant to get the teens down. After a few minutes, the assistant came back and answered, ‘They won’t come down.’ The manager shrugged his shoulders and went back to his duties.
‘This is ridiculous!’ I thought. So I marched back into the play area and shouted up toward the teens, ‘If you don’t get down in one minute, I’m calling the cops.’
They slowly slid down the slide, holding their shoes and clumsily pulling up their jeans. They said some rude remark to me, and I went off, ‘If you’re going to skip school, which is ILLEGAL, at least stay out of places meant for LITTLE KIDS!’ I ended up calling the cops right then, and they ran.
I went to the manager (who was sick of me by now) and suggested he at least clean the compartment up there because who knows what they could have left behind.
A small woman with gloves, a spray bottle and a towel climbed up to disinfect the area. After a few seconds, she shrieked, spoke to herself in Spanish, and came back down pinching a used Trojan and a hypodermic needle.
Right as she showed her findings to her boss, the police arrived. FINALLY the manager’s somber facial expression changed, and he looked like Barney Fife from the Andy Griffith Show.”
The Customer Is Not Your Friend
“Okay, so I’ve been working at McDonald’s Australia for a few years now and have a fantastic story for you… I think.
I had been working at the presenting window in the drive thru where you collect your food, so I knew how the drive thru worked inside and out. I was introduced to the cashier window where you make your payment. This window is also where orders are taken from lane one.
There are usually two people working in the booth during peak times to keep the target time under 3:30 minutes. As a guy, I’m not the best at multitasking.
It was just after the dinner rush when I was alone in the booth for about five minutes while my colleague was running some things to the stockroom. A woman drove into my lane where I began to take her order.
Me: ‘Hi, how can I help you.’
Customer: ‘Hi I would like ndhe jsdhsjaj..c.d.cdfvfndsb…’
Me: I’m sorry, could you please repeat that? I can’t quite hear you over the traffic’ (We are located right by a four lane highway)
Customer: ‘GHFAHSGgaskdjfcx… filet fihhhhssss….’
Me: ‘Right, so was that a Filet O Fish?’
Customer: ‘What? Fusfjdn fish jshdlbenw!HBGHVDJHGVSBNBDAHJUI!!!’
Me: I am sorry, would you be able to drive down to the next window where I can take your order there?’
Customer: ‘AGHhhhh’
The woman proceeds to drive through. When she arrives I greet her and she begins to abuse me.
Customer: ‘WHO WAS THAT RUDE MORON THAT TOOK MY ORDER?!’
Me: ‘I apologise, that was me. Now may I take your order? I couldn’t quite hear you.’
Customer: ‘NO! WHO WAS THAT RUDE GIRL THAT TOOK MY ORDER?’ (Give me a break, I was 14)
My colleague enters as she hears an argument erupt.
Me: ‘I am sorry if I was rude, I couldn’t hear or understand what you were saying.’
Customer: ‘LET ME SEE A MANAGER!’
Me: ‘I’ll be happy to get a manager for you.’
Customer: ‘I WANT YOUR NAME AND YOUR NUMBER!’
She repeated this many times. I told my colleague to remove her name tag to make her feel safer as she was clearly distressed. I removed mine too.
I was being abused and so was my colleague. She was called a prick and a floozy. I think that’s a little harsh for a 16-year-old girl working at McDonald’s, but anyway. I start to freak out and feel threatened.
Me: ‘I am sorry, I am going to refuse to serve you unless you stop threatening me, I will get you the manager shortly. Stay here please.’
I closed and locked the window as I thought she was going to grab me or attempt to hurt me or my lovely colleague. We were both being abused and were quite shaken. The woman continued to bash the window as she yelled at us. I left and locked the booth and went to find a window.
I warned the next window not to serve the woman as she hadn’t paid and was abusive. They locked the window too. I let the manager know what was happening and they spoke to her at the window. She told them what she wanted and they gave it to her to make her leave… but she wasn’t finished quite yet.
Once she was given her order free of charge, she drove back through my lane, past my window and straight to the presenter window. She took her large coke, abused the manager further, removed the lid of her large coke and threw the entire thing at the manager. He was soaked in a cold and sticky beverage. She continued to abuse the manager, asking for the ‘rude chick’s name and number.’
The restaurant manager requested for her to leave the premises and found two new people to run the cashier booth. She let us stay in the manager’s office until we calmed down. She brought us some water and told us to stay there. We were both very shaken.
The police were called and notified, but she left before they arrived. I didn’t wear my name tag for the rest of my shift as I was so scared of that one customer. The manager made an assumption that the customer was on pills or something.
I sadly never saw that colleague again. She resigned. Good luck to her.”
A Play Place Beat Down
“Not an employee but one time while road tripping up to Vancouver Island with my brother and stepmom we stopped for lunch at a McDonalds in that town with the giant hockey stick/puck in front of the arena.
So my brother and I, about 12 and 10 respectively, scarfed down our meals and started exploring the play area. Now, this wasn’t your average playplace, it was huge and they had these weird child-sized, hard-ish stuffed animals attached to the floor with Velcro. I don’t know who came up with them, or how they were meant to be played with, but they resembled a harder, lighter punching bag in texture.
Back to the story though. Our stepmom sat below, finishing her food while she glanced upwards every now and again to make sure we were okay. My brother and I soon parted ways in the massive, labyrinthian structure. Sometime later, a random kid and I squeezed past each other while crossing paths in one of the tubes. As soon as we were clear, he glared back at me and growled, ‘Touch me again and I’ll slit your stupid little throat.’
Now, this kid couldn’t have been any older than me, so you can understand my shock at hearing this uttered by a child no older than ten. As if he even had a weapon. He was gone before I could process what he said and I didn’t retort. Oh well, back to playing. I guess some kids are just crazy.
Some time later, my brother and I met at the top of a spiral slide. Being that he got there before me, he went down first. As I’m sliding down the spiral, I hear an argument unfolding below. As I emerged from the bottom of the playplace, the scene became clear.
Psycho kid was all up in my brother’s face, screaming unintelligible obscenities. I guess the little prick took his time getting off the slide and my brother slid right into him. The kid is getting more and more aggressive, screaming louder and getting physical, shoving my brother’s chest like little thugs always do when they want to intimidate.
My brother, who I’ll point out is a head taller than this delinquent, is keeping his cool and trying to tell the idiot to bug off. The kid’s dad is nearby, and get this, the hick greaseball mumbles, ‘You tell em’ Jimmy!”, in between mouthfuls of Big Mac.’
A couple things went through my head before I acted: the kid’s unfortunate excuse for a father couldn’t care less if the world ended tomorrow, my brother can’t as well beat this younger idiot without some chance of repercussions, my approaching stepmom is a good five-ten seconds away on the other side of the play area, and I need to reassert my dominance over this hill-billy spawn who’s best experience with violence probably comes from his likely abusive dad.
He didn’t see me coming. I ripped a nearby giant duck from it’s Velcro binding and brandished it by the tail, charging towards the violent little brat. I don’t even think he turned around at all, the first blow hit him square in the back, with all my weight behind it. He tumbled onto the floor in front of my brother, gasping for air, I guess I knocked the wind out of him. But I wasn’t finished.
‘SLIT! MY! THROAT! WILL YOU?!’ I shouted with every swing, each strike harder than the last. He was crying for his daddy by the time my stepmom dragged us away. She was about to end the trip early before we explained the situation. In the end she decided not to punish me, gave a heavy sigh, and chalked it up to another case of small town madness.”
“THANKS FOR THE TRASH!”
“I will now tell the story of the best thing I ever saw in McDonald’s playland.
A few years ago me and my kids were eating at McDonald’s in the south and of course we had to eat in playland because kids love that kinda stuff. Mickey D’s had at this time installed talking garbage cans in there. It was probably intended as a way to get kids to throw their own trash away so employees wouldn’t have to do it so much. Whoever designed those things knew nothing about children.
When you put trash into the talking trash can, pushing your garbage in past that plastic spring-loaded flap which says THANK YOU on it, the trash can would say ‘Thanks for the garbage!’ or something like that. You know, things a talking trash can would say.
ANY PARENT could tell you what would happen next. Children know that trash cans can not actually speak. So each successive child, having been congratulated by the trash can, would do the obvious thing, and put his head inside the trash can to see who is in there.
Then the spring-loaded THANK YOU flap would swing shut and grab the children by the neck in the manner of a squirrel trap, and they could not get their heads back out, and there would be flailing and muffled screaming, and they would have to be rescued by their Mom.
This happened over and over and OVER. Kids of a certain age will put their heads in a talking trash can even if they just saw the last kid get garroted by it. It kind of makes them even more curious. Just one kid after another getting choked by this evil instrument of torture. ‘THANKS FOR THE TRASH!’
It was the best thing I have ever seen. Kids leave, new kids take their place, new victims for the magic trash can. I never got tired of it. Next time we went to McDonalds they weren’t there any more but I hope someday they will come back for another try.”
A Brit Shares Their Opinion On The Golden Arches
“This story is from the late 1960s or early 1970s in the U.K. It was a time when we were only just beginning to see some of the giant U.S. fast food restaurant chains opening up over here. A new such restaurant had opened up in a part of London near where my parents lived (Bromley, I think): I hadn’t heard of the business before. It was a restaurant that had a clown for a mascot and these great big golden arches in the shape of an ‘M’ emblazoned on a red background.
We were sitting around the tea table one afternoon, chatting with one of my sister’s teenage school friends while she told us about a hideous experience she’d recently had. She’d got a job for one of the new restaurants and had been so disgusted by the horrendous lack of basic hygiene that she virtually needed counselling afterwards.
In lurid detail, she described the grease caking the walls, the mouldy fowl in the cool storage, the filth all over the floor. She mentioned the mouse droppings and cockroaches crawling around amongst the detritus on the worktops. To make matters even more hideous, a massive heap of rat-infested rubbish was piled up behind the building, causing desperate neighbouring businesses to scream at the restaurant’s staff when they tried to put any more rubbish out, so refuse was piling up inside the back door.
The restaurant was fairly new and (because of all the publicity) was rushed off its feet. No-one was experienced, and they couldn’t even get enough inexperienced staff, because the wage was so low. The whole place was panicky, miserable and desperate. My sister’s friend didn’t even last out her shift: she left after a few hours.
I’m now a 60-year-old woman, and it seems to shock people that I’ve lived all these years in a country that has MANY of these restaurants (and takeaways), without EVER having eaten from them.
My boyfriend says it’s delicious and I’m nuts. But I’m pretty sure that my sister hasn’t ever tried it, either.”