McDonald’s is huge in a lot of places, and unfortunately being that large means that
more times than not, stories get out into the public. Sometimes these stories are good, sometimes they’re
bad, and sometimes they’re down right ridiculous. There are so many to choose
from, told by customers, ex-employees and the mainstream media, it’s hard to even
know where to start when it comes to good McDonald’s stories. So why not begin right
here, with this list of top ten McDonald’s stories.
Knockout at McDonald's.
Sometimes in a fast food environment it’s really hard to keep your cool, you’re working on
your feet all day, and sometimes the kitchen area can feel like the hottest place on Earth. On
top of that, you also tend to deal with hungry people who are in a rush, and a lot of them
can be pretty rude. For the most part, keeping your cool involves ignoring the impatient
tone in the customer’s voice as you wait for the fries to cook or you pour their coffee,
but sometimes it’s not as easy as it sounds. One employee at a McDonald’s showed just
what you shouldn’t do when a customer is being rude. A video of the employee went viral,
showing the McDonald’s employee knocking the unruly customer out with one impressive
punch. At the time, he probably thought he was doing the right thing, but he more than
likely had a few regrets once he had to deal with the consequences of his actions. There
is a bit of backstory, apparently the customer was fairly intoxicated, and had been doing
some very disrespectful and downright disgusting things, such as spitting on the counter. There
was probably more to it than just the employee having to deal with this one drunken idiot,
but regardless, it made for quite the interesting story.
McD’s Marketing Plan Gone Wrong
At one point, the marketing team over at McDonald's thought it was a great idea to get people
to tell their favourite McDonald’s stories on Twitter and use the hashtag ‘#McDStories’.
For some reason, they didn’t seem to see the major flaw in that idea, the flaw being
the fact that people weren’t going to use the hashtag solely for heartwarming stories
about how great their local McDonald’s was. It seems like quite a big oversight on their
end, to not realize that a social media marketing scheme such as this had a huge potential to
go all wrong - it's the sort of thing that you would assume marketing experts would think
about. The idea backfired on them horribly when the hashtag went wild, leaving them with
very few good stories. Instead it was used to showcase such gems as a video of a live
mouse that was in a sealed bag of McDonald’s buns, and every insult people could think
of to throw at McDonald’s. Hopefully the fast food company learned its lesson and
doesn’t plan on attempting to use that sort of social media marketing again in the future.
A Head for Business at McDonald’s
McDonald's came out pretty lucky when a Virginia mother had taken her kids for an innocent
meal at her local McDonald's and found a fried chicken head in with her chicken wings. When
she discovered it, she brought the situation immediately to a McDonald’s employee. She
was offered either a refund on her meal or a new box of chicken. She opted for the refund
and decided to go home and cook for her kids instead, which seems like she made a very
good choice. The odds of finding the same or even another disgusting thing in your chicken wings
twice in a row are pretty slim, but after finding that particular sort of surprise in
her food, she probably didn’t have much of an appetite, especially for more chicken
wings. Finding the deep friend head of a chicken in your meal isn’t a great experience,
but McDonald’s got off relatively easy in this situation. Most other people would have
taken them to the bank with a lawsuit, and with good reason. Finding a chicken head,
or really any whole body part of any animal in your food, when it’s not supposed to
be there is a horrifying situation, hopefully one that most people will never have to deal
with. Lucky for the fast food giant, this particular woman decided that she would be
content with just a refund and a home cooked meal.
One of the Good McStories
Not all McDonald’s stories are bad or disgusting - sometimes a McDonald’s employee truly
goes above and beyond what is expected of them at the job. One such incident happened
at a McDonald’s location in Chicago. It was during a pretty busy time when a man in
a wheelchair approached the register. Not only did the employee take the time to patiently
figure out what the man was asking for, even though he was having a hard time understanding
him, but he also did something very unexpected when he did figure out what it was the man
needed. The customer was handicapped, and wasn’t able to eat his meal unassisted,
and so he was asking the McDonald’s cashier for help with his food. Now most people would
probably just dismiss the man, ignore him in favour of helping the lineup instead,
assuming that their supervisor wouldn’t be too happy if they just left their till
in the middle of rush hour. This particular employee shut down his till and disappeared,
and much to the surprise of another customer who had been watching the whole thing unfold,
he had gone to the back to wash his hands and put on gloves. The caring employee then
proceeded to go with the man to his table, and assist him with cutting up his food and
helping him eat it. Only someone who truly cared about their fellow man would go so out
of their way for someone, and it’s very heartwarming to hear that people like him
do exist out there.
McDonald’s Coffee is Little Too Hot
Now most people have probably already heard the story of the infamous hot coffee that
ran rampant throughout media outlets when it had first happened in the 90s - sorry to
say, most of the reporting on the incident was outright false. The unfortunate elderly
woman simply planned on grabbing a coffee at McDonald’s and continuing on with her
day, but what she didn’t expect was to end her day with severe third degree burns that
put her in shock and almost took her life. McDonald’s ended up paying out $640,000,
a good deal of which went straight towards the woman’s medical bills, as skin grafts
are an expensive medical procedure and her case was so extreme. Since this happened in
the United States, she would have had to pay for most of her medical treatment out of pocket.
This story was a huge one, and it was talked about for quite some time after it happened
- it led to a false narrative that the woman had been driving with the cup between her
legs (not true) and that this was all her own fault - also, not true. McDonald’s coffee
had burned hundreds of people up until that point, since they were serving it at near
boiling temperatures. Thanks to this brave woman whose name was dragged through the mud,
McDonald’s finally lowered their coffee temperatures and added a label to the coffee
cups.
That Time McDonald’s Got Hacked
Some may think that McDonald’s getting hacked wouldn’t be a big deal, but it sort of
was, and it didn’t even affect the business itself that much, other than giving them a
pretty negative reputation for it. This isn't the only time that McDonald's has been hacked
- even their Twitter account has been hacked more than once, so it's probably not the best
idea to entrust them with any of your personal information. It did affect the customers
and website users though providing the hackers with all sorts of personal information from
various McDonald’s websites, which included their ever-popular Monopoly websites. After
the incident, the company warned its customers not to trust any phone calls or emails they
received from the company, as they would most likely be the hackers attempting to scam them.
Along with email addresses and phone numbers, the hackers also had access to customers full
names, physical addresses and even information that had been gathered by McDonald’s about
their promotional and advertising preferences. That’s a lot of personal information to trust McDonald’s
with, let alone some hacker who is determined to scam you out of any and all money they
can get.
The Customer Isn’t Always Right at McD’s
A story told by one former McDonald’s employee tells the tale of one particularly irate
woman who thought she was in the right and there was no possible way she could be wrong,
until it was proven that she was in fact... wrong. As the story goes, a woman sent her
young child into the restaurant by himself with the money to buy food for the two of
them - as usual the cashier helped the young boy and handed him his change, and the boy
went on his merry way back out to his mother with the food he had ordered. A few short
minutes later and the boys mother stormed into the restaurant, yelling about how her
child had not given her the correct change. She insisted that the cashier must have short
changed the boy because he was young and they figured they could get away with it. A manager
was brought in to deal with the situation, and all of the tills were counted to show
they had the correct amount, so there was no way that he could have been short changed.
Despite this fact and that the McDonald’s uniforms at that location had no pockets,
she kept angrily yelling about how the cashier must have taken the money as there was no
other possible explanation. That is until the former employee who told the story went
to change the garbage out in the customer area, lo-and-behold, a receipt was found
on top of the garbage in the bag, and it was folded neatly with the missing ten-dollar bill
in it. It was brought over to the lady, who promptly realized that she was wrong and had
been throwing a fit for no reason. Needless to say, she was embarrassed and left in a
pretty big hurry.
Theft at McDonald’s
It’s no surprise to most that theft occurs, probably at every McDonald’s location around
the world. Most people wouldn’t think of most of the theft as actually stealing anything,
but it happens quite often in the form of taking unauthorized drinks or food for free.
It may seem nominal, but if employees are doing it quite often and over a period of
time, it can really add up for a company. Worse though, than taking a big mac or some
large fries every shift you work, is outright stealing entire cases of food or toys. There
are many stories out there of instances where employees were caught taking things
that they definitely shouldn’t be taking, but one of the most ridiculous ones is simply
a case of no common sense. A former McDonald’s employee tells of a co-worker who had been
stealing entire boxes of frozen hamburger patties and other food supplies when he
took the garbage out. This apparently continued on for quite some time until he was finally
caught by the store manager with a box of frozen hamburgers in the trunk of his car.
It's a wonder he got away with it for as long as he did, and who knows how much food he
had actually taken over the months before he was caught red-handed, but management knew
something was wrong as there was always a shortage when they would do inventory. He
was immediately fired and the case of the food inventory shortages was solved.
Sometimes it Pays to Be Nice at Mickey D’s
One example of some truly good customers comes from a McDonald’s location in Kansas where
one very lucky McDonald’s employee received a pretty huge surprise. A regular customer
that came by quite often, stopped in for a different reason one day during a specific
McDonald’s employees shift. To everyone’s surprise, the customer stopped in to give
one of their favourite employees a present: a car. They had heard that the employee’s
current car had broken down, and they had been relying on getting rides from friends, family and
co-workers in order to get to and from their shifts at McDonald’s. Now we all know that
working at McDonald’s doesn’t pay the best, so the employee was trying to find themselves
a cheaper car that they could afford, since they knew that they couldn’t rely on other
people for rides forever. Lucky for them, they had made quite the good impression on
this particular regular customer, because when he himself had some good luck and received
a brand-new truck, he decided that rather than sell his old vehicle, he would spread
a little bit of that good karma and give it to the out-of-luck McDonald’s employee.
Now that must have been some great customer service from that employee for a regular customer
to be willing to gift her a car.
McDonald’s Employee Loyalty
For most people, your first job at McDonald’s tends to be a short-lived job, maybe something
just for the summer while school is out, or a job you keep for a year or two to save up
for that special something, but for one employee in particular it was a life-long career. A McDonald’s restaurant
in Australia back in the 1980’s implemented a program where they hired people with moderate
disabilities, and one such employee was a young man with Downs Syndrome who was only
eighteen at the time. He became something of a local celebrity, a few people only going
in to the McDonald’s location to see him. He was sort of the local face of the restaurant,
and people loved how he was just a little bit cheeky at times. He worked there for an
impressive thirty-two years in various roles before he finally retired at the age of fifty.
Co-workers were sad to see him go, many of them recalling some great stories of working
with him and saying that he always made them smile. He was much loved by his co-workers
and customers alike, and he loved his job more than most things. Thirty-two years working
at the same job, now that’s loyalty.
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