McDonald's is one of the most beloved fast food chains in the world. With such widespread
influence, and so many locations worldwide, the franchise is bound to slip up from time
to time. Some of the mistakes they've made are amusing, while others…well not so much.
McDonald's has a lot of baggage, and we decided to sort through all the skeletons in their
closet to bring you the ten McDonald’s mistakes they will always regret.
Hot Coffee Scandal
Have you ever noticed the disclaimer printed on disposable coffee cups or sleeves warning
you that the beverage you are about to consume is very hot? Well, there’s a reason that
disclaimers like this one need to exist. In 1992, a hot cup of coffee got McDonald’s
into a whole lot of trouble. Stella Liebeck suffered serious burns after spilling her
scalding coffee on herself. She ultimately sued the fast food chain and received a tidy
sum of money as a result. This lawsuit is often viewed as frivolous, but it’s far
more serious than the media would have you believe. Turns out, McDonald's coffee was
being served at a temperature approximately thirty-five degrees higher than coffee from
most other establishments. Not only that, but, during the court proceedings, hundreds
of anecdotes of people being burned by the fast food giant’s coffee were unearthed.
Liebeck herself had third degree burns over sixteen percent of her body and had to undergo
hospitalization and surgery. Despite the fact that McDonald's would probably rather everyone
forget about the whole incident, the hot coffee scandal isn’t one that’s easily forgotten.
The “Mc” Ownership
Wanting to protect your brand is one thing, but McDonald's started to take things a bit
too far. The chain has grown extremely possessive of the “Mc” prefix and has made considerable
efforts to make it their own. They’ve gone to great lengths to have other businesses
with names utilizing the prefix to drop it entirely – even when it’s part of their
family name. One particularly embarrassing incidence involved McDonald’s Family Restaurant
in Fairbury, Illinois. In the nineties, McDonald's (the fast food restaurant) decided to open
a location in Fairbury, and actually made McDonald’s Family Restaurant remove the
possessive “s” from their restaurant name. The residents of Fairbury certainly weren’t
putting up with it; they maintained a fierce loyalty to McDonald’s Family Restaurant.
Luckily, things went back to normal after the McDonald's shut down. McDonald’s might
want to lighten up a bit on this one – the chain is famous enough that no one’s going
to confuse it with a family-owned business.
Labor Law Infractions
Several reports of poor working conditions at McDonald’s can be found both overseas
and in the United States. Pregnant employees being mistreated, wage theft, the scheduling
of excessively long shifts – some up to twenty-five hours in length – without over
time, the list goes on and on. It can be expected for there to be isolated incidents
of this kind of worker maltreatment, but to have them popping up with such frequency doesn’t
look good for McDonald's. In the States, McDonald's employees banded together, demanding the right
to unionize, as well as an increase in pay from $7.25 to $15 per hour. Meanwhile, in
the United Kingdom, workers went on strike in order to fight for guaranteed hours and
increased wages. The revelation that McDonald's had been dodging labor laws left and right
was one that disgusted a lot of people.
Vegetarian French Fry Controversy
Fast food restaurants have never been the most welcoming places for vegetarians. Naturally,
many people were thrilled to hear the announcement that McDonald's would be switching over to
plant-based oils. Vegetarians everywhere could finally enjoy these world-famous fries. Unfortunately,
they were victims of misinformation. While McDonald's stated that their fries were now
being “cooked in 100 percent vegetable oil,” They failed to mention that they were still
adding beef flavoring to their oil. You won’t be surprised to hear that, once the truth
came out, it didn’t go over well at all. It hit both McDonald's reputation and wallet
quite hard. In the resulting lawsuit, McDonald's was made to pay ten million dollars to multiple
vegetarian organizations. In Canada, McDonald’s stopped using animal products to make their
fries in 2007, and they’re now a vegan product. This is true of several countries worldwide,
we'll see if the United States follows suit.
Korea’s Bulgogi Burger
While much of the McDonald's menu is kept consistent at locations around the world,
sometimes different countries like to add their own cultural twist. An example of this
is the Bulgogi Burger, which was available at McDonald's in South Korea. It celebrated
one of their favorite local dishes by fusing it with a classic McDonald's burger, and general
consensus was that the result was delicious. Bulgogi is an amazing Korean dish, made of
grilled beef slices marinated in soy sauce and seasoned delectably. At first, everyone
was singing this burger’s praises. But then, in 2017, a group of school children stopped
at McDonald's on a field trip. The teacher, along with several of the children, ordered
this particular item, and ultimately fell ill with enteritis, a horribly uncomfortable
intestinal inflammation. Not long after, a five-year-old girl suffered permanent kidney-failure
after eating a Bulgogi Burger. In the latter case, the burger had reportedly been undercooked.
All of this together was too much of a hit to the burger’s reputation. In an attempt
to play it safe, McDonald's pulled the item from their menus temporarily.
Monopoly Scandal
Monopoly and McDonald's kind of go hand-in-hand. Their partnership was a great marketing move
on McDonald's part, however, there was one small kink in the system that brought them
more bad press than good. The contest was simple enough. All you had to do was order
a meal and collect the Monopoly pieces that came with it. Collect the right ones, and
you’re a winner. There were several possible prizes, but the big one was a whopping one
million dollars. People will do a lot of things for money, like the ex-cop who was willing
to go to pretty extreme lengths. He worked at the company that manufactured the Monopoly
pieces, and therefore had easy access to them. For twelve years, he arranged shady deals
with people, offering to give them the pieces necessary to win a cash prize. What did he
want in exchange? A cut of their prize winnings, of course. This scam went on for so long that,
by the time the truth came out, McDonald's had lost twenty-four million dollars and a
whole lot of respect. All in all, a pretty unfortunate situation for them.
Pink Slime
No one has ever expected McDonald's to be a health food restaurant. No one’s asking
for kale smoothies, protein bars or anything of the sort. But that doesn’t necessarily
mean that people don’t expect their meals to be prepared with ingredients that at least
resemble food. All anyone is asking for are edible ingredients. And pink slime? That ain’t
it. When pictures of the pink slime began circulating online, people were shocked that
the gooey Pepto-Bismol colored substance was the precursor to their beloved Big Macs. What
exactly is this pink slime? Well, in the industry, it’s referred to as lean, finely textured
beef. It's made from the meat that gets trimmed off of beef along with the fat. The trimmings
are simmered to separate muscle and fat, then run through a machine to complete the separation.
Next, it's squeezed through a pipe and sprayed with ammonia, to remove all bacteria. Then
it's dyed pink, packaged, frozen and shipped out to meat packing plants. And that, everyone,
is how pink slime is born. The FDA and the American Meat Institute have both proclaimed
that it is safe for consumption, but many people in the general population didn’t
like the look of it at all. After the pink slime news broke on ABC in 2012, many fast
food corporations, McDonald's included, announced that they would no longer be using it in their
products. But the damage was done, and the pink slime legacy lives on.
Racism Lawsuit in Virginia
Shortly after purchasing three McDonald's locations in Virginia, a man named Michael
Simon had fifteen employees fired in an attempt to reduce the number of African-Americans
employed at his restaurants. The black employees who lost their jobs were replaced by white
individuals. Additionally, while still working at McDonald's, one of the black workers who
was eventually fired reported having been harassed on multiple occasions by supervisors,
who made inappropriate and racist remarks towards them. Ten of these former employees
filed a civil rights lawsuit against McDonald's on the basis of discrimination. Many are frustrated
with the franchise for not doing more to protect its employees. There was remarkable outcry
in response to this incident; an online petition demanding reparations for the former employees
garnered tens of thousands of signatures. Hopefully McDonald's has learned from this
and will take the necessary actions to ensure that their employees are protected and safe
from discrimination in the future.
Muslim Family McChicken
This is, unfortunately, another incident that boils down to intolerance of minority groups.
A Muslim family visiting Alabama from New York stopped in at a McDonald's in Decatur,
where they ordered fourteen McChicken sandwiches. This sandwich is their go-to McDonald's order,
but this time something was different. While eating their sandwiches, they noticed an unfamiliar
and unexpected flavor, which they described as "smoky". They proceeded to open up the
sandwiches, only to find small pieces of bacon, arranged in such a way that they were hidden
from view when the sandwich was closed. In keeping with their religion, Muslims are not
supposed to eat pork, so needless to say this discovery was rather upsetting. A representative
from the Decatur McDonald's stated that this was unintentional and that the employees were
not at fault, but failed to provide any evidence to support their claim. Bacon is not typically
included in the McChicken, and the way it was stealthily hidden inside the sandwich
makes it hard to believe that it was a simple mistake. And to make that same mistake fourteen
times? Nobody’s buying it. It’s awful to say, but such acts are not uncommon. In
fact, over the past few years, they’ve actually been occurring with more and more frequency.
Drive-Thru Intercom Hacks
Let’s end things off on a more positive note, shall we? We’ve seen racism, poor
working conditions, and third-degree burns, so here’s a bit of a darkly comedic pick-me-up.
This event took place in 2016, in New Bern, North Carolina. On December 4, an intricate
prank was executed by a very talented hacker, who tapped into the drive-thru intercom's
wireless frequency. Customers in the drive-thru found themselves subjected to the customized
messages of a hacker with a twisted sense of humor. In a video, the hacker can be heard
saying things like “You know I’m actually on the toilet right now, and I’m just going
to serve you your food. I’m not even going to wash my hands.” And it just gets more
inappropriate from there. To make matters worse, after they got bored, or ran out of
creative content, the hacker proceeded to play audio from, how should we say…an adult
video. Way to keep it classy. This shocking event definitely didn’t reflect well on
McDonald's, and the fast food chain went to great lengths to ensure that nothing of the
like would ever happen again. The last thing they needed was for this isolated incident
to become a widespread epidemic.
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