It seems as far as fast food restaurants go, McDonald’s is by far the most polarizing one. You either love it or you hate it; the food is addictive, the service is mediocre, and there are guaranteed to never be enough napkins or sauces with your food. Let’s talk about it.
I worked at McDonald’s, 35-40 hours a week, from June through August of this year as a summer job. I was there for the drop of the snack wraps, the Hello Kitty Happy Meal toys, the McDonaldLand meal, and everything in between. I worked breakfast and lunch rushes five days a week. I was there when we ran out of lettuce and the Sweet N’ Sour sauce for multiple days in a row. I know a shocking amount of how it functions, and now I am here to provide tips to all of you.
- On Mobile Orders
Unlike places like Starbuck’s or Dunkin’, McDonald’s does not actually start making your mobile order until you either press the button that says I’m here (if you’re picking up in the lobby) or tell the Drive Thru attendant your code (if you’re picking up in the drive thru). If you’re picking up Curbside, they’ll start making your food, but won’t bag it and make your drinks until you let the app know what Curbside spot you’re in.
Chances are, you will wait just as long for your food if you mobile order as you will if you place your order with them. The only difference is convenience at the drive thru and lack of direct interaction with employees.
- On Parking in the Drive Thru
If you order a quarter pounder, you’re getting parked. There’s no way around it, unless kitchen employees accidentally made extra QPCs. The quarter pounders are always cook to order due to food safety; they’re thicker than the burgers and as such should not be kept in the heating trays.
If you order a burger without onions and/or salt, or fries without salt, or more than 40 chicken nuggets, you’re getting parked. If you order a large amount of food, you’re getting parked. If your order is actually quite reasonable but the manager on duty is strict about drive times and thinks we are not moving cars fast enough, we will have to park you.
When you park, your receipt is printed along with the park spot you are supposed to be in. Typically, once you park, you will wait 2-5 minutes for your food as we must prioritize the people actively in the drive thru while waiting for your food. If you are forgotten about, chances are your receipt fell somewhere and we lost it. At the restaurant I worked at, we did not typically have people waiting on parked orders for more than five minutes, but this will vary depending on staffing and location.
- On the Food Quality
Quite frankly, McDonald’s food quality was exactly what I expected. They kept up with cleaning everything, including the ice cream machines (they were only broken twice in my time there), and unless your expectations were ridiculously high, McDonald’s is exactly what you’d expect: pre-frozen food fried or grilled in batches then served to you. The meat is what they say it is, and it’s very mediocre quality. However, it is not inedible, and there were no significant hygiene issues at my location. We barely even had any bugs.
I got grossed out by the breakfast foods pretty quick, because the McMuffins smell awful while they’re cooking, and I would always take my break before we switched over to lunch, but lunch foods remain decidedly OK in my mind.
- On Customization
Customization at McDonald’s is limited, but not ridiculously so. What we can do depends entirely on what the registers allow us to do. We cannot, for example, give you a McFlurry instead of a drink on a meal, because the register does not recognize it as a drink, and won’t let us complete the meal unless we put through something that registers as a drink. We also cannot, in the case of a McDonaldLand meal, give you a drink that is not a shake, because of the way the registers work.
However, you can put pretty much any sandwich topping on a burger, you can put as much or as little cream, sugar, and flavoring in your coffee as you want, you can have hot fudge or caramel mixed into your McFlurry, and more. My current obsession is putting Big Mac sauce on literally any sandwich I order.
- On Napkins and Sauce
Yeah, policy on napkins and sauce sucks. The amount of times I got chided by a manager for giving someone too many napkins, or giving people sauce in the drive thru that they did not pay for, is ridiculous. We are only allowed to give a small amount of napkins, and you have to pay for extra sauces, though it’s only an extra 20 cents per sauce. If you want sauce with a burger, for example, we put it through the register and make you pay for it because otherwise the people bagging your order will not know that you want sauce with it. It is ridiculous.
McDonald’s is a huge corporation that’s been around for a very, very long time. Their ways of doing things are tried and tested, and though they are not always the most popular, they’ve been in business for this long already, and as such I highly doubt they’ll change it. But hey, at least the Big Mac meal went down to $8.