You probably hit up the Golden Arches a few times a week without giving a single thought to the workers who serve you. After reading this you probably should. McDonald's crew members have a few horror stories to share.
Sometimes, customers can be pretty mean. Other times, things just get weird. Business Insider spoke with several current and former crew members and heard some of their worst, grossest, and strangest stories about working at the fast-food giant.
1. Emergency Walmart runsMcDonald's and Coca-Cola are quite a pair. McDonald's is the brand's biggest restaurant customer, according to The New York Times, and customers expect to be able to order a soda with their McDonald's meal - so issues with a McDonald's soda machine are a big deal.
One McDonald's crew member said how their restaurant dealt with a broken soda dispenser. "I had to drive to Walmart at 4 am to buy 30 two-liter bottles of soda until we could fix the issue," the crew member said.
2. Barking, disruptive dogsOne McDonald's crew member of seven years complained about encountering customers who bring in "annoying" dogs that "bark in my ear when I'm trying to take your order".
3. Customers keeping money in their brasA crew member from Pennsylvania said that they hated to see "people that take money out their bras". They added that they didn't want to have to touch "bra money." "I don't want to touch what was just touching your flesh," the crew member said.
4. Oatmeal gets thrown more often than you thinkOrnery fast-food customers are nothing new. But one crew member told Business Insider about an encounter with one particularly aggressive customer at the drive-thru. "One time, a woman threw her oatmeal at me through the drive-thru window because I was trying to make sure that I heard her coffee order correctly," a crew member of two years told Business Insider.
5. Ketchup is taken very seriously"I've had people throw a fit when I didn't give them ketchup by default - the customer is supposed to ask for it - or when I didn't give all of the extra sauces they want without charging them," a former crew member based in New York said.
6. Food is left in restrooms"I have seen a half-eaten fudge sundae in the women's bathroom," a crew member said. "It was sitting on the toilet, and it was completely melted. I don't know what was wrong with whoever left it there, but to this day I still find it depressingly comical."
An Illinois-based crew member also added that they had found enough food in their restaurant's men's bathroom to "feed a household".
7. Families with vomiting kids are the worst"A small family was on their way out when their 6-year-old son threw up right in front me," a former crew member from Virginia said. "This child clearly did not chew one piece of food from his Happy Meal and swallowed everything whole." The former crew member said the family "just kept walking" and didn't bother to apologize, clean up the mess, or check to see whether the child was okay.
"He stormed back into the restaurant, accused me of poisoning the boy, and told me, 'Clean up that s---, it's disgusting,' as if it were my puke. He also failed to inform me that his grandson had also thrown up in the play area. I got a very angry complaint from someone about that."
These are pretty crazy, but the chances of seeing any of this or it happening to you are probably slim. Now you know the truth, will you live in ignorance and still go, or find your fried solace elsewhere?
No judgement here, either way.
