McDonalds: Edible or Not

my new thing is mcdonalds pov. this one channel where (a guy who owns a mcdonalds franchise, i think?) shows us how the sausage is literally made. fascinating stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKWLu6UHryQ

the mcrib one is good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eQOHUuukrs

My mom will occasionally buy my nieces a Starbucks treat after school, but they've never stepped foot in a McDonald's or BK or indeed any classic fast food joint we grew up with. My godson the same. Their friends the same. Most don't even drink soda at parties. I wonder if a generation raised by bougie white or white-adjacent (aka Hispanic) will have grown up without these toxins.

xp You have to admire his craft.

oh geez those videos, if I’m in a McDonald’s I try hard to avert my eyes from the kitchen area, sort of like holding one’s breath while going through a tunnel. Scott Seward otm re oncology waiting room vibes

McRib has a sentimental spot in my heart because my wife and I went there for a quick lunch one day where she told me she was pregnant, and that's what I had (fall '87, 1st McRib rollout iirc). I always smile when it's reintroduced for a while, but not enough to have another one.

This ventures into "i don't even own a TV" territory, but the only thing I've ever eaten at a McDonalds was the fries and the last time I even set foot in a McDonalds was 1988.

the filet o fish is good. It isn't meat goo like their nuggets and mcrib.

McGoo

'twas my first job, and by far the worst in every way

I don't know how it is now, but McD's back then was "We Do it Our Way".... i.e. if you ask to 'hold the pickles' or 'no onions', you'll be punished with a wait
Better just to remove the pickles yourself

My last McD visit was in Barcelona a few years back - my GF needed to use the bathroom, so I ordered a draft beer which seemed very novel

never eat this shit

xxp Mine was Burger King. It was awful. The worst was having to set up the broiler in the morning. We soaked it in a lye tank overnight to get the grease off. What a filthy, dangerous job.

The upside of doing the morning shift was getting off at 2:00 pm.

Yeah, I did breakfast shift a lot, mostly in the drive-thru... I got horrible acne from frying those little hashbrowns, I can't stand the smell of a McD anymore

McDonald's in the Philippines fucking rules btw.

I didn't even have a burger there once. They have fucking fried chicken, with a special gravy that you could dispense at the condiment station.

And white rice as a side

mine was BK too. luckily I have "people skills" so I got to do register and drive thru a lot. making the food wasn't too bad either. kinda fun sometimes in fact. on the other hand all the maintenance jobs fucking sucked. and yes there is a very specific smell to it, I feel it whenever I go into one or encounter a teenager who works at a fast food place and hasn't changed shirts yet. which is funny because when I was working there I couldn't really detect it after a month. my Mom definitely could though she complained about it constantly

should also mention I worked harder at that job than any other job I ever had. for $5.25 an hour lmao

I had a coworker who crammed his uniform shirt into a mayonnaise jar after work, to make sure it was extra wrinkled and gross when he clocked in the next day

Mostly never eat McDs but the one thing I will stan for are their breakfast burritos when on long trips. Just something about hot salty egg and sausage wraps with crappy hot sauce when heading out on a long drive or waiting to catch a plane. They even have a semblance of vegetables in them! I recall someone saying breakfast was the only thing worth eating at McDs because your body has all day to burn off all the calories.

My fast food experience was Taco Bell which strangely was looked at as favorable experience when I applied to the very whiteppl "Mexican" restaurant in town after a summer working at the border (NB in rural upper Michigan.)

Mostly never eat McDs but the one thing I will stan for are their breakfast burritos when on long trips. Just something about hot salty egg and sausage wraps with crappy hot sauce when heading out on a long drive or waiting to catch a plane.

I'll remember this.

when I worked at McD, a buddy worked across the strip mall at Taco Bell, and we used to exchange our lunch break meals since we were so sick of the respective swill

Yeah we used to do food trades all the time at BK. Was fun to get Papa Johns and throw the banana pepper in the deep fryer because it would explode

As I recall, McDonalds food is on the low end of edible, but most of it qualified as something to eat. otoh, I do whatever is necessary to eat higher up the edibility scale and have succeeded in not eating at a McDonalds for decades, so my information may be outdated.

I also worked the closing shift at BK. There would usually be a ton of food left over. I'd have a second dinner of, like three Whopper Juniors and a couple large fries. Ah, youth.

I worked at an Arby's and have no idea how I didn't gain 70 pounds. it was a terrible location - you could only get to it easily from one side of the road, and if you were going the other way, it required a U-Turn at a really frustrating intersection, and there were much better options on either side.

so full staff was supposed to be 6, but we did such shit business, we ran it with 3. but we were told we needed to drop 2 chicken patties down every hour, and when that hour passed, it had to get tossed. it was stupid and wasteful - we had many hours where we didn't sell any.

so I'd go to the back and eat them rather than toss them...sometimes multiple times in a shift.

same here, I probably put down 15-20 chicken nuggets every shift, plus I'd always grab a Hershey pie on the way out. even the managers were like "who cares we get paid like shit". thank god for having a teeanged metabolism. well that and being on your feet for 8+ hours a shift.

lol this McDonald's just ran out of straws. people are revolting.

(yes I'm eating here again. sadly, it's the closest restaurant to dad's nursing home, so I come here twice as much as usual)

DQ had a policy of throwing away mistake orders, and it was followed under the threat of firing. However, they saved a mistake strawberry milkshake for me on my birthday.

maaaaan fuck that. 'let's waste food rather than putting it to good use'.

What was the mistake?

lol that was BK's policy too and only one person there gave a shit. it was really hard to get fired there unless you just never showed up. though I almost did for saying "welcome to McDonalds how bout a Big Mac?" as my intro line in the drive thru for an entire night

only thing I can think of is being afraid people will make mistakes on purpose, but even that is negligible. I do remember one night working at a mexican restaurant where one of the senior servers put in the order wrong three times for the same table, resulting in three sets of 'mistake' meals, and managers looked pretty pissed when they saw 8 servers pigging out mid-shift on three mistake meals lol

I know it used to be a thing for employees to call in fake pizza orders

I support all methods of stealing food

What was the mistake?

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, September 19, 2023 12:01 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

wrong size or flavor. You could also get in trouble for overserving. The owner's son would weigh your cones and throw them away if he felt you were being generous.

I'd routinely give people extra chicken nuggets. my 8-pieces were usually more like 10-12.

The owner's son would weigh your cones and throw them away if he felt you were being generous.

That guy can go to hell.

i'd steal his car keys and take owner's kid's car for a joyride and offer to bring it back 'if I'm feeling generous'

The owner's son would weigh your cones and throw them away if he felt you were being generous.

"Siri, what is a 'failson'?"

I had a Filet O' Fish meal today. I can report that McDonald's is, indeed, still edible.

What was the mistake?

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, September 19, 2023 12:01 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

wrong size or flavor. You could also get in trouble for overserving. The owner's son would weigh your cones and throw them away if he felt you were being generous.

― The Xenaverse Connection (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, September 19, 2023 3:39 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

How ironic for them to prevent the practice of hurting margins with product "waste" by... literally wasting the product. Unless the employee is totally humiliated and never does it again, all you're doing is making them and the customer shrug for a moment, and in the end the business only receives the money for a single order vs. the double+ order's worth of product expended.

I keep reading this thread title as McDonalds now offering edibles.

McTHC

Lol.

Filet o' Fatty

Hash browns

Kind McNuggets

pretty sure I've bought a cart called "Grimace's Birthday Shake" before

Totally Fried Apple Pie

I'd read an article about McDonald's attempts to detoxify their brand. I don't know how much of this is specific to Europe, but along with changing colours from the garish iconic red-and-yellow to the more "organic" messaging green and brown you'd see branches redecorated to have like giant pictures of carrots on the walls. Carrots as an option in the happy meal too. Speaking of which, is it a legal thing that they can't advertise the toys in those anymore? They're still there if you check - along with the "educational" option of getting a crappy McDonald's book instead. It all feels very shame-ridden, like obviously absolutely no one is going to go to McDonald's for a healthy meal but they have to pretend a little now instead of the ostentatious hedonism of yore.

Specific to the UK, McDonald's ads try hard for the relatable: hey grampa living in a council flat, you may not share a lot in common with the young black kids who are your neighbours but you both love our fries! Hey mate, want a coffee without getting talked down to by the late sipping, croissant munching urban elites? We have you covered. A cozy part of the British landscape, not at all a foreign invader as it used to proudly announce itself as, no longer the avatar of glorious American capitalism that will bring joy to us all. In Portugal they try to incorporate local dishes into the menu and again, absolutely NO ONE is going to go there for the caldo verde soup, but it's a way of telegraphing that same sense of "belonging" there.

What's amusing about this to me is I haven't seen the other US chains adopt similar tactics - Burger King and KFC basically still are the same things they were when they first came to Europe. I wonder if McDonald's had to move in these directions because it's more iconic, a bigger symbol of American food imperialism.