McMemory

  I moved to the state of Washington back in the fall of 2013 after spending nearly two years living and working in Israel. My first job there, the first one I could get, was at a local McDonald’s. I worked there for a good six months before moving onto another job at Home Depot. While I didn’t want to necessarily spend the rest of my life working at McDonald’s I did have some interesting experiences, and there were regular customers that I enjoyed seeing. I shared a memory from McDonald’s on this blog awhile back, and now here is another one.  

     

       Typically I ended up working the early morning shift when breakfast was being served. One man came in and asked for three breakfast McMuffins without the sausage. Basically he was asking for pieces of buttered bread with cheese. I put his order in and then he says, “And I would like those for free!”

“Okay,” I said. “Do you have coupons?”

“I am a Muslim!” said the customer.

“Well, okay,” I said. At first I was confused about why his religion was a factor in him getting free breakfast food. He might as well have said, “I would like those for free. I really like Ikea furniture!” or “I would like those for free. My favorite dinosaur is the triceratops!”

Seeing my confusion, the customer then explained in more detail his issue. “I can’t eat pork as a Muslim,” he said. “And the other day I made the exact same order, but they got it wrong and put sausage on them anyway. So I couldn’t eat them and I did without breakfast.”

“Let me talk to one of the managers,” I said. “They would have to authorize this.” So I walk over to one of them and tell them the situation. She talks to the customer and punches in the magic manager code into the cash register so that his value menu items are free. Soon he obtains his free bread and cheese and leaves. 

The manager then turns to me, sighing, and says, “Don’t make any promises.” When I explained that I did not make any promises to that customer she simply rolled her eyes at me and moved on. She was the only manager I ever had an issue while working at McDonald’s (she actually tried to have me fired once); pretty much everyone else thought I was doing an excellent job (I actually got Employee of the Month once).

Couple things to keep in mind. Let’s say hypothetically the manager denied the customer’s request to void the cost of the sausage-less McMuffins after he got his order wrong from the other day. At the least he might complain on Yelp or Google about the situation. At worst he might even hire a lawyer and file a discrimination lawsuit against McDonald’s. Even if the restaurant ultimately won in the hypothetical lawsuit, it would lose money from having to hire a lawyer and would ultimately be made to look bad in front of the public, thus losing customers and money.

Second, the customer wanted a few items from the dollar menu free of charge (and justifiably so in my opinion). The local McDonald’s where tons of people come in and out every day is not going to go under thanks to giving out a few of their absolute cheapest items free of charge to one man.

Third, McDonald’s probably needs to expand the options for their breakfast menu. Many of them are heavily infused with pork products. Many religious people such as Muslims and Jews do not eat pork, and some people may simply not like it. Currently I am teaching abroad, and in the McDonald’s in the country I teach in they have lots of breakfast chicken sandwiches which are pretty good and totally free of pork. 

Personally I wouldn’t want to wait in line and pay money for tiny pieces of bread with cheese on them.