Mildly Infuriating

I personally love kiosk ordering and by proxy, self check-outs anywhere and everywhere. The less humans I have to work with the better, because humans are slow, social, and make mistakes. That said, McDonald's kiosks kinda suck, and they are one of the least intuitive interfaces out there IMO.

McDonald's has been on a really steep decline for the last few years, it seems. They used to be tolerable; they weren't the best fast food around, but they also weren't the worst, and were generally a pretty good deal for your money. The last few times I've gone, the prices have been higher than the time before, and the quality lower than before.

The last time I went was nearly a year ago; my food was cold and my shake was melted, and it was nearly $20 for just one person. There's just no reason to go back.

McDonald’s has been on the decline since I worked there 13 years ago. What you’re reporting as dry and overcooked is actually food that has been hot held long past the time it should have been thrown out. You can’t even get a burger patty that has been cooked within the past two hours most of the time unless you’re there during peak times.

While I've almost always read bad online reviews for McDonalds in the US, I think the experience might differ a lot in other places around the world, for context on what I'm about to write and why I think many people think the price is the worst offender.

Believe it or not, I've always had a good experience at any McDonalds I went to service wise. Over on this side of the pond they're seen much more positively in general, I think. Their food is pretty good by fast food standards, and it's way more consistent quality wise than pretty much every other fast food place. In the last few years they've also turned most of their restaurants from the typical fast food restaurant decor to cozier and actually comfortable places to hang out in, which is pretty cool.

BUT, the prices just don't make much sense anymore. The price for a basic menu is currently near the price point of an actual restaurant meal. At shopping centers over here there's usually always a couple of "somewhat fast" local food restaurants - I don't know what to call them, kind of an in between between what you would call fast food and what you would expect from a "slow" fancier restaurant - and it's actually become cheaper to get a normal menu there than at McDonalds. The one big attractive of McDonalds and fast food in general used to be price - but if it's currently cheaper to get a full plate of great much better food, why would I ever go to McDonalds unless I'm really in a hurry? They seem to be counting on people still going there out of habit, but I think there's not nearly as much of a fast food culture here, so I've started noticing that McDonalds around me have much fewer attendance than they used to.

The McDonald's kiosk sucks. It constantly tries to upsell you on every item or tries to get you to go back and add more items to your order even after you're done ordering.

The last time I went there I got a 10 Mcnugget "value" meal which still ended up costing $13. For that much I could have gone to a better restaurant and gotten a similar amount of food of much better quality.

To me at this point the only benefit to ordering McDonald's is convenience. They've basically turned what should be an inexpensive value product into a premium product, but the "premium" aspect of it is just that they're open late lol

I haven't been to McDonald's in like 10 years barring once or twice for a mcflurry or any fast food place other than dominoes.

Street food fills the fast food hole much better. Fuck McDonald's

Those stupid kiosks are the worst. And I ly there so they do t have to give another teenager minimum wage for taking orders, it's not for our convenience at all.

Honestly, it’s 9pm so unless the store is 24 hours (and even if it is) then they’ll be trying to close down a clean up and get things ready for the morning shift which starts early.

When I worked at McDs years ago a few big orders deciding to sit in the restaurant around 9pm could mean the difference between getting to go home at 12:30 and getting an OK nights sleep vs getting to go home at 2:30 and getting a terrible nights sleep before they might have to come in at 10am the next day.

You could argue that if they didn’t want customers at that time then they shouldn’t be open - which I would agree with - but obviously the low level grunts making your food don’t get to make those decisions.

Drive through is always prioritized way over orders inside

I don't like the kiosks at all and it seems like the service is slower when you use them. It's like no employee feels responsible for your order. The food can be good, the biggest variation I usually see is in the fries, sometimes they are hot and fresh and other times you can tell they've sat for a while.

Nearly every burger was overcooked and quite dry.

I get stuck eating at McD once every month or two because of food deserts, and I would say it's a borderline miracle if any of your burgers weren't over cooked. They're cooked from frozen on, basically, a giant panini press. And no one checks them, they just cook to until the machine dings... if there's someone available to do anything about the ding, that is.

I like the kiosks and haven't really received lukewarm fries, but the food IS overpriced, isn't as fast as fast food should be, and quite often they mess up the order too.

I hate the kiosks. But, they are money makers.

As much as I agree that they create shitty experience, they generate so much more dollars per order than having a human take the order that they are never going to leave.

As an ex McDicks employee the mistake is going into mcdonalds at the end of the night. Past 7pm things slow down and employees start heading home. And drive thru ordering is always prioritized over in store orders.

If you want good McDonalds show up in the lunch/dinner rush, all other times they're running low on staff, and the food has sat in their warmers for eons. It's also kind luck of the draw on if you get the employees that have 3 brain cells. Sometimes you'll show up late when the non nose pickers are there and actually get good food. Other times you'll get there and spend 10 minutes staring at a guy picking his nose looking at his phone instead of grabbing the food and putting it into the bag.

The McDonalds in my area is pretty amazing (Silverthorne CO). There’s always like 10 employees and it just hums in there. I only ever order from the app; I get a large fries no salt and a large unsweetened iced tea for $2. The fries are always fresh (no salt is key) and they are ready within a minute of me walking in the door.

I don't eat their often either, but the current meal deal with fries, drink, double burger, and nugs for $5 is pretty great by today's fast food prices, so I've gone a few times over the last month.

Everything at the one I've been going to seems on the up and up. (I use the apk and hit the drive through). Foods been between pretty warm and hot every time. Only real gripe is that every time I order the burger no ketchup, no onions, and extra Mustard, and every time there's only the tiniest damned bit of mustard on it. Like....I want some Mustard, damn it.

Remember when everyone was so upset about losing Brazilian rain forest? Turns out we'd all rather have Big Macs.

The icecream and salad are fine at McD, but the rest of their so called food has always been awful to my taste. The fries taste like cardboard and the buns taste like Styrofoam. The feeling in my stomach told me, that this cannot be called food.

We are a long time away from the hamburger rap by Tai Mai Shu