McDonald's

[Andrew NDB]

Anyone been to a McDonald's lately? wtf happened to them? Used to be Ronald McDonald statues everywhere and giant playgrounds where you (or now, your kids) can play and go and hide inside burger towers and stuff. Bright colors (lots of red and yellow) and just a warm environment.

Now they're all gray, antiseptic-like. You step inside and there's a guy waiting for you to herd you toward the ordering kiosks... you get your drink cup to fill up and a stand with your number so they know where to take your food when it's ready (that's right, they bring it to your table). But they don't give you a tray so there's really no way to do anything more than take your drink and take your number stand and find a table in one trip... you can't stop and get ketchup, napkins, any of that since you've only got 2 hands -- that's got to be a second trip, after you leave your drink and number stand on your table. So you know, you're kind of getting your ketchup or whatever you need sort of nervously looking back at your table, making sure nobody is messing with your drink.

And half of the seats are like wedged up against the wall. There's tiny tables there and big privacy dividers only a foot away from your head... super awkward.

[ProphetofGanja]

Welcome to the McFuture

[IndigoErth]

I guess that's supposed to look modern? Color wise it looks drab. So much for the fact that the typical fast food colors were used for a psychological reason. This drab look now doesn't say "hunger."

Haven't been in one forever because I never cared for their food. Don't think any of ours got that makeover though. At least not yet. (edit: Actually maaaby one in a shopping center I rarely visit, I think it's a McD's there that something was being done to back in the summer. I think.)

I think we only ever had one with the playground stuff around here. Though I believe it (or the updated version from years ago) is still there.

[AquaParade]

Food completely aside, I don't like going to McDonalds because they seem to care least about customer service. Maybe along with taco bell.
It's typically clueless teenagers or people who very clearly don't want to be there. I just don't trust that companies employees with my food.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

I've not had any of those issues, but thats because I don't live in the US.

Sounds like they're just cutting costs, perhaps in reponse to declining revenue?

[Slade]

Yep. Ours just reopened. Its worse than before. Barely any room to sit, kiosks are right at the door so people are all jammed up as soon as you walk in.
We went in the other night, the kiosk wasn't sending the orders so it took over an hour to even get our food.

[Voltron]

Complaining about an extra trip to get ketchup has to be the laziest thing I've ever heard.

"What? I have to walk? AGAIN? I'm sorry, I thought we won the Cold War. And where are the playlands? What's a grown man supposed to do for entertainment here?"

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Originally Posted by Voltron

the laziest thing I've ever heard.

Well, I don't exactly go to McDonalds to combat my laziness

[Voltron]

Yeah, but where's the ketchup? Ten feet away? At the farthest? It's not like going to Mordor.

[Zulithe]

It gets worse. In some markets the drink cups have NFC chips on the bottom. The drink machines will only dispense when it detects the chip, which seems fair, but they also lock your cup to only be able to refill it 3 times.

This can be a big problem since the machine is not smart enough to know when you actually filled your cup. You can't do say half coke half something else because the machine will think you filled your cup twice. And if you accidentally don't fill up your cup when you decide on a flavor and press the button -- well too bad, it counts as one of your refills. Press a flavor that is about to run out and it stops 1/3 through filling your cup? That counts too. Want to sample a single sip of a drink or syrup flavor combination to make sure you like it? That will count.

Look forward to seeing them roll this out in more places since it's obviously a big cost savings for them.

It's really stupid and annoying and makes me not want to go to McD's anymore.

Every time I turn around these chain restaurants are doing everything they can to try to push away business. Either by raising prices, implementing ****** policies like the NFC cups, making getting condiments/napkins/etc. harder to aquire or trying to charge you for them, weird redesigns that are less comfortable... at what point do they start losing business and wake up because that's what needs to happen.

[CyberCubed]

A lot of McDonald’s by me have done away with cashiers to take your order. And now you just make your order on kiosks with touch screens and then get a receipt. Of course then you go to the counter and the workers then get you your food from the back, but otherwise you don’t order from humans anymore.

I felt like I was living in the future. No more cashiers and now robots or machines take your order. I couldn’t believe the giant kiosk touch screens they had with every food item on the menu and you just select what you want. God it’s like The Jetsons or Futurama.

Of course some other McDonald’s are the same as always, especially the ones in the poor neighborhoods with the same minimum wage cashiers taking your order, but in the new renovated McDonald’s it’s like something out of sci-fi.

God we really are in the far flung future of 2020. I can’t believe we all made it to the future.

[Prowler]

I haven't eaten at McDonald's since... 2005? I only liked it when I was a kid because of the nuggets, the fries and ofc the Happy Meals. Sundaes were ok as well. never cared much for their burgers.

McDonald's rebranded itself around the mid-late 2000 or so iirc, with their letters becoming white on a green background. I don't think it was a good idea. Red was such an iconic colour for McDonalds just like yellow. The combination of both was pretty good. Maybe I'm on the minority on this one, but it's become a lot easier to overlook a McD's when you walk past it than before.

I remember McDonald's having playground areas quite well. At least the larger ones usually had a pool full of balls or whatever. I think I dived into one when i was a little kid once but can't recall. McD's no longer has those? Come to think of it, it seems like McDonald's restaurants, at least here in Portugal are all roughly of the same size these days. Ther used to be two very large ones in the city.

A pretty cool looking McDonald's is one in the second biggest city of Portugal, Oporto with a big eagle on top of it:


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[IndigoErth]

Wow, that McDonald's looks like it belongs in some really high end upscale mall. And sell gold leaf encrusted chicken meat paste nuggets.


What the heck is this about chips on cups? o.O Come on now...Next we'll be reimplementing pay toilets.

edit: OR, rather, the company's app that will verify that you made a purchase upon scanning the code on the bathroom door to open it. No purchase, no open.

How do the redesigned stores have less seating/space? Are they whole new smaller buildings, not just existing ones given a facelift?

And I'd like to point out that I was never too lazy to get up for more ketchup at Burger King, dammit. Where you actually had to make the effort to go back to the front to refill another tiny paper cup with five fries worth of ketchup. You know how many trips this requires to eat all your fries?? And god forbid you also need it for your burger or nuggets. Sure, you usually grab more than one, but one can carry only so many tiny paper cups at a time. Do they still do the paper cups? Not eaten inside in years. I don't recall if McD's had them, I assume they would have at least back in the day...? If they want to save money and limit refill abuse, maybe they could switch to those for the sodas, same price, and keep unlimited refills.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

Wow, that McDonald's looks like it belongs in some really high end upscale mall. And sell gold leaf encrusted chicken meat paste nuggets.


What the heck is this about chips on cups? o.O Come on now...Next we'll be reimplementing pay toilets.

edit: OR, rather, the company's app that will verify that you made a purchase upon scanning the code on the bathroom door to open it. No purchase, no open.

How do the redesigned stores have less seating/space? Are they whole new smaller buildings, not just existing ones given a facelift?

And I'd like to point out that I was never too lazy to get up for more ketchup at Burger King, dammit. Where you actually had to make the effort to go back to the front to refill another tiny paper cup with five fries worth of ketchup. You know how many trips this requires to eat all your fries?? And god forbid you also need it for your burger or nuggets. Sure, you usually grab more than one, but one can carry only so many tiny paper cups at a time. Do they still do the paper cups? Not eaten inside in years. I don't recall if McD's had them, I assume they would have at least back in the day...? If they want to save money and limit refill abuse, maybe they could switch to those for the sodas, same price, and keep unlimited refills.

It was considered the most beautiful McD's in the world last year by some American journalist apparently. In this article there's a pictures of its inside:

https://observador.pt/2018/08/26/o-m...o-diz-que-sim/

Thing is it's a very old building of art deco. So it's no originally a McDonald's. It just happened that a McDonald's was open in that building decades later.

[IndigoErth]

Very pretty. What even leads some of these companies to choose these particular locations, esp as they've got to be expensive? (Much like the East L.A. CVS that took over an old theater.) Being an eye catching oddity? Because the look of it clashes to much with the overall concept of McDonald's it's rather funny. There needs to be a blog or something that archives places like this.

Wonder what it's like for the employees who work there.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

Very pretty. What even leads some of these companies to choose these particular locations, esp as they've got to be expensive? (Much like the East L.A. CVS that took over an old theater.) Being an eye catching oddity? Because the look of it clashes to much with the overall concept of McDonald's it's rather funny. There needs to be a blog or something that archives places like this.

Wonder what it's like for the employees who work there.

The article says the food isn't that great. It's McDonald's after all. And apparently the American journalist that visited it recommended people who go there to just have some coffee and order a cream custard(a Portuguese sweet) and then leave. Seems the guy enjoys seeing how different McDonald's places can be in different parts of the world.

No idea why McD's picked such spot. I don't live in that city, but maybe it's because it's located in the main/most iconic avenue in that city. That's something more and more common in many European cities nowadays. Starbucks, McDonald's and other big chains popping up in historical centres, which leads to them losing identity. In this case, McDonald's was able to blend right in. But it opened in 1995 already and things have changed for the worse since then all across European cities.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Voltron

Complaining about an extra trip to get ketchup has to be the laziest thing I've ever heard.

"What? I have to walk? AGAIN? I'm sorry, I thought we won the Cold War. And where are the playlands? What's a grown man supposed to do for entertainment here?"

That's not the point. The point is that if you're by yourself, you have to leave things -- namely your drink -- unattended while you go and get ketchup or whatever.

[Voltron]

I still don't understand the concern. Are you afraid of getting mickeyed in McDonald's? Of someone stealing your cup? Are you in a particularly bad area where thefts are that common? I understand an unease in leaving children unattended, or if you have something big like an iPad or laptop you're carrying.

Otherwise, this is just another case of a company changing their model for whatever reason. They do this all the time. It's probably just to help phase out human employees and automate everything. Yay for the singularity.

[Leo656]

I was gonna say, where the f*ck y'all living where you gotta worry about getting dosed at a McDonald's.

Now, gang-jumped in the bathroom at a White Castle, sh*t, that's an everyday thing, but I've never heard of anyone getting GHB'ed at McDonald's while they were going to get more napkins. And I live in NJ, where fast food cashiers are legally allowed to mace you for asking for extra sauce packets.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I was gonna say, where the f*ck y'all living where you gotta worry about getting dosed at a McDonald's.

Oh, you'd be surprised.