McDonald's Cons Patrons Off Their Order Of Fries, Ex Employees Claim

A recent Ask Reddit thread called “What did your job want you to hide from customers?" became a lot more interesting after a former anonymous McDonald's employee revealed interesting information on how his then manager taught him and his colleagues to rip customers off their fries order and how they would create imaginary employees to blame all the mistakes on when speaking with customers.

The alleged McDonald's employee by the name Loony Gecko revealed how his old boss invented a fake employee to blame all the mistakes on. “Once in a while, the manager would tell the customers he 'fired' that imaginary employee and then come up with a new name for a new imaginary employee that would be the new sucker.”

Another Reddit user by the name experiMENTAL bunny recalled a time when McDonald’s taught him to pinch the fry carton. “Pinch the carton just right while putting the fries into them so that it looked full, but actually wasn't,” he said.

He also revealed how a customer once caught him doing the trick and called him out for it. “He shook the fries out into his bag and poured them back into the fry carton himself and it only filled up half way, so I had to give him more fries. I was impressed and embarrassed. It's been 7 years and I can still see his face.”

However, he wasn’t the only one who claimed that the fast-food giant practiced this method. Another user ranted about how he hated this practice and would refuse to do it. “Never got fired, but managed to have a few customers ask me when my shifts were the next week so they could have me filling their fries.”

He further went on to also explain the economics behind the alleged fry operation. “The fries were dirt cheap too! Case held 6 bags, each bag made 8 or 12 baskets, and each basket made 4-5 large fries filled my way. They only cost 20$ a case, so if they just filled them like I would they would net 288$ with all conservative numbers(8,4,1.5$) and assuming they were all sold in meals. This is coming from management side because I was shipping manager so I had to know all this shit.”

Following this Reddit thread, a spokesperson from McDonald’s decided to clear the air surrounding the confusion and refuted the claims. Speaking to the Sun he said, “We believe these claims to be fictional, there are no ‘secret tricks’ and we have strict operational procedures in place to ensure that fry portions are not under-filled.Without a verified source we are unable to investigate this further. Our employees work hard to ensure our customers have the best experience possible in our restaurants, and we strongly refute any claims that suggest otherwise.”

Terri Hickey, another spokesperson for McDonald’s, told spoke to Huffington Post regarding the controversy saying, “The notion of a secret trick is absolutely false. There are strict procedures in place to ensure that fry boxes and bags are appropriately filled so our customers can enjoy our World Famous Fries to the fullest.”

On an interesting note, fries are a very popular staple food for Americans with McDonald’s convenient and appetizing menu being one of their favorites.

A recent article by the Sun also revealed how McDonald’s uses natural beef flavoring in their fries to make them taste even better. The addition of the flavor gives the fries a distinguished taste. However, his flavoring is necessarily used for sales in the U.S. and Canadian markets.