McDonald's Rant 5 - Sausage McMuffin & Filet'O'Fish

See here for the other rants.

I suppose this is less of a rant but rather a curious observation.

Why is it that these are the only McDonald's food items that are sold throughout the entire day? Filet'O'Fish is a lunch menu item and yet, it's available during breakfast. Sausage McMuffin is a breakfast menu item and yet, it's available during lunch. Who chose these 2 sandwiches? Why these 2? Why not the Big Mac or the Egg McMuffin?

(This applies to Hong Kong McD's only)

McDonald's Rant 4 - Commercial

See here for the other rants.

My wife and I were disgusted by a recent McDonald's TV commercial here in HK. Video link here. The basic rundown of the commercial goes like this:

• Family of 4: Mom, dad, son, and younger daughter.
• Commercial opens with the son playing alone with his train set. His little sister interrupts him by taking the train off the tracks. He shows his dissatisfaction by telling his sister to stop. The mom sticks her head out from the kitchen and tells her son to yield to his sister.
• Son tries to show Mom a drawing he made. Mom is busy feeding her younger daughter and tells her son to go away to play by himself.
• The whole family goes to a park. Both mom and dad focus on their daughter while their son sits alone on the bench sulking. They then look over to their son and realize what they must do.
• They all go to McDonald's where the dad orders a Big Mac meal for his son.
• His son shows surprise and enthusiasm (because he's supposedly only expecting a Happy Meal?)
• His dad implies that he's getting a Big Mac meal because he's grown up and no longer a child.
• The son happily celebrates getting his "grown up" meal, having completely forgotten how his douche-bag parents treated him like dirt just moments ago.

So, here's what I took away from that commercial:

• The parents completely neglected their first-born child with the arrival of a new baby.
• Instead of spending more time with their son, they decided to buy him out with a Big Mac meal.
• So now, the son is suppose to feel ok with that because he got a Big Mac?

McDonald's seems to be claiming their food is more important than parental care. If so, all parents should forget about giving their kids attention, encouragement or hugs. Just buy them all Big Mac meals. If you really want to show your love, super-size them.

McDonald's Rant 3 - McNuggets Sauce

See here for the other rants.

Here in HK, if you order McNuggets, the server gives you the default sauce. That is, sweet & sour sauce. They have several sauces. Sometimes, they have promotional periods where they offer special sauces. But even in normal days, they at least have barbecue sauce and mustard sauce as alternatives.

(Why they don't normally have honey mustard sauce is beyond me. They only have it during special promotional periods. At those times, they call it the Singaporean Honey Mustard Sauce. I have no idea how honey mustard is related to Singapore.)

So why is it that they assume that everyone wants sweet & sour sauce? Is it because we're Chinese and they feel we have to use a Chinese sauce for our McNuggets? If so, why not give us oyster sauce or soy sauce? Or perhaps they should just take McNuggets off the menu all together and replace it with McKungPao Chicken!

Ok, I'm not really being serious when I'm implying there's a racial issue to all this sweet & sour sauce business. Anyway...

Try asking for an alternative sauce to the sweet & sour. Rather than just giving you the alternative sauce, the server will replace the sauce they've given you. Even if your order was a take-out and the sweet & sour sauce is in your paper bag under 2 sandwiches with a bunch of fries, they will use their grimy hands to dig out that sauce before giving you the sauce you requested.

Good luck trying to get extra sauce. I can't verify this since I've never asked for more sauce. But apparently, they actually charge you for it.

McDonald's Rant 2 - Napkins

See here for the other rants.

In many ways, my rant regarding the ketchup packets also apply to napkins. No matter how much food you've ordered, by default you only get 2 pieces of napkins. You could have ordered 3 trays of food and unless you've asked for more napkins, you only get 2 pieces.

But actually, the amount of napkins you receive should be the least of your worries at McDonald's. Pay attention to how you've acquired those pieces of napkins and you'll see what I mean.

1. The person handling the cash register is the one responsible for placing the napkin on your tray. That same person is responsible for handling the money which is incredibly dirty. And since that person is trained to give you 2 napkins only, each napkin has made contact with his/her filthy fingers. Wait, it gets worse...

2. If the orders gets backed up, the servers sometimes review what's outstanding for each tray. And each time they review a tray, they use their hands to tap on your piece of napkin. So if you think about it, your napkin has already been used by the time you get to it. Wait, it gets worse...

3. Let's assume your order is a take-out. When they've completed packing your order into the paper bag, they use all five fingers to grab your napkin and receipt and toss it into your bag. Congrats, your napkin has just been soiled further. Wait, it gets worse...

4. If your order is a take-out, sometimes they don't even give you a tray. They place your receipt on top of your 2 pieces of napkins and just place it on the counter. If there's a line, your order gets moved across the counter to make room for the next. That means, your napkin has now been used to wipe their counter clean.

Just remember this the next time you use that harmless looking napkin for anything...

McDonald's Rant 1 - Ketchup Packets

I'm feeling rather antsy these days because of my wife's pregnancy. So I'm going to start a couple of posts on rants regarding McDonald's over the next couple of days.

Using just 1 minute searching on Google, I was able to find that I can buy a case of a 1000 ketchup packets for US $32.79. That's less than HK $0.30 per packet. Consider that a fast food chain as large as McDonald's would certainly buy in bulk and that price would surely be lower.

Then why is it that by default, you never get more than 1 pack of ketchup if your order contains fries here in Hong Kong? You always have to pop the question: 

"May I have some more packs of ketchup please?"

By "some more", you would expect at least 2 or 3. Definitely not 1. Then why is it that the server keeps only giving you 1 more? It's just a waste of time and effort because then I would have to ask them for more again and they have to get me more again.

What's worse is sometimes they respond to your question with another question:

"How many do you need?"

That's the most stupid thing. Firstly, it's rude. Secondly, with the effort they made by asking the question and then waiting for my response, they could have filled my entire tray with ketchup packs. For this very reason, I never answer this question. I just repeat my request for "some more" packs of ketchup.

This whole thing just makes the restaurant look cheap. While McDonald's is certainly no 5-star restaurant, you would think they can afford to generously give away ketchup packets.

Maybe the next time I get asked how many packets of ketchup I need, I should say something like this:

"I'm not sure. I usually use about a pea-size amount per piece of fry. I think that will burn through about 1 packet of ketchup for every 10 fries. How many fries do you reckon there are on this tray?"