McDonald's Employees Can't Stand These 10 Customer Habits

McDonald's is one of the biggest fast-food chains in the U.S. In fact, McDonalds serves up food items to hundreds of millions of hungry customers every year. To keep up with the demand, the restaurant titan needs a huge workforce to keep everything running smoothly. The good news is that many of the chain's thousands of employees seem to generally enjoy working there. They find it fun, rewarding, and beneficial in terms of learning new skills. But like with many jobs, working at McDonald's comes with some downsides.

Many McDonald's employees say that the customers they deal with everyday can make things seriously challenging. To get a better understanding, we combed through Reddit to find some of the worst customer habits that McDonald's workers have said that they just can't stand. If something you do is on this list, no judgement, but just a hint that you might want to change your ways. Spoiler alert: Asking for no salt on your fries will often be badly received. Just a heads up.

If you're ordering at McDonald's, do your server a favor: Get into the nitty gritty details straight away. If you want a Diet Coke with no ice, say it. If you want extra ketchup, say it. If you want to make your item a meal, say it. If you don't, your server will have to spend time asking you all of these questions anyway. 

In the subreddit r/McDonaldsEmployees, one unnamed Reddit user talked about how frustrating it can be to "drag everything out" of a customer who isn't being specific enough with their order. They said the conversation can go something like this: "'I'd like a Happy Meal." Okay, which Happy Meal? 'Nuggets.' How many? '6 piece.' What's the sauce and the drink? 'Barbeque.' And the drink? 'Coke.'" They added that even after that whole exchange, the customer can still get annoyed because they wanted a medium Coke and extra fries, too. Of course, it's often because they didn't specify those details.

That's just one example. Many Reddit users who work at McDonald's say very similar things. For some, they sat the job wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that they often get the brunt of the customer's frustration if the order comes back wrong — even if it's the customer who is at fault for not being specific enough. So let this be the lesson: When it comes to ordering McDonald's, no detail is too small.

Often, McDonald's employees who work on the drive-thru have to deal with multiple things at once. They have to take orders from customers, handle payments, give out food, and so on. Some say they also have to clean dishes, too. So it's important to give workers a moment when you roll up to the drive thru window, as they might be in the middle of another task. If there's one thing that winds up McDonald's drive thru workers, it's people shouting "hello" at them as soon as they arrive.

Seriously, this comes up time and time again on McDonald's employee Reddit threads. If you want to annoy them even more, say hello repeatedly. Then, when they ask you what you need, tell them you need a moment to think. That'll really do it. In some cases, being impatient might even result in slower service from workers. One user wrote wrote on the r/McDonaldsEmployees subreddit,"When they barely arrive to the speaker and start saying hello like bruh! Wait!" They added, "The speaker isn't running away from you. Every time they do that, [I] always like to hold them."

At most restaurants and fast food chains, servers will repeat your entire order back to you after you're done telling them what you want. The key reason for this is pretty obvious: It ensures that the order is accurate, and allows customers to pick up on any mistakes before it is entered into the system. It might slow things down a little, but in the end, it reduces complaints and errors, which nobody wants.

But here's the thing: This trick only works if you pay close attention to the order when your server repeats it back. Some McDonald's employees on Reddit say that they have repeated orders back to customers multiple times, only for the customer to receive the order and claim it's incorrect. Others say things have got a little easier since the screens were introduced at drive-thrus. They simply ask the customer to read the screen and confirm. But again, it requires paying close attention. "I feel a lot of the orders I take the customers don't look and literally read the screen for confirmation," said one user in the subreddit r/McDonaldsEmployees. They added: "Read the screen. It's there for a reason."

This one should really go without saying, but unfortunately, many McDonald's employees have to deal with rude and aggressive customers. Some say they have received threats of assault while working their shift, while others have had customers yell in their faces due to incorrect orders. Often, people seem to get angry over seemingly small issues, according to workers. "A really aggressive woman threatened to beat me up after I calmly explained to her we don't do 2 for 3 McMuffins at my store anymore," said one Reddit user in r/McDonaldsEmployees. 

Sometimes, things get really bad, and workers have to call the cops. In fact, some workers say they have had to do this multiple times during their McDonald's career. In 2021, a report by the Service Employees International Union highlighted just how bad violence is in the fast food industry. It noted that from 2017 to 2020, there were about 77,000 reports of violent or threatening reports to the police from fast-food chain workers, including many employees from McDonald's.

Nobody wants limp fries that have been sitting around for a while. To try and avoid this, some customers ask for no salt on their fries. Why? Well, McDonald's fries are cooked in salt, so to ensure yours are salt-free, they have to make a whole new batch on the spot. Voila: Fresh fries. But if you still want salt on your fries, you have to ask for a salt packet, which gives the game away to employees. You didn't really want salt-free, you wanted them to make a whole new batch of fries just for you.

As you've likely already guessed, this is inconvenient, and really, really annoying for employees. To get their own back, some employees choose not to give out any salt packets. "[I'd] just tell them we ran out of salt packets to be petty," said one user in the r/McDonaldsEmployees subreddit. 

So now you must be thinking: How do you get fresh fries? Some workers say there is a better way: Just ask for fresh fries. Yes. It's as simple as that. Often, the fries are already fresh anyway, so everyone's a winner. 

If you're ordering for a large party (or you're just very hungry), it's a good idea to take your order inside the restaurant, rather than heading for the drive-thru. Most McDonald's workers feel that the drive-thru should be reserved for small, quick orders. Larger ones take more time and can cause delays.

Some McDonald's workers said that they have dealt with enormous orders at the drive-thru or from the curb, much to their dismay. And when we say enormous, we really do mean it. "The most drink order I had was like 60 coffees and 30 OJ," said one Reddit user on the r/McDonaldsEmployees thread. "And they ordered curbside and wondered why it was taking so long. They also ordered around 200 sausage biscuits."

Some McDonald's have their own limits on drive-thru orders, while others rely on the customers to use their common sense. One worker on the same thread said that if you're ordering more than 10 items, it's a good idea to take your order inside. McDonald's also has the option to order ahead in the restaurant's app.

Most McDonald's employees are very reasonable people. If you want, say, extra sauce or onions on your burger, they'll make it happen. Most simple modifications like this don't require too much effort from workers. Often, it's just a case of pressing an extra button on the till. But if you want an excessive amount of modifications, this is when employees start to get frustrated.

Firstly, too many extra toppings can make the burger messy and generally hard to eat. This is also annoying to prepare. Plus, it's extra frustrating when the customer inevitably ends up with sauce all over their shirt and complains to management. "If you order a sloppy mess and than [sic] receive a sloppy mess you better not bring that sloppy mess back and complain," said one Reddit user in r/McDonaldsEmployees.

Making too many modifications can also make your order more complicated and time consuming, and it also leaves more room for error. "Honestly if you're one of the people who modifies their burgers like crazy, please stop," wrote a Redditor in another thread on r/McDonaldsEmployees. "It's one thing to add or take away or even swap one or two things, but when you go nuts with it it gets so confusing and slows everything down like crazy."

For many people, the best thing about McDonald's is the breakfast items. From McMuffins and hash browns and sweet-yet-savory McGriddles, the fast food chain's breakfast menu is packed with hearty favorites. But there's a catch: They're only available in the morning. While the restaurant has experimented with an all-day breakfast in the past, McDonald's currently doesn't offer this option. So, if you want to indulge in your McDonald's breakfast favorites, you have to know when the morning menu ends. Usually, that's around 10:30 a.m. or 11 a.m. — although it can vary from location to location.

For some workers, customers not knowing when breakfast ends is really frustrating. It might seem like a minor thing, but when employees are asked the same question about breakfast times every day (sometimes by the same people each time), they can start to get a little wound up.

Another breakfast-related gripe from many employees? When customers show up a few minutes before the menu ends, and ask to order multiple breakfast items. "Mine are the people on Saturday who pull up to curbside at 10:27 and order 5 big breakfasts with hot cakes, 3 steak bagels, 4 frappes and more. Then complain it took a while," said one Redditor in r/McDonaldsEmployees. Basically, if you want to keep everyone happy, research breakfast times in advance and try to arrive at a reasonable time.

Most McDonald's are pretty clean places. It's part of the job description for workers to keep things tidy and hygienic. That said, it's still helpful and considerate to clean up after yourself when you're dining in a McDonald's restaurant. In most locations, there are trash cans and recycling stations where customers can dispose of their packaging and any left over food before they leave the restaurant.

It's not mandatory to clean up after yourself at McDonald's, but employees do get pretty upset if you leave your table in a state without making any effort to clean it up. Some feel like, at best, it's careless, and at worst, it's rude, entitled, and disrespectful. "Omg the worst thing is when they see me cleaning the tables and they still leave their mess," wrote one user on Reddit.

But it gets worse. Apparently, some employees say that customers will deliberately leave sauce containers upside down, so when the employee moves them, they spill everywhere. "The minute you picked them up they covered the table with ketchup," said another Redditor, adding, "I hate people!"

If you're in the mood for something sugary, creamy, chilled, and caffeinated but without any real coffee, then a McDonald's McCafe Frappé might just do the trick. At the time of writing, the chain has two options on the menu, the Caramel Frappé and the Mocha Frappé. But here's the thing, they're not actually that easy to make. So if you rock up to the counter and order several of these cold concoctions — expect a wait. And maybe a frustrated server.

To be fair to customers, this one seems to be more of a corporate flaw than customer's ignorance. According to Reddit, workers say that they often only have one machine to make the Frappés, which means that preparing each individual order takes a while. To add insult to injury, sometimes, the blenders are broken, too, which slows the whole process down even more. Another delay? There's sometimes not enough whipped cream or base mixture to make the drinks.

Basically, the Frappé process seems to be far from streamlined in many McDonald's restaurants. So, if you want a quick order (and a stress-free server), maybe just go for a soda.