A rant about a so-called “restaurant.”

So, about a year ago I was driving across country somewhere in the Midwest and I had to pull in to a travel plaza for some gas. It was one of those stops on the highway that has a fast food restaurant attached. This one, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, had a Mcdonald’s.

As a rule, I avoid fast food places unless it’s late and I’m traveling, and there are no viable alternatives. I was in the middle of a long trip. Usually I pack enough food for a day or two so I don’t have to eat out. Tuna sandwiches. PB&J. Mixed vegetables. Actual sustenance. But it was my third day of driving, and I’d already burned through all my rations. It was getting dark, I had a few more hours of driving to go, and by the time I stopped again it was possible nothing would be open.

That left one hell of a Sophie’s choice. So into McDonald’s I went after parking my car.

You know that shot from The Exorcist when the priest arrives to the house and it looks all foggy and ominous? That’s what I felt like standing outside the door to Ronald McDonald’s Chamber of Misfortune.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad this time,” I stupidly thought as I entered, immediately smelling something that was a cross between a men’s locker room and a public bathroom. There were crumpled napkins on the floor. Crumbs left on tables. Wet rings left from soda cups. Splotches of ketchup all over the condiment counter. Like a party of five-year old’s had just left.

It wasn’t that busy. There were maybe three or four people in there. Middle-aged guys with pot bellies wearing stretched out t-shirts. Creased old white sneakers. A distinct aura of sloth and imbecility. In other words, your regular Mcdonald’s eaters. Not a visting dignitary stricken by an unstoppable masochistic urge due to severe hunger, like myself.

There were several employees wandering behind the counter and in whatever passes for a “kitchen.” Older, mean-looking ladies. I don’t blame them for looking mean. I’d turn into a one hell of a mean SOB too if I had to work at a McDonald’s. But then again, I’d be homeless and living under a bridge before doing that.

Because the old ladies looked so mean I thought better than to order at the counter. I instead turned to one of the glowing, smudgy rectangles nearby. McDonald’s has recently installed these giant smartphone-looking screens in their restaurants that you can order and pay on. This is supposed to make the food ordering process more “efficient.”

I guess they figure people can’t stand to look away from their phones for more than five seconds even to order food, so why not create a giant smartphone for them to order on? Seems genius to me. Who doesn’t want to press their fingers onto the same screen a million other people just touched with their germy, sticky hands?

But whatever, I was starved. And if this screen brought me garbage posing as food into my mouth even ten seconds faster, I’d be perfectly fine with getting hepatitis on my hands. I tapped on the digital menu selections. A simple quarter pounder “meal” with fries and a water. Paid with my card. Then took a little plastic number display to a table in the corner.

FYI, that little plastic number thing usually means someone will BRING your food to you. However, I was about to proven very wrong about this age-old tradition.

So there I waited. And waited. And waited. And no food arrived at my sticky little table. A couple of giant flies did try to land on me, though. And some goober was coughing the whole time in the other corner so hard it sounded like he was hacking up a blood clot. But besides all that unpleasantness, hey it wasn’t that bad.

About ten minutes later I get up and go to the tiny what-passes-for-a-counter counter to inquire about my missing cuisine. Mind you, I was only sitting right off to the corner. Like, if you were working that counter, I’d have been in your peripheral vision. You wouldn’t have even had to turn your head to notice me. But anyway, there my food was, sitting on the counter, getting cold, with the bag wide open. I’d input into the giant smartphone order taker that I wanted a tray as I planned on eating in, as I don’t like to eat and drive, or eat in my car period. And again, I took a plastic number to display on my table. But evidently the highly efficient new system Mcdonald’s had put in had failed to record that request. Either way, I was left with a bag of cold fries and a lukewarm “burger” (yeah right, more like a soggy greased cardboard).

I looked right at Mrs. Sourpuss Face and inquired why no one had brought me my meal.

“We don’t really do that here,” she hissed, and then ducked into the kitchen. I stood there dumbfounded for a moment.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. If you were sitting so close, why didn’t you get up earlier and check to see if your food was there? That’s besides the point. They still put it into a bag instead of on a tray. They left the bag wide open, causing it to get cold. And they weren’t that busy. Like I mentioned earlier, there were just a few buffoons in there when I arrived. They absolutely had time to hand off a simple tray of so-called food just out of courtesy. It’s literally the least the counter people can do. They don’t cook the food. They don’t even take orders for food, with those giant glowing monolith screens. They don’t clean up any tables. So what exactly do they have to do at all other than make customers feel like useless pests?

Dejected, I returned to my table. The food tasted like shit, of course. And after that horrendous service experience, I was pissed off and embarrassed. I’d have enjoyed a meal more sitting in a porta potty than sitting at that goddamn sticky table with the giant prehistoric flies buzzing around and Mr. Hack-A-Lung in the other corner.

When the fuck did Mcdonald’s become an absolute dumpster buffet? I remember when Mcdonald’s had a certain mystique. It had the ball pit. It had a play place. It was lively and colorful. Then some dumbass kid probably broke a tooth off on a ball pit ball and that was that. You used to even be able to smoke there. I know it was THE place to go to in the ’70s. That was when Mcdonald’s was at its height, not to mention reasonably affordable to eat at for a regular person. I paid something like $14-$15 for that cold pile of cholesterol-soaked sponges. Now, instead of Mcdonalds being a colorful foodie wonderland, the “restaurants” look like dystopian government offices. Everything is purely utilitarian. Like it were designed for robots. If there is one subtextual message McDonald’s sends with its interior design, it’s “Give us your money, now get the fuck out, asshole.” There’s no warmth. No welcome. No quality. No humanity. And certainly no value for your hard-earned money.

McDonald’s anymore is a monument to culinary failure. It’s like prison cafeteria food a supervillain somehow conned the world into paying $10+ per meal for. It’s staffed by people who aren’t really overworked, they just don’t give a fuck. It’s architectural design looks like it was created by aliens. Literally everything about it is so disgustingly bad that it’s actually shocking that such a business could even exist, much less be a multi-billion dollar corporation.

You’re not even a customer inside a Mcdonald’s anymore. You are a sucker from which as much money as possible is to be extracted, while offering as little as possible in return. Granted, that’s most retail and fast food establishments period. But Mcdonald’s takes it to an art form.

There’s this guy on YouTube called TheReportoftheWeek who reviews fast food. Some of his videos are quite lengthy. He reviews Mcdonald’s meals from time to time. He goes into detail, and gives really good and thorough reviews. But honestly, you only need about five seconds to review any meal at all from McDonald’s. They suck ass and belong in the trash. There, review done.

Really, I don’t know what it is anymore. It’s like every place exists to see how much it can piss you off just enough so you’ll still return. I went to Wal-Mart just today for example, and I’m not even done checking out before some fucking “associate” comes up to me to pester me about doing a customer service survey on the card reader. I’m in line trying to get my groceries in my cart and I’m supposed to fill out goddamn survey? GTFO. I was in line for all of two minutes. What the hell was I even supposed to base my survey on anyway? That’s it, no more surveys. I’m done. From here on out, if I’m asked to do a survey, it’s a guaranteed zero or one star review. I don’t care.

Fuck Mcdonald’s.