McDonald’s Denies Claims That It Tells Employees to Under-Fill Fries

McDonald’s Denies Claims That It Tells Employees to Under-Fill Fries
(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Jack Phillips
12/12/2017
Updated:
12/12/2017

McDonald’s employees are claiming that they were taught to under-fill orders of fries. The company, however, denied those allegations.

“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,” spokesperson Terri Hickey told HuffPost.
Another spokesperson told MailOnline, “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.” They added: “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.”

The issue was raised when several people claiming to be McDonald’s employees wrote on Reddit that they were taught to under-fill.

“I worked at McDonald’s and they taught me how to pinch the fry carton just right while putting the fries into them so that it looked full, but actually wasn’t,” wrote user, “ExperiMENTALbunny,” in a thread.

“I only had 1 customer call me out on 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.”

Another user echoed the statement.

“I [expletive] hated that practice and basically refused 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,” user “Psychoopiates” wrote.

(TeaLaiumens/Wikipedia via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)
(TeaLaiumens/Wikipedia via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

“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.”

A third person came into the Reddit thread, saying that they would be considered a bad McDonald’s employee if they filled out the food packaging.

“I absolutely hated working at Maccies so I would overfill fry boxes as much as possible, fill drinks properly to the top instead of just what the machine automatically dispenses, basically I provided great customer service,” the person, “thedreamdweller,” wrote. “But it made me a [poor] employee in my managers’ opinion.”

Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter with 15 years experience who started as a local New York City reporter. Having joined The Epoch Times' news team in 2009, Jack was born and raised near Modesto in California's Central Valley. Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/jackphillips5
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