I've been to many, many mcdonalds restaurants everywhere i have been and always enjoyed the standard of service and food. enter the Payne Road Restaurant, Bow E3, London.
Me and Bradley went to london this weekend to stay with max, and when we got to his we just wanted some comfort food. the three of us wandered down the road and went in. it was mental.
firstly we were greeted with a massive queue. like, not just your kind of mcdonalds big queue that disappears in 5 minutes, imagine burger king on its busiest day. there was only one person serving. When Max eventually got to the front (after literally 15 minutes) the guys service style was incredible. imagine middle indias answer to drum and bass mc skibadee. he wasn't listening, and sure he was in a rush, but he was just making up parts of the order and adding bits on. he just kept speaking in a monotone rhythmical voice, an assault on the senses. honestly, at one point max said 'and a cheeseburger please...' and the bloke went 'two cheeseburgerssss...' it was fucked.
Bradley clocked that mcdonalds are now serving oasis on tap. as this happened it almost sealed our fate. the woman who had emerged to serve me and bradley remarked they were not serving any fizzy drinks as the machine was broken. no sign on the door, but you are either having oasis, a milkshake or water. As bradley ordered he asked for an apple pie. the woman walked around the back and brought a cold apple pie back round and put it on his tray. bradley felt it, and asked what the deal was, why it was cold. The woman didn't win an oscar in her unconvincing attempt to convince bradders that they have to take them out of the little machine round the front and take them round the back 'to cool down for 20 minutes' as if we have never, ever had a mcdonalds apple pie before and noticed it is the most blistering hot thing available to burn your mouth with.
So not only is this woman not serving us fizzy drinks, she is serving us cold apple pies and then trying to feed us bullshit with our extra value meals. i redeemed my NUS card mcflurry, requested the creme egg one (OBBBVVVZZZZ) and she had the cheek to tell me that its not in the offer with the NUS card. like it would have pained her to help us enjoy our dining experience slightly after a series of blunders and mistakes. By now we were close to giving up. it was one thing after another. i gave in, ordered a crunchie one as a replacement. it came back with a normal plastic spoon in it, as apposed to the appropriate straw/spoon/mcflurry thing that clips on to the machine and stirs the chocolate bits. I asked the woman serving and she said they had ran out of them. our minds were blown. was this really mcdonalds? is this life? like i said, you expect a standard of quality from the mcdonalds brand, and they had not delivered (up to this point) on about 5 counts.
The woman, by now losing patience with us losing patience slammed my room temperature oasis down on my tray and said 'before you start moaning, there is no ice left, thats why there is none in there.' incredible. so not only is there no ice, but the drink inside the cup is just a lukewarm sugary mess, and it was apparently my fault.
we sat down and started to eat. bradley went to eat his apple pie, it was too cold, like beyond a joke so he went up to talk to the same woman who spun him the bullshit about them having to cool down. she had no problem with his complaint this time round and got him a piping hot one from out of the little rack thing. it was so bizarre. where we were sat we were in plain view of the drive through window. during this period i saw two things. firstly, the mcdonalds worker literally tossed the bag of food through the drivers open window into his hands, as apposed to passing it over to him in the style of a human. it was getting beyond a joke now, i thought something was seriously wrong with all the people who worked there. secondly my mind got fully blown.
i looked over at the drive thru lane to see a man getting handed a mcflurry. proudly sat on top of the mcflurry was the correct eating utensil, the fantastic mcflurry spoon/straw thing. remember? the ones they ran out of? the ones they didn't have any of? i couldn't hold in laughter of utter disbelief, it was incredible. I went up to the counter and told the bloke to give me one. he obliged, handing me one out of a brown mcdonalds paper bag that appeared to be full of them and looked confused. i explained that a lady told me no more than 10 minutes ago that they had ran out and he replied they had just got a delivery of them. (it was currently about 11:30 at night.) I walked outside the door, to see the woman on her cigarette break and shown her the spoon. she patronisingly replied 'awwww, you got it then?' it was so weird, like a parody of mcdonalds in a film or something.
finally these three girls came in, all wearing matching fishnets and black pants, attracting a lot of attention from lads passing by. it was inappropriate, like something out of a weird dream. you know when the girls from a strip club come around the bars in town to stamp your hands? it was like that. a weird, uneasy feeling. it seems all the young men in Bow all of a sudden had to pop in mcdonalds, only to have a look at the menu and realise they don't actually fancy mcdonalds. shortly after the trio of rumpasauras' had left it turned into a really hostile environment with a lot of young men rolling in and just sitting around being weird and trying to intimidate people. it went on for about 15 minutes before we decided just to leave.
the whole experience was just bizarre and surreal. it seemed like the staff were doing anything they could to try and piss us off and make sure that we didn't enjoy our time in the restaurant. it was one of those situations where i was thinking if the regional manager could have seen the way the branch was being operated they would have hit the fucking roof. it might not sound like it was mental, but think that all of this occurred within about half an hour and it puts it into perspective just how exhausting the whole thing was. but seriously, why the fuck were they lying about the apple pies and mcflurry spoons? so odd.
SAM GRUBB REPORTING FOR WICKED-LAND NEWS, BACK TO THE STUDIO
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