: : I am a McDonalds employee, I can tell you that you have to pay the full price of a Happy Meal, including the soda. ...: Sir, I agree with you completely. I too am a McDonalds employee, I find it incredibly annoying when customers get belligerent and act like the originator of this thread. I charge the customer for the soft drink even if they order water, and no one ever questions it. I do that because my managers have told me to. To re-emphasize your point, sir, crew people like myself don't make the rules, we only follow them.
"[T]he originator of this thread . . ." said that she wanted water in place of the soda, but I'm under the impression that she was willing to pay full price for the meal. There's nothing wrong with paying full price and asking for water in place of soda. If a McDonald's employee won't go along with that, the employee is not following the rules.
This comes as no surprise to me. Being an employee, you assume the customer is wrong. You ignore the possibility that the customer could be right. As I've said in past threads, McDonald's employees rarely accept the fact that they're wrong. "The customer is always wrong" must be the motto of a McDonald's employee. It's McDonald's employees against the world from what I can see.
By the way, I ordered an item from McDonald's that I've purchased for years and years. I ordered it with cheese, as I always do. The cashier repeated my order, so I know she heard it. I asked the server if it had cheese, and she assured me that it did. After getting the order and going on my way, I found out that it didn't have cheese. I returned to get the all important cheese, and I was told that they couldn't put cheese on it. She said, "it doesn't come with cheese." It comes with cheese if I order it with cheese. I've been getting this item with cheese on it longer than the person at the window has been alive, yet she's telling me this lie to save face for her error. The girl serving the food told me it had cheese, yet she didn't know. In the end, I got my cheese. I didn't complain. I wasn't rude about it.
Maybe they left off the cheese intentionally because they take pleasure in getting your order wrong after you've made every effort to make it clear to them exactly what your order is. Maybe they did something to the item when I had them put cheese on it. Nothing would surprise me. I think they should turn all those cameras on the outside toward themselves, so there's a video record of what they do. They're just a bunch of kids on a playground disguised as a restaurant.
If I were a business instructor, I would take my class to a local McDonald's for a great lesson in how not to treat customers.
