I saw today that the FTC is investigating McDonald’s why their ice cream machines are always down. The journalist’s over at TMZ also wrote an article about it.
The problem’s been so persistent … there’s a website dubbed McBroken … which tracks ice cream machine outages across the country.
The problem? McDonald’s ice cream machines are overly complicated to operate and incredibly difficult to clean … often making them susceptible to breaking down. According to the Wall Street Journal … the machines require a nightly automated heat-cleaning cycle that can last up to 4 hours to get rid of the bacteria.
TMZ
I figured I’d throw my “journalist” hat in as well; hard to type that when I write about Horny Tik Tok Trends and people fighting. Anyway, before I became Mailman Dave, I worked at McDonald’s for 5 years. After dropping out of college, I didn’t have a plan, so I worked at McDicks as a closer and then made my way up to manager before leaving. Not exactly the greatest job in the world, but sometimes you have to have a shitty job. Anyway, I worked every shift known to mankind. Opening, 8-4, 10-6, and closing. So I saw all of the shit that hell hole has to offer, and I saw firsthand why the machines would go down, and of course, it’s not as simple as people are lazy or the machines sucked.
The first reason is that if you don’t put shake mix in right away, the machine will overheat and refuse to turn back on. Say there are only 4 of you working, and you’re on track to do a $1500 hour. You don’t exactly have time to run to the walk-in, grab shake mix, and pour it in. It also doesn’t give you a lot of time to do this. All of a sudden, you’ll be on your way to the walk-in, you’ll get back, and the machine will be locked because it overheated.
The second reason is that the machine takes fucking forever to clean. They tried to train me to clean it, but I always figured out how to weasel my way out of not fully learning. Fuck that. I didn’t want to be in charge of cleaning that thing. I think it took about 4 hours to clean if you knew what you were doing. There were so many small parts; you had to take every ounce of shake mix out of the machine; you then had to put everything back together and wait for the machine to cool down. This was supposed to happen in the early morning, but nothing ever works how it should. So sometimes that person had to come in the evening. If it’s getting cleaned, we were told to say the machine was broken so we didn’t have to deal with assholes saying, “why would you clean the machine at 8 at night?” People are used to hearing that the machine is broken, and it’s just easier.
The third reason is that sometimes you try to cheat and clean the machine early, and some asshole will come in 5 minutes before closing and want a McFlurry. On the closing shift, there’s nightly cleaning that you have to do, and to do that; you need to turn off the machine. Instead of being there until 2 in the morning, the closers will try to do things early. If you’ve already started to clean it and somebody comes in, tough shit.
The fourth reason is sometimes people are lazy fucks. They’ll see that it needs shake mix, have the time to get it, and don’t do it. Then when the machine goes in heat mode, they don’t have to deal with making cones, McFlurries, and milkshakes for the rest of the night. Sometimes some dirtbags don’t want to work. That’s in every job.
So the next time that you go to a McDonald’s and they tell you the ice cream machine is broken, here are 4 reasons why. I don’t blame you for being pissed, but it’s not the worker’s fault a lot of the time. I know you think it might be funny to make a Tik Tok throwing something at them or being a dick, but don’t. Working at a fast food place blows donkey cock, and they don’t need you being an asshole to make it worse.
