If McDonald’s denied you nuggets, would you punch through the drive-through window? Or if your orange juice was missing from your order, would you call 911? Probably not, but some people would. These are their stories. And their meltdowns.
1. The Chili-Sauce Shooting, Wendy’s 2007
In 2007, a man at a Wendy’s drive-thru window demanded ten packets of chili sauce, to which the employee responded that store policy was only to give out two. After the man’s persistent demands, the employee eventually complied and handed over the ten packets; by this point, however, the customer wanted more. When the manager of the store, Renal Frage, came out to talk to the demanding customer, the unidentified man shot Frage and drove off. On the way to the hospital, Frage kept “trying to [figure out] … why someone would shoot me over chili sauce.” We’re not really sure, either, but neither the assailant nor the ten chili packets were never found.
2. The Case of the Missing Digit, Wendy’s 2005
For a few months, Wendy’s in San Jose, California, was under investigation due to Anna Ayala biting into a tip of a finger she found in her chili. She was apparently so “emotionally upset once she found out what it was … she was vomiting” said Joy Alexiou, a spokesperson for the Santa Clara County Health Department. Ayala then sued Wendy’s, cried to the media about the horror she found in her chili, and cost the restaurant millions in revenue, causing them to have several rounds of layoffs. The only twist of the story was that Ayala was the one who had placed the digit in her chili. This came out eight weeks later after every finger that could have been in that chili, from the initial suppliers to all of Wendy’s restaurant workers, had been accounted for. Ayala and her husband—the finger was from her husband’s colleague—are now in jail.
3. McNugget Emergency! Call 911?, McDonald’s 2009
On February 28, 2009, Latreasa Goodman called 911, not for someone’s health being in danger, a house on fire, or a crime being committed, but because her local McDonald’s had run out of McNuggets. She had paid for a ten-piece order of Chicken McNuggets and was told that it was store policy not to give refunds, but they could exchange her order for something else on the menu; a Big Mac perhaps? While this is certainly an annoyance for Goodman, does it warrant an emergency call? Or three, in this case. When the 911 dispatcher didn’t respond the way Goodman wanted, she called again and then again, for a total of three times, until police arrived at the scene. Goodman was arrested for misuse of 911.
4. The Disabled Debacle, McDonald’s 2009
This is the one where we really have to side with the customer. First, Margaret Todd, a sixty-nine-year old disabled woman, tried to enter her local New Zealand McDonald’s via the front door but couldn’t because it wasn’t wide enough to accommodate her mobile scooter. She then decided to go through the drive-through window, where she’d been served before, which we think was quiet a savvy reaction. She was then told she couldn’t be served for “health and safety reasons.” Huh? Todd, not backing down, pushed the manager to detail these health and safety reasons, to which the manager had no answer. Finally, the manager agreed to serve the woman if she waited away from the window, which is just unnecessarily rude. At the end of all this, however, Todd went to pay with eftpos, an Australian and New Zealand based payment system, but was told that this McDonald’s didn’t except eftpos. Todd was pretty furious, and rightly so if you ask us! This whole debacle started because the front doors to the McDonald’s weren’t wide enough to accommodate Todd’s handicap scooter.
