Hey guys, I have been an employee at McDonalds for 5 years so I have decided to share a few deals and hints you can use to save some money and get the best products.
Firstly - A ~$4 medium cheeseburger meal.
The loose change menu deal is currently a $5 medium double beef n bacon meal. Personally, I prefer just normal cheeseburgers. So instead of taking the meat off manually, you can request the burger without bacon and without one piece of meat (We call it 10:1 (ten to one), as it is a tenth of a pound). As you can see in the picture provided, the meal is -90c as adding and removing pieces of meat costs and saves you $$$ respectively.
By asking for a medium double beef and bacon meal WITHOUT 1 piece of meat and without the bacon, you are essentially ordering a cheeseburger (without a pickle, but you can ask for a pickle if you want) with medium fries and a drink, saving yourself nearly $2 if you had ordered a medium cheeseburger meal.
Secondly - Fresh fries
Personally, I hate it when customers do this, but whatever.
If you want fresh fries, you can simply ask for fresh fries, but generally we will be annoyed by your request and just give you the same fries as everyone else.
Instead, ask for either no salt, or only a little bit of salt. We will be forced to wait for the fresh fries to come up to give you the type of fries you asked for.
Thirdly - Fresh Meat
Again, I hate this.
If you want fresh meat on your burgers, ask for the meat unsalted and with Angus seasoning. We automatically salt and pepper all meat we cook. If you ask for Angus seasoning instead of salt and pepper, we have to cook a run of meat specially for you and put the Angus seasoning (Usually only put on Angus meat) on your burger. If you want a Angus burger, we put both salt and pepper AND Angus seasoning on it, so this will still work.
Fourthly - General hints and tips
We are supposed to throw out any meat/chicken which is past it's timer (Generally these are 20-30 minutes). On overnight and during non-busy periods we get lazy and just press the timer again instead of throwing it out and cooking fresh product. This is why I never eat the bacon on the double beef n bacons. It is one of the worse culprits for this. Sometimes it will sit in a tray from breakfast (10:30ish) to about 12-1 in the afternoon until we use it all, depending on how much was cooked and left over.
The oil in our vats are supposed to be changed every 2 weeks. If you can see the the bottom of the vats and the oil is clear, the oil is very fresh and the chicken is 5x more tastier. If it's black, then it's old and you get run of the mill tasting chicken.
EDIT
Just to be clear - we filter this oil every 12 hours. The chicken is not cooked in dirty oil continuously. Once filtering is done, the oil is pretty much brand new, but not as see-through-ey.
Sorry for the confusion.
Be nice to us and we will be nice to you. Common sense. I don't come into your workplace and start swearing my head off because this burger isn't $2 cheaper than the store down the road or that you got the wrong order. Be calm and polite and you will get your problem sorted.
Every store which has a drive thru has a certain amount of time to get cars through. My store is 3 minutes. That means as soon as you roll up at the speaker box, we have 3 minutes to get you your food and rolling away. We have a scoreboard in the store showing how many cars each store has done in the past hour, and the percentage of how many cars have met that deadline. So when going through drive thru, please be conscious of this and order quickly and efficiently as you will make us and the people behind you waiting happy.
If you have a problem, ask to speak with a manager if it's serious. If you're missing a toy, fries, a drink, just ask a normal crew member and they will get you one.
I am 90% certain that a Bacon and Egg add Sausage is cheaper than a Sausage and Egg add Bacon. 10% of me says that they are the same price.
Remember that the crew who work at McDonalds are generally teenagers and this is their first job. Don't expect 5 star service from people who aren't tall enough to ride a roller coaster.
Sorry if this belongs in the forums. Enjoy your Meals!
+1 for honesty and creativity on saving a few $$