A McDonald’s employee has revealed the reason why the ice-cream machines at the food chain’s outlets always appear to be broken.
The reason is pretty simple: the staff doesn’t bother cleaning them.
Former McDonald’s worker Will Doyle took to Twitter, saying that the staff is almost always reluctant to serve ice-cream to the customers because soft-serve machines take a lot of time to clean.
“Btw, I used to work in McDonalds. The ice cream machine was never broke, it just takes 3 hours to clean so we used to say it was broke so we didn’t have to serve you lot. Cheers x,” Will tweeted.
Another former employee, Eleanor, seconded Will, adding the machines were ‘always working’ but just ‘took too long to clean’ so they would tell people they’re broken.
The original tweet went viral soon after it was posted, racking up more than 10,000 retweets.
Eleanor said it’s ‘easier’ to say that the machine is broken as compared to explaining to the customers that the machine can’t be used during a cleaning cycle.
“Unless you work for the company you don’t understand,” she added. “It seems dumb but it’s genuinely easier to lie to avoid having the same conversation 10000 times a day.”
Former McDonald’s worker Megan Wojcik added: “Or someone would accidentally press the weird heat button which spoiled the ice cream/shakes so it had to be cleaned.”
Twitter user Megan Pears said: “Will take all McDonald’s secrets to the grave.”
User Kat wrote: “Bf recently worked there… can confirm the absolute truth in this! And that barely anyone knows how to actually clean it.”
Rhys Thomas added: “Question is, why are they making machines for fast food chains that take 3 hours to clean.”
User TheGrizzlyBanjo said: “I’m copying this information so the next time McDonalds does that I will show them this tweet.”
User Andizzle wrote: “I don’t understand why you couldn’t say it’s being cleaned or maintenanced.”
After the tweet went viral, the fast food chain released a statement to the Mirror, apologizing for any inconvenience caused to their customers due to the cleaning of machines after every 24 hours.
The statement added that the machines ‘undergo heat treatment cycles’ in which they are ‘disassembled sanitized and cleaned every 14 days.’
Replaced!