Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:16 AM Erwyn van der Meer

McDonald's is discriminating against the car-impaired

NoCar-NoMcDonalds

Yesterday evening I found that McDonald's is discriminating against the car-impaired. I am currently in Seattle for the Microsoft TechReady conference. After a photo walk with two colleagues we were getting thirsty and hungry. I managed to stay out of McDonald's for the almost four weeks that I have been in the States, but the McDonald's two blocks away from the Space Needle was a bit hard to resist.

We arrived there at 23:02 and the "restaurant" had just closed. However, the drive thru (yes, that seems to be the correct spelling here) is open 24 hours per day. But what do you do when you don't have a car? You walk through the drive thru. We weren't carrying enough metal to trip the detector in front of the ordering pole. So we couldn't state our order. We preceded to the pay window to order there. The guy there looked very amazed and said he could not and would not serve us. WTF! "Why not?" we asked. "Because you don't have a car", he replied. Disappointed we left. Next time, I will try riding a bike through the drive tru.

In the mean time I will boycot McDonald's for a while.

PS: This is just for my own good as I have the feeling that I gained a couple of kilos here in the US.

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# re: McDonald's is discriminating against the car-impaired

Friday, August 01, 2008 8:18 AM by Matthijs

A typical example of Duck-Vs-Eagle customer service ;-)

In regard to your weight; You wrote yourself you hardly ate at McDonalds these weeks, but did gain some kilos.

So maybe you *should* eat more at McDonalds and eat less 5 pound sizzling hot steaks :-)

# re: McDonald's is discriminating against the car-impaired

Friday, August 01, 2008 10:08 AM by Ramon Smits

When McDonalds Hoogvliet opened you also needed to have a car for a long period before they also allowed bikers and pedestrians. I can imagine that if that specific McDonalds is only accessible by car a a fuel station on a highway but not when it is located in a city.

Anyway, nowadays they understand that there people bring in money too so I think that when you order a burger from a chopper then you probably be helped too!

# re: McDonald's is discriminating against the car-impaired

Friday, August 01, 2008 7:16 PM by Frits

There's probably a little practical side to this as well, as people on foot can easily sneak by cars that are waiting in line to get served.  And chaos would ensue ...

From a lawsuit-POV (and McDonalds has had its share) allowing cars and pedestrians to mix in the same driveway is probably not the wisest thing.

Nevertheless, it apparently wasn't too crowded so you might have gotten lucky. But what was so irresistable about the space needle Mac?

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