Bradford – McDonalds Kirkgate

I very rarely go into McDonald’s in the UK, they’re usually a little superfluous for me given that there are those wonderful things called pubs. However, it’s the McDonald’s monopoly season and I thought I’d see what I could get.

Anyway, food, drink and stickers aside, I do feel sorry for the staff here. The upstairs of the restaurant was closed off, which really wasn’t ideal for customers, although they had a few seats free downstairs. In came a yell of children (or whatever the collective noun is) who were showing off which was the rudest, all aged around 10 or 11. Fortunately they were nowhere near me, but two of them were vaping in the corner and one of the crew members asked a manager to deal with the situation, which he begrudgingly did. One kid had also managed to pinch an entire cup of ketchup, which ended up being thrown on the floor outside. The crew member battled on though trying to clean the mess up the group had left, but he remained endlessly polite as if this was just another repeat occurrence of annoying customers.

Then a group of younger women, probably aged around 16, came in and were abusive to the crew members. The same manager went over and threw them out as well, telling them he didn’t want customers like that in the restaurant. He certainly wasn’t in the mood for debate and I quite liked that confidence and authority. It certainly made for a tense atmosphere though, especially as then another customer was rude to a crew member, just what you want at 15:00 on a Sunday afternoon.

There’s no real point to this post and I’m not going to go down the line about how there are problems with this younger generation, as it’s a small minority and it’s been the same for every other generation. It is though a reminder about just how hard so many staff in hospitality work, often in trying and difficult circumstances and provocation from customers.

On a more important matter, I got a free coffee from the Monopoly stickers, so that was handy, although I’ll collect that when kids are at school, it’ll be more sedate. That’s the key message, be kind to hospitality workers and there are prizes galore with McDonald’s Monopoly….