38,000 locations—that’s the striking number of McDonald’s restaurants you’ll find worldwide right now, according to the fast-food giant’s corporate site. Sure, that number is probably off by a few hundred this way or that way, but it speaks to the undeniable fact that McDonald’s is a nearly unmatched business success story.
One way the chain got to 38,000 units spread across 100 nations is by selling food with a reliable taste at a low price. Another way is by keeping employees on a pretty tight leash. We did some sleuthing and came up with these eight oddly strict, specific, or just bizarre rules McDonald’s workers have to follow, and we have to say that a few of them make us wonder just what happened behind that counter or drive-thru window that saw these regulations added to the policy books. Plus, 7 Strict Rules That Have Gotten Hooters Girls Fired.
With an extremely limited number of exceptions, McDonald’s workers are strictly prohibited from giving away free food. No ice cream cone for a kid. No coffee for a cop. No freebies, period, unless you want to risk termination for having effectively stolen from the restaurant. It was a refreshing departure when McDonald’s OK’d some food giveaways to healthcare workers in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.,
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McDonald’s sandwiches like the Big Mac or McDouble are essentially scientifically designed, with everything from ingredient type and even to order of assembly tested and locked in. And according to Mental Floss, any employee who does not follow the exact assembly steps of a McDonald’s menu item risks termination for doing so.
Per a Reddit conversation, as well as various other sources, McDonald’s employees are strictly prohibited from playing the popular McDonald’s Monopoly game. And in fact, in some cases, their close family members are not supposed to play, either.
You know those signs in restaurant (and other) bathrooms that say: “Employees must wash hands before returning to work,” right? Well, those are indeed enforced policies. But it goes even beyond that, per Salon: in many McDonald’s locations, managers mandate that every employee washes his or her hands every 30 minutes or face discipline or even termination.
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For starters, McDonald’s workers may only refer to the iconic, off-putting clown mascot as Ronald McDonald, no nicknames. As for the person playing the clown himself, that gent is bound by a number of strict rules, including agreeing to never reveal his true identity, to protect company secrets indefinitely even after separation, and to reply to customers using a set script, according to Reader’s Digest.
According to a former McDonald’s employee who shared via Quora, if a worker is off with the measurements of volume items like french fries or milkshakes, they can be terminated. With milkshakes, the commenter cited a very strict window of just plus or minus 0.25 ounces leading to a shake considered unacceptable, and a few unacceptable shakes (or over- or under-loaded containers of fries) could do it.
McDonald’s provides its worker with most of their uniform, including a shirt, hat (or visor), an apron, and a name tag. But when it comes to pants and shoes, the worker must supply these, and they must meet very strict criteria. Via Zippia, pants must be black and can’t be denim, sweats, or leggings. Shoes must be nonslip, black, and able to be polished, meaning leather or faux leather material.
And on other holidays, too. Per an article on Medium, if a McDonald’s worker is employed by a location that will be open on a given holiday, he or she may have no real recourse to avoid a scheduled shift on that day unless they can prove an extraordinary need for an exemption—merely saying you celebrate Christmas won’t get you off on December 25th, in other words.
Steven John
Steven John is a freelancer writer for Eat This, Not That! based just outside New York City. Read more about Steven
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